* T * S * A *

Happy holidays!

Note: If you want to see a truly happy holiday message see this. As this note is not really very happy at all.

Now if you are like most families the holidays mean a trip to your local airport for a jaunt across the lands to visit places, people, and because the holidays are not without commercialism.. things! Well this holiday, I want you to do something very important. I want you to "Opt Out" of the backscatter x-ray imaging machine at airport security. If you think you might need a bit more convincing than that, then read onward.

1) Don't get voluntarily x-rayed. It's bad for your health. Cells get warped and become more prone to cancer. X-rays are carcinogenic. The more you get the merrier those cancer causing cells proliferate. Think that a little old x-ray won't be as harmful as dental face x-rays or flying in a plane in general or other exposures? Well, just think of it as living in moderation. Decide what cancer causing beams of radiation are worth it and which are not. If you have had cancer or have it now or just don't like the idea or the word cancer, then don't get x-rayed at the airport! The truth is folks, we don't know what levels are cancer-causing, we are all different. The posted toxicity thresholds per TSA are not based on the elderly, children, pregnant women or anyone with any kind of medical condition. We just don't know. It is not worth it.

b) Also, it's a nude shot. If this bothers you (transgenedered, woman of Islam who cannot be viewed by a man other than her husband, child, modest anybody) then great! Don't get x-rayed for those reasons, whatever your reason, don't get x-rayed. OPT OUT.

$$) Health or Nudity aside the reason we all of a sudden have these intense homeland security devices is because Michael Chertoff, who used to be the Secretary of Homeland Security under Bush, is currently a paid lobbyist for the manufacture and installation of the "backscatter body scan machines". That, my friends, is corruption, fear-mongering, abuse of power for direct financial gain, and pure absurdity at it's finest.

2) Ok, so this means you are signing up for the grope. Please refrain from using the euphemism "enhanced pat down" because it is a grope. Please announce, "I opt out of the x-ray, can I please be felt up instead?" or "Nope, no radiation for me, please show me your best moves!"

d) Fine, maybe that doesn't sound good either. Then there are two options:

!) Don't fly. Staycation it up! This is easy for some to say, I bought tickets to Mexico for the holidays, before TSA bought the right to get in my underpants, and I want to go to Mexico damnit.

A) Write to your senators, and congressional legislators. I have already taken liberties to provide email addresses, phone numbers and canned letters. Feel free to edit them as you see fit. I became a little emotion-heavy at the end of mine. Do with it as you will.

Phone statement for Maria Cantwell's voicemail (202) 224-3441: "I think that the TSA has gone too far. Body scanning and inappropriate groping are unconstitutional and wrong. If you want my vote, change the policy."

Write to Senator Patty Murray: http://murray.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=ContactMe

Write to Senator Maria Cantwell: http://cantwell.senate.gov/contact/

Write to U.S. Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington's 5th Dist.: http://mcmorris.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=82&sectiontree=4,82

This is what I wrote each of them:

Dear Cathy McMorris Rodgers/Senator Patty Murray/Senator Maria Cantwell,

I am writing to you to urgently request your immediate support and action to become a co-sponsor of the crucial legislation that is H.R. 6416: The American Traveler Dignity Act in Congress. 

Dispersed ionized radiation in backscatter scans are clinically harmful to soft tissue. The threshold is listed in media publications as requiring 1,000 scans in one year. This exposure is carcinogenic and the threshold is not based on children, the elderly, pregnant women or individuals with medical complications or conditions. It is absolutely detrimental to our health. 

"Enhanced pat downs" are a despicable, unwarranted invasion and sexual assault on our children, pregnant wives, elderly mothers, mentally disabled adults and everyone in between.

I have rights. I have the right to not be subjected to harmful x-rays that take and save photographs of my naked body. I have the right to not be sexually abused by a stranger.

Women of religious sects that forbid the opposite gender's viewing of their bodies is violated. 

Children, your innocent kids or grandchildren, are defenseless against this horrendous invasion and molestation of their private bodies.

Survivors of rape and incest are irreparably traumatized by airport security.

This is disgusting. I want to fly my pregnant sister, her husband, and their 4 year old daughter out to see me and my family for Christmas, and I refuse to have them radiated or sexually abused because they might have toothpaste in their luggage. 

This has got to stop. I am sick with hatred for what our country has become. Not because of terrorists but because of fear and power.

Stop. Stop allowing TSA personnel access to my little niece's privates! Is that too graphic? Better x-ray through her princess jammies and save an image of her nudity in some database instead then. 

Dear Senator/Cathy/Patty/Maria, please help us put an end to this crime.

Sincerely,

Jane

Enraged citizen.

Incidentally here is a list of possible options to recite during your friendly safety grope:

·      Oh, you've just got to teach my husband that technique!

·      Here's some hand sanitizer, you'll want this afterward.

·      [commence "When Harry Met Sally" bogus orgasm sequence]

·      Since I paid for first class, I get a happy ending with this right?

·      I have bed-bugs/lice/crabs/scabies. 

·      Reveal your naked-self underneath your trench-coat and shout "I got naked for national security!

·      Well, that was humiliating for the both of us.

·      That was wonderful, where can I leave a tip?

·      [initiate crying sequence]

·      Turn your head to the side and cough.

·      Look the agent directly in the eye and simply state "thank you for groping me."

And if this post has left you feeling distraught, here are your actual rights: You do not have a constitutional right to buy an airline ticket (air travel is a privilege not a right, it is voluntary), therefore it cannot technically violate the 4th amendment--which this otherwise totally violates! You have the right to opt out of the x-ray scan, which means you are subjected to a "grope." If undergoing a grope, you have the right to a same-sex groper, you have the right to be groped in private instead of public, and you have the right to have a support person present for your groping. Don't forget to say something awkward to your TSA Groper so they feel uncomfortable, but not threatened, you don't want things to escalate and end up on a No-Fly list or worse.

One more thing, many stories I have read about personal experiences, relate that the larger the group of people opting out the more likely the TSA crew is to just pass you through the original wand scanners out of annoyance for slowing down the line. So get there early. Talk to people in line around you. Encourage others to opt out for their safety. Take the time, and make the airlines and TSA personnel complain that the expensive x-ray machines aren't worth it. And write to your politicians, this is the only way to stop this ridiculous power-trip.

Thank you for you time readers, may you travel this holiday in peace and solidarity, without fear, radiation and molestation!

No, You Can't Call Me Doctor

I have begun the last leg of this academic tour in life, I am in my second quarter of a three year doctorate program in nurse-midwifery. And no mom, I will not be doctor-nurse Jane, but I do appreciate the humor.

To everyone who is confused by this title, I will help you out. But just so you know, I was confused too until after I had been accepted into the program, and finally decided I better learn what all this alphabet soup really means for fear of an extended family member asking and me not having any idea of how to respond.

Currently I have a degree in nursing, a bachelors degree, and a nursing license to practice: alphabet soup = BSN, RN. This translates to "a Bachelors of Science degree in Nursing and licensed by the state of Washington as a Registered Nurse."

Now I am pursuing a higher ed degree in nursing, specializing in midwifery. The degree is a DNP, or Doctorate of Nursing Practice, and the license is CNM, or Certified Nurse-Midwife. It is a doctorate of practice not a doctorate of philosophy (PhD). The DNP is replacing the masters in nursing, MN. It is simply a new level of education for all those familiar ARNPs or Nurse-Practitioners out there who we know we all see for our primary care because family physicians are becoming fewer and farther between.

It'll be a journey, but it's surreal to be studying birth, officially, finally, gloriously. Bottom line, I will  be a midwife.

Seven

Been pretty busy lately... we bought a home. That's 'Diva with our "Sold" sign from the street. When she went for first sniffs I said to her, "G, you will be here forever, because I will bury you here, this is your sacred ground." She seemed cool with it. She has since made official her fav spots, including a ceremonious scratching of the surface in an exquisitely climate controlled dirt patch.

Our first night home: Joe declined to be misled by my optimism that we would get the keys any earlier than June 17th, but we did, so late on the 16th we brought over sleeping bags, some art, some guitars, the dog and a bottle of champagne. We probably should have slept on a floor with radiant heating, but our new living room will never seem as spacious and unbelievably ours as it did that first night with nothing in the house but us. 

Yesterday, weeding the veggie starts before work I heard something in the hill above the rock wall. I ran upstairs so that Joe could simply look out the bedroom window and see a beautiful deer with her polka-dotted fawn twins walk past. 

This is my happiest place on earth.

Other news keeping me very busy: I just started graduate school.

Mother of Many

Winner of the UK's BAFTA Award for animated shorts, I was able to purchase a copy and have it mailed to me.

Yesterday was Midwives Day, and it's Nurses Week, and my good friend Marian gave birth today!

Happy birthing, happy mother's, happy families; in honor of upcoming Mother's Day.

xoxo

Art Show: Portraiture of the Birth of a Mother

Artist statement: Jane began painting bellies in 2005 when her sister was placed on bedrest. wishing to assist and spend quality time with her , jane painted her belly as she focused on growing her daughter. Nearly 30 paintings later, an alphabet book was born for baby Alayla. belly painting then reached other doula clients and now jane paints for anyone with a full womb! Bellies make a beautiful canvas; mothers are a work of art. It’s a wonderful & fun way to honor your pregnancy. Come to sante restaurant & charcuterie to honor mamas for mothers day and any other day in may!

Jane the Pain

My sister taunted a little ditty that started like that when we were small & frivolous...

Let's discuss P A I N, is it a four-letter "p-word"? It's starting to become one due to my current working environment.

Emergency nursing/healthcare is about knowing a little bit of everything (and not a lot about anything?). Every ailment walks through those doors, not just anything, but everything. So where does a provider start? That's where my role begins, I prioritize patients, triage, pinpoint chief complaints, perform focused assessments, vitalize, anticipate procedural and pharmacological needs, order them, discuss these with the Emergency physician in my zone, prepare piggybacked machine pumped triple intravenous lines, after I've placed an IV line and collected blood specimens and sent them to the lab. Oh and I dole out our prized creature comfort; the toasted blanket.

Pain is a large part of why folks arrive in my unit, why any one goes to the ER. I work with adults, so we use the numerical pain scale; "Zero being 'No Pain' and ten being the 'Worst Pain of Your Life', where exactly would you place yourself at this moment?" kind of an assessment. Pain is considered a sixth vital statistic regarding your medical presentation and subsequent care, along with blood pressure, pulse, respirations, temperature and oxygen saturation. Pain is important and while we cannot detect a standardized measurement of a person's pain, we can ask and we can believe and trust and respect that individual's pain experience.

Here is where it gets tricky, two things can happen; 1) someone becomes a victim of a fear-mongering society full of shows and stories of friends of friends co-workers who are addicted to pain medications. So, your patient doesn't want to take pain meds, or won't admit to the severity of their pain to avoid requiring pain meds. 2) people are in fact addicted to pain meds, and will do almost anything to receive them.

Jane's adapted response to assessing PAIN:

To confront patient #1 who is presenting with right sided flank pain (read: kidney stones) and says she prefers not to take narcotics, she needs to hear some patient teaching regarding pain receptors and cost-benefit analyses. First of all pain is your body indicating to your brain that something is intrinsically wrong.  Pain is a helpful signal to let us know we need to do something about what is wrong. Kidney stones, to choose a random, common, and excruciating example (see also; appendicitis, migraine, symptoms of a myocardial infarction, fractured limb) is not good. All of these things are not good for you, therefore when they present, they trigger pain receptors. When your body is lighting up its pain receptor circuit board, it is waiting impatiently for that special someone, an opiate-derivative narcotic pharmacopeia that will switch it off thereby releasing the tension build up that pain creates, release and relax the contracting muscles and organs and allow normal body functioning to return to baseline.

Note the number one thing people say to me when I inject a milligram of dilaudid into their vein is "how can people be addicted to that stuff? that feels awful!"

Now, for patient #2, I tend to see a presentation along these lines; woman walks to room chasing three little kids around the hallway, reaching, running, bending, carrying and then tells me she fell and her wrist, back, neck, ankle and foot are a 10/10 pain.... and "could I just get an IV and 2 mg Dilaudid to start and some Phenergen as well,... thanks." This is when I don't have to start an IV and I can give her an oral tablet of a single Percocet and try to convince her that it is not okay to take medical equipment from the supplies locker in her patient room. OR, how about the woman who tells me she is having 32 out of 10 for pain. So I given the prescribed 2 mg Dilaudid. Well, she tells me she is "a little bit better, maybe a 9/10 now" So another 2 mg dose slides into her vein, she relays that she is definitely an 8 now, but still having a really hard time, so this time I give 1 mg of Dilaudid to her. At which point, she has become completely snowed, and is barely rousable, to the point that I have to poke and yell and slap on the blood pressure cuff and oxygen tubing, cranking it up from the wall source and try to perk her up. So, as she's stabilizing I, just curious, ask her what she would rate her pain now? "I'm... uh-......" and I poke and prod and stimulate her awake again, what number, I ask? "-uh, 7." she manages to say, and falls asleep again.  OR the middle aged man who comes in with his wife, he's here for abdominal pain and has been nauseated and vomiting all day and night. Currently he is writhing on the gurney. I am trying to get an IV in so we can replenish fluids, bring his blood pressure back up, and have access so as to draw blood for samples and provide alleviating medications, so I prep my lidocaine numbing medicine to give a tiny--skinny shorty--needle injection to the site where I want to place the bigger, longer, more painful IV needle. I break the skin and my patient yelps and cries out, I pause looking up blankly and ask flatly "was that excruciating?" and he snaps "yes!" Well, this makes me think he has a very little pain tolerance, and therefore is being awfully dramatic about the whole abdominal pain and violent writhing acrobatics. In a phrase; loss of credibility.

Two take home messages:

One, working in situations like those mentioned above where patients are clearly, and sadly addicted, dependent or otherwise exceptionally tolerant of pain medication is slowly but surely already turning me into a nurse who maintains judgment, cynicism, a lack of respect and ultimately annoyance and embarrassment for the patients I work with. I am completely devastated when I am lied to about a person's pain. Tactics that are used to obtain unnecessary pain meds, all back-fire, I can turn my mr. nice nurse off completely if I am being taken advantage of, manipulated and treated rudely, and bottom line is I don't like the way it makes me act and feel toward patients. I can see how positive spirits are broken down in this line of work.

Two, pain is a bad sign unless you are in labor and going to give birth (did you think I wasn't going to bring up birthing?) then pain means Purposeful Anticipated Intermittent Normal experiences your body undergoes to prepare you for the transition Earthside your baby makes with you. Birth pain does not harm you or your baby, there is a system of hormones in place to guide your body through it (provided you aren't taking drugs in labor to speed up labor or stop the pain, that messes with your hormones and thus the whole process).

So cheers to real pain, good or bad.

Violet Fever!

This clip is courtesy of Selina Shehan, vendor guest/local artist who attended the Spokane Shrinking Violet Society Event we put on yesterday. A fantastic and overwhelmingly successful vendor fair, art exhibit, full entertainment line-up, champagne & cupcake toast, keynote speaker, first annual Violet celebration! 


Violet love, 
J

Sex Ed with Red Wigglers

No, I'm dead serious.


Someday when I have kiddos in school I want to "moonlight" as a school nurse. I dream of offering a healthy and productive (pun.. intended?) atmosphere for the education of sex for our society's youth.


I currently volunteer at APPLE, the elementary school program that I attended, as a "parent" reader for five first and second graders. Recently one of my readers chose a favorite dessert book (as opposed to a vegetable/challenging book) called Diary of a Worm by Doreen Cronin. Amelia loved this book, and therefore, hence, ergo she exhibited a surprising fascination with worms.


Coincidentally, I recently attended the increasingly popular Worm Bin workshop presented by avid worm goddess (she literally generates entire communities and worlds of worms out of your garbage heap) the lovely Miss Mariah McKay. During this presentation on composting Inlanders and coffee grounds in your apartment, I had an epiphany. As petite and stylish twenty-something Mariah reaches into her bin and produces a handful of rotting fruit (in a productive anti-green house gas way) and dead leaves (totally alive with beneficial microbes) she exclaims "oh these two red wigglers are having sex!" Then, to test the audiences professed commitment to spreading the worm-bin love, she dumps her handful into my bare hands and we all take turns feigning comfort as we examine the twisty-tie couplet of wormies.


Jane's Epiphany: Kids (who like bugs and stuff and learning) + Worms (who like to reproduce and don't look particularly risque when doing so: they don't have penises or vulvas or faces for that matter*) = perfect opportunity to bring up where babies come from (a topic near and dear to my heart for political/health/community/feminism/humanity/and other important reasons). 


I believe if a young school-aged child (I'm suggesting as fresh as a four-year-old here folks**) was taught where babies came from by holding in their hands two wormies who were knotted together, sharing their bodies, organs and hormones to create another wormie, we could eradicate the playground taboo of gross and mysterious sex, and the mis-education thereof, be rid of parental and teacher squeamishness and instruction ineptitude, say ciao to uninformed curiosities leading to adolescent sexual experimentation resulting in negative outcomes (Spokane's teen preggo rate remains slightly higher than average) and boom, we've got a therapeutic introduction to comprehensive sex-ed (not to mention composting and gardening)!

* Except for the whole hermaphrodite component of worm fornication, which might require a collective viewing of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" as a pre-requisite***

** Statistically boys experiment with masturbation at the tender age of 8: a full two years before standard human growth and development and sexual education begins in primary school. Teach 'em! Don't make 'em guess and feel isolated!

*** Ok, maybe I took it one step too far, no "Hedwig.." I take it back.

Happy VD!

Violet Love Notes! For my girlfriends at the lunch this weekend. Every second Saturday Spokane's Shrinking Violet Society meets at One World Cafe (local! organic! vega/vege-friendly! pay what you can!) Here, this saucy social co-op, convenes to network, empower, and depart full and inspired. This was how I was welcomed into the Spokane scene immediately upon arrival, and now I consider myself a violet. Recently while recruiting performers for our upcoming Violet Fair at the end of February, one of the lady DJs replied that she'd be honored to play for the "screaming violets." I love this misnomer, sometimes we could definitely rock a more hard-core name than shrinking but the name has meaning and was originally likened to the Ladies Sewing Circle and Terrorist Society.

So this Love Nest Day, the lasses are exchanging Valentines. I couldn't swing the card making party so I've taken over the kitchen and have been generating fun cards all week in preparation. It feels like solid therapy to make something out of the dregs of your art supply bin with your hands and still-gooey glue.

PSA from Nurse Jane: Happy Cardiac Day to my readers! Remember dark chocolate + red wine + oxytocin (the love hormone) is good for your old ticker.

xoxo

Curious about life in Emergency?

Note to self: Take glucose breaks so my blood sugar isn't lower than the patient's while I'm giving an amp of D50 [intravenous dextrous]!

Today I went in to do discharge paperwork for another RN, and the patient was a teacher I recognized from high school. I think we both feigned ignorance. I also met someone who knew my grandmother in her younger, political years.


"[Quietly with a sheepish voice] I hate needles... [louder and in a creepy voice] but 'Jay' loooves needles, pain keeps 'Jay' going"

-says my patient who walked at least one mile barefoot in snow, being treated for frost bite.

"Last time I had this done it was a new nurse and it hurt and she obviously didn't know what she was doing... you did great though, I didn't even feel it, how long have you been a nurse?"

-hahahah! I told her "oh, a few months" but technically I've only been working for one month. That was an awesome ego-boost [for iv starts]!

A severely inebriated man comes in on my first day in triage and has difficulty describing his knee pain, the intake nurse is also having trouble understanding him. "R------ did you keep it wrapped and take the medications we gave you yesterday?" I said recognizing him from his previous three visits this week.

A 30-year experienced Emergency RN pulls me aside one day; "the world outside isn't really like this, you can forget that sometimes working in here, but remember the rest of the world is happy, safe and normal...

most the time."

My days in the ED tend to come with "themes" 
like a broken bone day, 
or everybody's bleeding!-day, 
there are general themes like 
our community is just not well today 
or the general public is not taking care of themselves today... 
there was also the post Christmas weekend theme: 
everybody ate and drank and sat around too much 
and now abdomens, dormant illnesses, cardiac muscles 
and stress-inducing conditions are all a'flare. 
I'm always curious what the next "episode" will be about.

[word-compiling year-end reflection application cop-out]