My Job

So since I have been at my job for a few months now I thought it might be a good time to share how I feel about it. Truth be told, I love my job. I enjoy the girls I work in the office with, I think I work for a great doctor, and the hours are fairly awesome. I can admit that all through school I just assumed I would be working at the hospital in the Labor and Delivery Unit. I love pregancy and delivery and all that sort of stuff. It seemed like the perfect place to work and I knew it would be something I would enjoy. As school came to an end and the need to hunt for a job became a reality Barry and I began to realize that working 12 hour shifts would not work with our family and I was somewhat sad to think I would not get to work with the moms and babies. Just after school got out I took some time off to simply enjoy my kids for a while, I didn't even open a book for a whole week. Then it was back to the grind again as I studied for the NCLEX. I passed my boards in September and began to look for a job. I really didn't look that hard in the beginning because I was enjoying being at home so much. Then came October and the news that with the down turn in the economy that Barry would not be getting any more overtime. After reviewing our finances over the weekend we knew the time for me to go to work had arrived. I started looking for a job more agressively that Monday. On Thursday I was interviewd and hired at Dr. Hopkins office. It felt like such an answer to our prayers. It may sound silly but I had been praying that I could get a job that had the hours we needed plus some of the hospital nursing experience that I wanted. Dr. Hopkin is a family doctor as we cover everything from peds, to OB, to geriatrics, he even has a fantastic weight loss program. I get to go up to the hosptial with him sometimes to deliver babies, the other day I saw him deliver a 11 lb 1 oz baby (by c-section of course!). I get to give all kinds of shots and draw blood. I even get to do IV's when I work on a scope day. The stress is usually quite low and its' fun to get to know the patients when we see them on a regular basis. There have been some interesting things happen and sometimes you learn more about a person's life then you ever wanted or cared to know but often thats when we laugh the hardest. Anyway just thought I'd let you know that things are going well here at the office (I'm actually at work waiting for the drug reps to bring us lunch as I type this). Also I'll post more news about Cassidy as we recieve it. Thanks for all your prayers as always the are being answered!

If It's Not One Thing It's Another

Just before spud harvest as I was helping Cassidy get ready for school she had a seizure. Although I took her to the doctor I was told that it wasn't a big deal and I shouldn't worry about it. It wasn't long after that when I started working for Dr. Hopkin and it was also time for Cassidy to have her yearly check-up with Dr. Meyers at Primary Children's. I posted earlier about that visit and how they have decided that Cassidy will need surgery in about two years to correct the birth defects that she has in her rib cage. In order to see Dr. Meyers I needed to get a referral so I took her to see Dr. Hopkin. During that visit it came out that she had, had a seizure earlier in the fall. He was fairly surprised that we hadn't done any testing on her and suggested that when we got back from SLC we should look further into it. Early in November Cassidy had an EEG and for unknown reasons we did not get the results of that test until the beginning of this month, and the results were abnormal. I couldn't understand the results very much but they said something about her left occipital lobe not firing at the same rate as the rest of her brain. And Dr. Vance (the pediatric neurologist) suggested that she have an MRI. That was conducted the next Monday and today we went to see Dr. Vance to see what she thought, it turned out to be a 4 hour visit. Cassidy has been diagnosed with Epilepsy. Although she hasn't had any obvious seizures since early this fall there is still evidence in her brain that there are indeed some problems. I'll be honest, although I sat through the 4 hour dicussion I am simply overwhelmed by all that I was told and also a great portion of it simply was way over my comprehension, so I will not even make an attempt to reexplain all that she said. Cass will be having a second EEG on the 3rd of February to try and better determine what kind of medication she will need. I was hoping we could avoid that route as long as she doesn't have another one but Dr. Vance is quite sure about her needing to be medicated soon. As for me as a Mother I am still trying to accept that something might just be wrong with my baby girl. Oh by the way did I mention that about two weeks ago she fell on the ice at school and broke her arm? The last few months have been kind of crazy with Cass but I hope she knows how much I love her. Keep her in your prayers.