Full Moon Brings 'Em Out!

Man, oh man was work busy this weekend. I am wicked tired and sore. My usual 2 12-hour shifts and 8-hour shift turned into 13- and 14 hour shifts. Not only long, but busy and hard. And I'm on-call Wednesday night and there was no sign of it slowing down. Lots of walking, turning patients with epidurals, moving beds to the OR, stooping over to help with breastfeeding, and just running from one thing to the next. At one point Sunday night, I had 4 active labor patients (thankfully only for about 1 1/2 hours), one having late decels, and one who was a repeat cesarean. I wished I could just squat, grunt, push and deliver a set of fully-trained labor-nurse triplets to help out! There was no time to eat, drink or pee. This a.m., I realized I hadn't peed since I went into work, and still didn't feel like I had to go. That's the kind of busy we were. Gotta love a full moon and storm. Oh, and Saturday night, we had a bomb code. That's right, we had a code called because of a bomb threat. I never wanted to hear that code called. I didn't actually hear it called because I was admitting active labor #3, and when my co-workers told me, I thought they were lying. Nope. For about 2 hours, we waited, as patients were still coming in (yeah, lets bump of the census before the bomb goes off) wondering when they'd call it clear or tell us to evacuate. We figured it was probably bogus, but you just don't know. It turned out to be bogus, but man, was scary.

Saturday morning, before the chaos of L&D, I ran another 5K, this one was to benefit St. Jude. Let me tell you, when I woke up at 5:00 a.m., in the dark, to 40 degree temps and mist, I wanted to crawl back under the covers and go to sleep. But, I had pre-registered, and I thought of all the kids that would never be able to run a race, and all the kids that someday might be able to thanks to the money raised. Even though my money was already there, I felt obligated to go run. Before the race, they had a fun kids race, 1/4 of a mile. I'm a huge crier, and man, did the tears fall watching these little kids run. Who knows if these kids were ever patients at St. Jude, but at that moment, in my eyes they were. So here I am, a 30 year old woman, crying because some kids are running. I'm sure I was a sight. But, then it was time for my race. It was cold, but thankfully it had stopped raining. I had my best time ever, 27:15, and felt great afterward. They had marked every 1/4 mile, which was nice because you knew how close you were, but at the same time, you knew how far you had to go. Apparently, I do great and feel awesome the first 1 3/4 mile, then I start to tire, and want to be closer. At mile 2 1/2, I'm done. My muscles are screaming "stop, stop! we're tired! we can't go one!", but there's only a bit more than a half mile left, so I keep going. And once I see the finish line and the time clock, I'm able to maybe kick it, like a 4 cylinder engine running on fumes, and finish strong. It is a test of endurance and strength, finishing a race, but afterwards, it feels great. Just knowing I can do it, is awesome. I'm not fast by any means. Serious runners finish in 19 minutes. I'm happy to not be last! I'm working on getting a co-worker who runs regularly to run a 5K race in 2 weeks here in town. I'm not sure I can better my time at this point in the year. It gets dark so early and so it's hard to get out and run. But, it sounds like it's a fun race to do, so I'm hoping to get her to run it with me.