The light inside.

I am reminded on an almost daily basis in as a hospice nurse that these "things" that make us who we are, well they can go away. Life is unpredictable, and "who we are" is probably not the things that we do. I've learned that it's a kernal of something much greater. It's the light that we put in to the world. We can make that light as bright and shiny as we can, but I'm also aware that one day the light will dim. I watch people struggle so much with the dimming of their light, with the loss to do and be all that they once were.

I hike, because it makes me feel strong. It brings me to places that fill me up with beauty. It makes me feel at home when my heart and brain start feeling lost.

I knit and craft and write, because it puts a piece of me out in to the world, something of myself that even I knew not existed before it was created. 

I am a hospice nurse, because as hard as it can be sometimes, I get to a part of the most poignant moments in a family's life. I get to give love and instruction in a time when life is filled with grief. 
I took this picture last Thursday when a lovely patient of mine lost her battle to brain cancer. I was touched by what it's going to mean for her husband to walk by this sign every day.

I run, because it takes all of the hard, emotional stuff that is stored in my body and it releases it into the universe.

I love, because I can, because I've been blessed, and because it is the truest direction for my heart to follow. I love because it envelopes me in the most gorgeous , heart wrenching sweetness. I love, because as scary as it can be to feel so vulnerable, I'm stronger, and more beautiful in that place.

This is what I have come to believe. I believe that light will never go away. I believe there is something unique and beautiful in each of us, something that will shine, some way, some how, far into eternity. Maybe it's in the way we touch each other's lives. Maybe it's in the tangible things we create. Or maybe it just is. Sometimes you just can't explain it. You just feel it. 

Why I will never be on Iron Chef.

Greek yogurt you creamy little bitch. I don't trust you. You're too tasty to be good for me. I can scoop you out like ice cream and see I don't think things that are that good for you should suspended from my spoon midair like a Dairy Queen blizzard, all thick and rich. But see I do eat you, a lot of you, and see if it were ME, and me ONLY, I would probably consist of you and granola for 3 meals a day.

You guys, I am soooo culinarily challenged.

I do not like to cook. I don't follow recipes well and the tweaks that I make are almost never for the good. I make a few standard items. Macaroni and cheese. Ravioli. Spaghetti. Oh and I do make a mean overnight steel cut oatmeal crockpot dish that my husband hates but that I adore.

Fortunately for me, Mike likes to cook. And he does a pretty good job I must say. But Mike gets home around 530pm. By that time I've picked up Ellie and need to get something started. Mike is a good cook but he is not a quick cook. And me, well, granola and yogurt, right?

I love my husband but one thing that this marriage of ours lacks is menu planning. Mike finds it incredibly frustrating, mostly b/c he likes to put a LOT of time and thought into what he wants to make. I just want to whip something up. So now we do things like pizza (homemade,..ok boboli crust but homeade enough for me!), veggie quesadillas, burritos, and breakfast for dinner. Those are our staples. Then we have our little aforementioned pasta dishes to fill in the spaces, but are they anything to write home about? Uh, no.

Today I went to the grocery store and said screw it. I bought some of those little stirfry family meal packs, a frozen veggie lasagna, a frozen pizza. I felt shameful buying these things when really, I want and try to eat fresh and good. But I just can't stand the stress of getting home from work and standing in the middle of my kitchen like some doe eyed teenager learning to boil water. I need some SIMPLE recipes. Things that don't have 20 ingredients. Things that use staple ingredients. And oh yeah, things that are good for you. Any suggestions?

The details make the goodness.

A weekend at home in Denver, with no agenda

and chocked full of gorgeous little moments.

Sweet little girl, full of a million hugs and squeezes

who finds such joy being with her mommy and her daddy. 

Please God, let this never end.

This photo by husband

Screw you, cancer

I have a large amount of sadness in my heart right now.

This job of mine, it can be so fucking intense. Of course I knew it when I chose to be a hospice nurse, and my skin has been relatively thick for most of patients' passings. But today I feel depleted and tired.

I've been very close to this one patient. She was only 44 and she had ovarian cancer. With her, there were tons of nursing tasks that needed to be done, like continuous infusions pumps and home paracentesis and an absolute ton of medicine management. So my point is, we've spent a LOT of time together. She was really just so loveable, and I know she loved me. She called me Summer Wummer whenever I came over. She bought me my own chest of drawers so I could organize all of my medical equipment. She was so kind. I became really close with her and her entire family.

She had tumors that literally looked like fists protruding out of her abdomen. Literally. It often reminded me of spaceballs when at the end the alien climbed out of that guy's stomach (I never told her that). She had intense pain that just got worse and worse. Yet she was such a fighter. She never wanted to admit that she was dying...never. When I told her last week that she was going into kidney failure I felt like I burst her hope. It was a terrible conversation but when I look back, one that needed to happen and I said it as kindly and gently as I could. She was in kidney failure. Those conversations are one of the more challenging aspects of this job.

When I arrived on Monday morning something had shifted. She was in agonizing pain. She was crying and had a sheet over her eyes because the pain was so bad. As a hospice nurse this is exactly what I NEVER want to see. We have tools for that shit. How had it gotten so bad? So I worked my butt off in there. We had her on medications that would have killed 10 elephants. We got it relatively controlled, but on this day she knew she was dying. At one point she was sitting on the edge of her bed and I was standing next to her. She leaned into me, so sweetly, so tenderly, and said "Summer, I can't fight anymore."

I literally sat at her bedside for 8 hours on Monday and 11 hours yesterday, keeping her medicated, doing everything in my power to manage her symptoms. It was shocking the amount of medicines that she required, and any ICU or ER nurse would be surprised that I was administering them in the home setting. And that her pain was still not fully managed!

This patient had terminal agitation, and I knew she was going to get it all along and really geared up her family for what that would look like. But still, you're never really ready for terminal agitation (when the patient is restless and agitated and appears so uncomfortable). As a nurse it broke my heart. I loved this patient and no amount of medicine that I gave her seemed to do the trick. Last night she was finally sedated enough to be calm, but at 5 this morning the agitation started again. I got there at 9am and tried everything I could think of to keep her comfortable, and I was working with some big guns. Oh how she struggled. Her breathing became gurgle-y (death rattle), her legs were mottled and cold, and she would flail her arms around like she was trying to get out of bed. And then, around 1045am today the room changed. She became calm. Her breathing sounded better. Myself, her mother and her sister were all at her bedside. At 11am she took her last breath. When I said "I'm so sorry, she's gone now" her mother looked at me with the most frightful eyes and starting bawling hysterically. The world lost this really wonderful woman. 

As the nurse I had to be as professional as I could. But I couldn't contain the tears that fell from eyes this morning. This patient had become such a part of my weekly routine, of my life. So I let them flow, briefly, and behind bathroom doors. Then I had to get to work: calling the coroner, mortuary, cleaning her body, all that stuff. It was hard, because what I really wanted to do was curl up on the couch and cry. She really got past that clinical boundary of mine, big time. Man I miss her so much.

Cancer is a terrible, horrible, good for nothing fuckhead of a disease. 

Scenes from a stock show

I'm at a loss for words these days. Life feels full and busy and simply doesn't enough hours in it.

But that said,  we always have time for some National Western Stock Show! Yeeeee hawwww!!!!

Alpaca!

Not quite sure. 

Ellie would have been more than content if she just sat on tractors for the whole event. She was obsessed with them, and there were a LOT.

Cousins!

You guys, bees are SO COOL. I learned so much about bees and was completely fascinated. I had no idea!

Maya spinning her first yarn.

Maya and Ellie feeling a big basket of wool.

I thought this guy was so cute!

Cowboy culture is so cool. To me it seems so simple, and efficient, and so appreciative of the laws of nature and the beauty of the earth. I gotta say, I'm darn proud to live in Colorado. This is a special place.

It was a gorgeous year.

Ah, the NEW YEAR. 

I will admit that sometimes I wish I could make time stand still, for there have been some delicious moments in this gorgeous year that I would like to savor forever, from trips and adventures, beautiful nights on the porch, personal goals and accomplishments. I want to savor forever my beautiful daughter's youth and the true, soul-felt JOY of watching her personality form and ignite. This year our family has really gotten to know what it's like to be "our family". And though not every day is something to savor, they have always been filled with love. 

Indeed I am blessed. 

Life is always changing. A perfect sunset will only last for a few sweet moments. A child will only be young once. This time that we have together is right now. 

I believe we all have the power to make every moment magic.

If you want to. 

(I definitely want to.)

Here's to a magical 2012.

2011, captured via cell phone

There, I said it.

I'm going to write something that I've been thinking for awhile. It's addressing this rather large knot of stress that I seem to carry with me in my heart nowadays, and I guess I'm hoping that by writing it I can some how release it. I'm a little nervous to write it, because then when I write it I might actually need to take action. But I might not. At least by writing it releases it from my body so I can look at it with a more objective perspective, do ya know what I mean? Anyway, here is the thing:

I don't think I want to be a hospice nurse anymore. Or at least, not right now.

I'm tired. Being a hospice nurse is not like "normal" nursing where you are assigned a patient, you go home, and then the next nurse comes in to relieve you. When you are a hospice nurse you form a very strong bond with a patient and a family. You will often be called an angel, and let me tell you, that makes you pretty proud of your career choice; you feel so appreciated. You want to be all that you can for these people. You want to make sure that your patients can die in the best way possible. You manage symptoms, family dynamics, medications, equipment, schedules, and you do all of this with a loving heart (crucial) and solid professionalism. I think I'm a good nurse because I am very compassionate with a patient that is dying. But more and more when I leave that space, I feel depleted.

Being a hospice nurse became infinitely more challenging when I became a mother. Now, at the end of the day when I have exerted so much emotional energy into the homes of these people that need me to be nothing but present and attentive, it takes away from energy that I want to give to my daughter. I feel void and often sad these days. Right now I have a patient that is young that I'm particularly fond of and I see her a LOT throughout the week. Our visits are a solid 2 hours each with all of her family members present and they are intense. Throughout my visits my cell phone will ring several times with needs that I must attend to. Then I jump into my car to see the next patient, catch up on my phone calls, and give myself just a minute or two to decompress from the last visit so I can give all of my energy into the next one. I do that several times a day. Then I pick up my daughter, go home, and try to be the kind of mom I want to be, often between the charting I need to accomplish and the "tidying up" of patient needs before the next day begins.

I like being a hospice nurse, but lately I feel like maybe this just isn't the right time in my life for this. As a young mom who wears my heart on my sleeve, sometimes, just sometimes, I want my patients to actually get better. I want to leave a visit with a patient and really leave it.

I am not the type of nurse who will ever slack on a job that is as important as making someone's last days comfortable, so I give it a LOT of energy because that's what it requires. And I'm not the type of mom that will slack on these precious days of being my daughter's mommy, so I give it a LOT of energy because that what it requires. But somewhere, between the push and pull, I'm being stretched too thin. Sometimes I feel like I'm being stretched so thin I could snap. Sometimes I worry that if I don't do something soon then I will. Does that sound dramatic? Sometimes it feels that way.

Christmas. Life. Magic.

Christmas is here tomorrow and I have not blogged once in December! This year there was just too much to do.  Between work, motherhood and my inner Christmas elf that wants to maximize and savor everything Christmas, I decided to take a break from the blog. Instead I dove in to life. This was an extremely demanding month at work and when the working day was done I made it my job to introduce Ellie to the magic. What tender and sweet moments we have had as a family. I will cherish forever the sweet innocence of my daughter's curiosity. And I will cherish forever these magical days of Christmas as a young family.

Carols by the tree. The girls had so much fun dancing!

Ellie with her cousins at the kids table.

My most precious blessings.

Hot chocolate!

I know I'm biased, but she is such a light!

We made snowglobes.

Under the mistletoe.

MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!!!!!!!!

30 days of gratitude 26-30: bringing it home

# 26: I'm grateful for the music in our genes. My mom is a stellar musician. I've always grown up with an understanding and love of music. And this small, wonderful child of mine seems to have the bug, too. I couldn't be more pleased.

#27: Grateful for the ocean, the smell of the salty air, the great horizon of all things unknown, and finding treasures in the remains of the tide.

#28: Grateful for the much too rare occasion of having a babysitter. Man it feels good to know that Ellie is in good hands with my mom so Mike and I can take off to explore without toddler and accoutrements. On this day we explored San Fransciso, for the umpteenth time, each time just as exciting as the first, each time making me feel like a little girl when I cross that gorgeous Golden Gate.

#29: Grateful for the true sense of magic I feel when I'm in nature, grateful that I never want to stop exploring.

#30: Above all else, I am eternally grateful for my family. I just love them so.

Thanksgiving 2011