A Reality.

This is week four in the Emergency Room.

Because the registration routine is being experimented with, the Triage bays started filling up again. However, this week, it was a lot smoother--I think mostly because of how Ms. Patricia handled the situation. Ms. Patricia is probably my favorite nurse to work with in the Emergency Room. She's kind to all the patients, maintaining that difficult balance between directness and manners. Not to mention, she's funny--today, she mimicked Santa, as she watched us, her "elves" scramble around the room to assist incoming patients. Her accent is also the best.

Anyway, working today was really interesting.

Walking into Emergency, I met a friend who was assisting her grandfather into a wheelchair. I've known Nancy since middle school, and so it was almost a happy reunion until we remembered the purpose of her visit. It was an interesting experience--where I had to sever personal relations to act professionally.

I also worked with some seriously ill people today. In one case, there was a young man who continued to vomit blood to the point where I brought him a wheelchair. He was rushed to see a doctor, rather than sit the registration process.

Not only that, I worked with a woman who could not stop sobbing--she was in too much pain. But she was forced to wait in the bays for over an hour because of the back up in the Triage.

I suppose health clearance from the Mecklenburg County jails are also a little more common than I realized--today, another inmate was brought in. Handcuffed. Escorted by an officer with two firearms.

But by far the most memorable experience today occurred near the end of my shift. A young woman came in with her mother, clearly very pregnant. I barely recognized her face, but I realized it was another friend from my middle school. She looked exhausted, stressed, anxious, changed. We were friends, but she and I both went to different high schools, and gradually drifted apart.

I don't think she recognized me at all.

When I asked what her emergency was, she answered by saying that she began contractions this morning.

When I asked her how many months she had been pregnant, she answered, "8 months. 32 weeks."

Then it really hit me. If she had been carrying her baby for 8 months, she would have been 15 (we had birthdays that weren't too far apart). Ironically, Dr. Phil (the TV channel that was on in the waiting room) had been talking about teenage pregnancies and reality shows about their situations (ie. Sixteen and Pregnant). This was much more "in your face" than a reality show--it was a reality. She wasn't even sixteen.

I knew that she was pregnant from rumors I had heard earlier, but this face to face encounter really shocked me to my core. And I sincerely hoped to God that the other rumor I heard was not true: that the father of the child was no longer part of the picture. Her delivery date coincided with the first day of school; what if she had to drop out? What might become of her child?

I barely recognized her. She didn't recognize me. How drastically, unrecognizably life can change within 2 years.

Chatting on the Phone to Girlfriends

My third week in the Emergency Room. The people moved a little slower than usual; the staff on shift were new to the job. It was uncomfortable seeing how slowly the Emergency Room moved, when people started actually filling the waiting room--normally the pace moves quickly enough to where there are only a few people waiting to be registered or treated.

This week, I noticed an unusual amount of Spanish speakers. Normally, there are one or two Spanish speakers who come to the Emergency Room who have difficulty speaking English, but this week, there were at least 10 appointments during my shift where a Spanish speaker needed assistance to communicate with the staff.

The unusual number of Spanish speakers really opened my eyes to how useful some of the things we were learning in school were--I could understand and communicate with the people, rather than bark "Que?" or "Mucho grande?" like Miss Ronda (God bless her heart) who was sitting at the desk today.

Miss Ronda was an interesting head nurse. Incredibly blunt, forceful, but like a courteous matron, she whirled around the Triage and the Emergency Room encouraging the newer faculty. She never used euphemisms to try and calm people down, but rather told them the truth, immediately and objectively.

This brings me to the other faculty. I've worked with many different nurses before; some nurses are more relaxed about helping the patients, while others are much more careful and busy. But this week, I noticed something that actually upset me about a certain group of nurses. In the Emergency Room Triage, where patients were to be seated for treatment after they had been registered, the nurses usually try and clear the area as quickly as possible. The nurses in question would sit at the desk, and use the phone at the desk to chat with their girlfriends. I would catch snatches of their conversations: "Belk is having a huuuuuuuuuge sale today, girl!" "Mm, mm, mm... I've gained sooo much weight hehehe, I don't even know if my man recognizes me!" among other chatter. Other than just chatting on the phone, some of the nurses even congregated around the desk, sitting in the seats the patients were supposed to sit in.

The Emergency Room Triage started to get backed up. When I was done registering people, that means that there was no room to bring them in to be treated. Each of the bays (waiting areas for the patients) were filled, and the nurses in the Triage were not replacing the papers, tissues, etc like they should be. To reassure the patients, I said, "The Triage is getting a little backed up, but the nurses will be with you shortly. I'll put you in one of the bays while you're waiting."

One of the nurses, who had stopped chattering on the phone, overheard me say that to one of the many patients in the Emergency Room. She pulled me aside, her expression stony and indignant, and said, "Next time, you just tell the patients that we'll be with them shortly."

That was the upsetting part. If the nurses aren't quickly moving the patients to get treated because they are too busy socializing, they shouldn't be indignant about the truth.

The nurses chatter in the Emergency Room while a man is wheezing, having trouble breathing, and his family is panicking...

Chained

My second week in the Emergency Room. The people moved in and out of the Triage area quickly, but one person remained in my mind for a longer period of time.

There was an inmate chained to a wheelchair. His midsection was wrapped in chains attached to the wheelchair, while his hands remained in handcuffs, and his ankles attached to the pedals. His orange uniform was emblazoned with the words "Charlotte Mecklenburg County Jail" in all capital letters. A burly, stoic looking security guard escorted him in, and wheeled him around.

The surprising thing is, this man was much more courteous and softspoken compared to many of the others who were registered to the Emergency Room. You could barely hear him speak when he answered your questions, and his general appearance seemed more comparable to a kindly middle-aged man, than a fearful criminal who deserved to be chained to a wheelchair.

He had greying/silvering/white-ish hair, and ice blue eyes, and was not unlike common representations of Santa Claus, but not round at all. His bony wrists and frail looking, thin physique was a reminder that jail was not a comfortable or welcoming place.

He was wheeled away for emergency care, and I wouldn't see him again, even while I was making rounds, but I couldn't help but think:

Why was this man, so kindly and well, normal looking, chained multiple times to his wheelchair?

But it just occurred to me, that those chains may not have been holding him back in the present, but binding him to what he did in the past.

A Bullet Wound

I volunteer in the Emergency Room.

I hope that it doesn't get too busy--not because I don't like doing work, or don't want to do anything, but because if the Emergency Room gets busy, it means that people are getting hurt more often.

Despite my wishes, the flow of the ER picked up around 10 AM yesterday when I was volunteering.

The man who was brought in probably didn't know that he would pop up in my mind for the rest of the day. He was a skinny African-American man, late 60s to early 70s. He was bleeding severely from a bullet wound to the thigh. Right or left leg, I can't remember, but there was a seemingly impossible amount of blood.

That image itself is burned into my mind, but the echoing words of his distraught family haunted me for the rest of the day, and probably will for a while.

"He was on his way to work... If someone wanted to steal something from him, they could've just pushed him over! He's old and frail... Why did they have to shoot him?"

It's a good question. It also makes me want to do something. I've been thinking for 24 hours and 44 minutes approximately... And I have nothing.

What can I do to solve violence?

I wish...

That I had woken up early yesterday to:

1) Move the car
2) Ice my family's toothbrushes
3) Remove the cream from Oreos and replace it with toothpaste.
4) Put plastic wrap on the toilet
5) Put folded up ketchup packets underneath the toilet
6) Superglue a penny to the ground (okay, bad idea... Hardwood floors+superglue?)
7) Duct tape the sink hose into a position where it sprays anyone who turns it on
8) Set everyone's alarm to 4:00 AM, and then pretend like they slept to the afternoon
9) Do something productive (<---Hahahaha.)
10) Actually celebrate April Fool's.

I never do, though. I think it's because I know better than to pull pranks when no one in my family is a morning person... Including myself. Which explains why I didn't wake up early.

Bubbles and Middle School Girls.

Sooooooo, I spent my entire morning at a local university, playing with bubbles, surrounded by middle school girls. It was really entertaining!

But really.

Ever since last year, I've been volunteering at a local festival called the Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival. And honestly, it's really fun. Because I get to build shapes using Zometools, which are like K'nex or Legos for math professors, and dip them in bubble solution (with a touch of glycerin to keep the bubbles alive longer) and teach kids about minimal surfaces and Lagrange's equation without them knowing. And plus, UNC Charlotte has really tasty food.

Working with these middle school girls to build dodecahedrons, tetrahedrons, and other shapes kind of makes me want to do more events similar to the Julia Robinson Festival. I met some of my little brother's friends, and my old teachers who brought their students to the Festival, and it makes me feel happy that I'm contributing to the community that helped raise me.

Senior Exits.

I saw someone carrying a canvas larger than himself in the hallways.

Just screams of artsy senior exit presentations... Which leads me to think about how March really is the beginning of the end. To quote a friend, "I'm done with senior exits.. Which means I'm cruising through the rest of the year." For many of the seniors, I bet that their year is pretty much over. Many have been accepted into colleges, and are just vying for any scholarships left over. Some are taking gap years (my friend's older brother is hiking the ENTIRE Appalachian Mountains trail, and then going to somewhere-exotic-but-I-can't-remember to do-something-really-cool-like-build-a-library-or-something-similar).

I'm almost kind of sad, really. They'll be gone to college, and I'll still have two years of high school. When they're gone, all they can do is look back, and time still moves on...

I was always really raring to get independent, and be "grown up" (cliche, I know), but now that I think about it, once high school is gone... It's over and done with. And often times, high school can dictate the rest of your life--your continued education (for sure... Which is why all of the seniors were stressing out!), your interests.

On another note, I got my permit. Yay.

I hope this doesn't go away...

I just have this burning desire to try my best at everything right now. It is kind of draining, but for some reason, this determination is just blasting through the boundaries that sleep usually sets up for me. I suppose it could be a sort of warped adrenaline rush as my midterm exams approach, in addition to the fact that it is a new year... But I hope it doesn't go away.

Lately, school's been difficult, and it's been even more difficult to motivate myself to keep on trying, to keep on working, to wake up when it's dark, do the things I enjoy doing outside of school, to come home to do homework, go to sleep for however many hours I can get, and wake up and do it all over again.

Though I somewhat enjoy this feeling of potential success (the best way I can describe it), I bet I'll feel some sort of relief after school's over and done again for the summer.

Phew.

And I am resolute.

I've decided that 2011 will be a great year for me.

Not just a great year, but a better year. I've made my resolutions, and I plan to stick to them... I probably said that last year too. But the fact that we have a new year, and a relatively clean, new slate (taking into account that I am 6 minutes away from 1/2/11 typing this post) gives me hope to try and make myself a better person.

But I guess that a New Year's resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other... (Pun completely and totally intended.)

But in the words of Edith Lovejoy Pierce: "We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day."

I'm looking forward to a new year.

Top Ten Things I'm Enjoying Today

10. KOREA beats Greece in the FIFA World Cup! 2-0. That's right.

9. The sun is shining, and the sky is clear.

8. I played tennis on a CLAY court today-- very interesting. But it's also very weird... I almost slipped trying to slide. I watched some videos of the master, Rafael Nadal, and I still don't get it.

7. I'm very excited for one of my friends' birthday party tomorrow. I also got her a present. Buying people presents makes me happy. Not necessarily buying people things, but also making, and even thinking about doing this makes me happy.

6. I wrote a goals list. I write a goals list every once in a while, when I feel like my life needs direction. It makes me happy to mark through the ones that I've reached, and write new ones.

5. I got enough sleep. I didn't wake up to an alarm, or my brother singing...

4. My fish. I think that's self-explanatory. I adore my fish. His name is Piotr.

3. The Taco Bell sauce packets. "Will you marry me?"

2. Volkswagen Beetles and yellow cars. This is because I think one of the saddest things is to see these vehicles, and not have anyone to punch.

1. Happiness. I feel like today is a great day to be happy. Let's try this everyday.

April showers bring May flowers...

But not May blog posts do they bring.

I haven't posted a blog post since last month!
I suppose I've been caught up in the game of Life.

The school year is winding to a close with less than 10 days of real school left! I can't believe that my first year of high school is almost over, but at the same time, I'm relieved. I can't wait until summer.

One thing I find funny about summer is that once it gets here, it can't be over soon enough, but one it's over, it can't get here soon enough. Just shows how fickle humans are.
(P.S. Fickle's one of my SAT words! Why am I so witty.)

Etymology

I was just thinking about this word.

The word naïve.

It means:
1.
having or showing unaffected simplicity of nature or absence of artificiality; unsophisticated; ingenuous.
2.
having or showing a lack of experience, judgment, or information; credulous: She's so naive she believes everything she reads. He has a very naive attitude toward politics.
3.
having or marked by a simple, unaffectedly direct style reflecting little or no formal training or technique: valuable naive 19th-century American portrait paintings.
Thank the Lord for dictionary.com.

But instead of just the definition, I thought of how the word looks. With its unusual umlaut mark, it looks like two large innocent eyes just staring out of the paper, like it's scrutinizing who you really are.

Just a thought.

FRESHMANitis?!

For many high school seniors, as the 2nd semester swings around, they begin to tire of school. Not that I can blame them--anyone that survives junior year (with all the college preparation, SAT testing, and etc) deserves a break. But my goal is to finish strong, and finish high school with a clean slate for college.

But that's going to take a lot of effort. Because the end of the school year is slowly but surely coming, many groups decide to hold their competitions and whatnot during this time of year. For me, just looking at my agenda is giving me a major headache. Biology tests, Spanish quizzes, doctor appointments, and debate practices on the same day...

My hope is that I don't contract FRESHMANitis right now.

I miss summer.

Joy.

One of my new year's resolution was to be happy unconditionally. Not all the time, because that would lead to me being stressed over being happy, which would defeat the purpose... But my goal was to be happy, and not as easily negatively affected. And I think I'm slowly achieving that goal.

Before the new year, I was chronically tired, and I think that made me live life half-heartedly, like watching myself live through a window, if that makes sense. But now, I feel like I'm more involved in life. If that makes sense. Again.

I make myself laugh.

Of course, that isn't to say that my life is perfect, or that my attitude. That is not true by far. But I'd like to think I'm slowly trying to become a better person.

But speaking of my other new year's resolutions: I can almost do a split in all three directions now! And coming from someone who had trouble reaching past her knees, that's amazing.

Hate.

I used to think hate was a really strong word, and that I didn't have the right to use it.

Now I'm being forced to reevaluate the word.

A teacher I had once, that taught me how to type (I loved my BCT class) but also how to live life was killed. He taught me that life is bigger than how you feel, but also partly how you react to it. A 22 year old man is now being charged for first degree murder.
Police say his motive was robbery.
I don't want to go into details.

Rest in peace, Mr. Davis. 2/9/10.

Appreciation.

Nothing really seems to brighten up your day more than knowing that you are appreciated.

But appreciating someone or something else can sometimes be a hard thing, and is many times, not on our mind. We think that our lives are too short and too precious to waste trying to appreciate someone or something that doesn't even like us, or benefit us in any way.

But today, I met someone who would always pester me because of what he would say, and someone I would continually avoid.
And I was forced to talk to that person.

But because I was reminding myself that this person was someone's precious child, someone's best friend, someone's cherished sibling, etc, etc, I found it easier to be kind and more accepting.
Not that it was easy, at all. Quite the contrary.
Just a little bit easier, and overall a pleasant experience.

And I suppose that appreciation is something to continually remind myself about.

A little 'thank you' can go a really go a long way.

Racist Jokes, Faulty Calculators, & Bellyflops

Well, we all know that today is Thanksgiving Day.

Where we give thanks. Today.

I have a huge list of things to be thankful for, but there are a couple that surprised even me:

Racist jokes.

When I was younger, I used to think racist jokes were the worst things imaginable. Even worse than 'shut up' or 'stupid'. They irked me, until the 4th grade. In the 4th grade, I met a boy who made racist jokes, things like, "What did you eat for dinner? OH WAIT, you're Asian. Of course, rice and eggrolls." At that time, I thought those were horrible, and I'd come home feeling rotten. But now that I think about it, these racist jokes helped me become a lot more insensitive to words that people use to try and hurt me. And now, this boy is one of my best friends. So I have two things to be thankful for in this category, racist jokes, and one of my best friends.

Faulty Calculators.

I had one of those days. The ones where I want to stay at home and sleep. I woke up at 6:50, and had to get to school by 7:10. I thought it was an A day, when in fact it was a B day. (On A days, I had gym, on B days, I had math.) I forgot about the math test we had, and my Physics teacher gave us a pop quiz. So, while I was taking my math test, I was calculating an integral on my TI-89, when I realized the calculator was giving me the wrong answers. So I had to work out all of my problems by hand. At the time, of course, I felt like running away and never doing math again, but then I realized that I was becoming too dependent on my calculator, and that not using it was a good measure of my knowledge. I'm pretty thankful for that. (By the way, the TI-89 is a HUGE reason why college and high school students are failing math.)

Bellyflops.

Bellyflops hurt. I found that out during my diving practice. I tried to do a forward dive pike for the first time, and I couldn't get out of it fast enough. BAM. It hurt. A lot. But that's okay, because then I felt like getting it right, and got back on the board. I didn't end up doing a forward dive pike, but I did end up doing an inward for the first time. I'm thankful for bellyflops too.

This time of year makes me think of being thankful, when I should really be thankful all year. Unless you're a turkey.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Becoming A Better Person

Lately I've been thinking a lot about what I can do to be better.

I get a lot of stuff from people about what I'm doing wrong, but they never tell me what to do to make myself better. And it doesn't help me at all.

This past Sunday, I rededicated myself to God at my church. I just feel like God pulled me to rededicate myself to Him--I mean, lately I feel like schoolwork or extracurricular activities are becoming more important to me. And that's never good. So, I'm working on becoming a more dedicated Christian.

Honestly, I think I've become a kind of happier person than I was in middle school. Maybe I was going through a phase or something... Because I felt that the world hated me for some reason? But I've also become a little more sarcastic. Like this kid I didn't know was being mean to one of my younger friends. I immediately started being mean. I don't really regret being mean to this kid because he was picking on my little buddy, but I regret that I couldn't resolve it in a nicer way. And, instead of making things better, I ruined MY day by being mean, and that kid's day too. So it's kind of a lose-lose situation now that I think about it.

This song really hits home for some reason. Don't ask why.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5Rgn5W
Russian Roulette, by Rihanna

"As my life flashes before my eyes
I'm wondering will I ever see another sunrise?
So many won't get the chance to say goodbye
But it's too late to think of the value of my life"