Birthday, continued

Today Wade and I went to his brother's house for a birthday dinner. This is Wade blowing out the candles with his nephew, Spencer.








Spencer enjoys making silly faces, so after eating cake we decided to make silly faces together. I think this picture is a real winner.

Wade's Birthday

Today is my boyfriend's 22 birthday, and I'm pretty sure that as he blew out the candles on his cake he was wishing for a girlfriend who listened better. Allow me to explain. Several weeks ago, Wade bought me minutes at Endless Summer, a tanning place about 5 minutes from campus. I decided that I didn't want to tan alone, so I convinced Wade to come too. He'd never been tanning before, and he was worried because he burnt very easily. I reassured him that everything would be just fine, and that after 10 minutes in the booth he wouldn't even get any color. He told me multiple times that he had very fair skin, and again I just brushed him off and said that he had nothing to worry about. The very tan employee behind the counter also said that 10 minutes probably wouldn't do much of anything. She handed Wade the waiver he had to sign as a first time tanner, warning him of all of the random risks. Wade looked her in the eyes and asked, "So, do I get cancer right when I sign this...or after I get out of the booth." The poor girl didn't know how to respond. However, Wade clearly had not met his daily quota for smart ass comments, and as we were touring the tanning salon, Wade mentioned that he hoped he could win the staring contest. When the employee asked him what he meant, Wade simply said, "With the light bulbs in the tanning bed."
I enjoyed my tanning session, and I felt just fine afterward. Wade was not so lucky. Later that night he said his back was itchy and painful and he wanted me to take a look at it. The second he lifted up his shirt all I could say was, "Oh my God, I'm sooo sorry."


From now on I will be listening to my boyfriend.

My Other Hobby

Besides nursing, I have one other main hobby. This is Boyfriend, and we've been together for two years.

This picture was taken on our 2 year anniversary. I like to think that I baked him love in pastry form. I also made him an awesome fleece blanket with race cars on it. He got me a toolbox full of ammo that we used while shooting handguns later that week.

Boobies

This week at clinicals, I went to a Mammography Center to see what the nurses did and what a standard procedure was like. Today the center would be doing a biopsy as a follow up to a suspicious mammogram. I was able to follow a 42 year old Hispanic woman, R., who worked the third shift at a packaging company. She was a sweetheart, and was working incredibly hard to help her daughter through law school. She was even nice enough to let me feel her breast lump before her biopsy.
Even though I enjoyed my experience, there was one part that shook me. Both the nurse and radiologist could clearly tell from the numerous calcifications on R.’s initial X-ray that she had cancer. I was even told that there was a 99% chance that this woman had breast cancer. However, when the nurse was speaking to R., she always reminded her that 80% of the biopsies turn out just fine and kept providing what I considered to be false hope. Having such intimate knowledge about a woman I barely knew while interacting with her on such a superficial level was almost unbearable. I knew that she would not be told about her cancer for another day or two, and that pathology would have to confirm, but I could not help wishing that we could just tell her now. I wanted to be there to hold her hand and to cry with her as she received this news. I desperately wanted to provide her with some hope, and to encourage her to keep living a life that she should enjoy to the fullest. Instead, all I could do was engage her in a conversation about Thanksgiving and holiday shopping to keep her mind off of the tremendous anxiety that she was feeling. The best part of nursing is knowing that you’re helping, and the worst part is not being able to help as much as you know you can.