Unity In Design
Part of advanced anesthesia training, is being able to decide on a clinical course when the patient has two concurrent underlying disease states which require the OPPOSITE way to handle them under anesthesia. For example, with a 'full stomach' (a recently digested meal) we would want to use a rapid-sequence intubation with succinylcholine. However, with an 'open globe' (a major injury to the eye), the use of succinylcholine on induction of anesthesia is to be avoided due to risk for extending the injury to the eye. So a patient who has an eye injury plus a full stomach--presents sort of a conundrum that only the advanced anesthesia practitioner can decide a course for the patient under their care and to navigate it safely.
As we grow in Spirit, we are asked to combine our perceptions of the opposite 'extremes' as you have it, in our Illusory experience of Duality...and to find the common thread which unites the whole.
What I am going to share with you, are the examples which on reflection about my day, bring up.
Give and Take
This morning my colleagues decided as a group to hold a meeting at six in the morning. On a school day. On a school day where I have my kid. Usually we have them at eight on Saturdays. But people don't like to go. So we have it before work.
I had to wake Anthony up at five thirty and take him to the sitter who would feed him and take him to school.
I was fifteen minutes late to the meeting because I overslept.
I had packed our lunches, and skipped breakfast. I had my coffee and cottage cheese with banana during the meeting.
The faction of the people who do O.B. call and are complaining--are Middle Eastern. For them, MONEY is something I cannot comprehend. There is a cultural thing with the Egyptians in our group--we have many--where being number one in the payroll department is the only thing that matters. So there are people who try to take hours, take call, work more...but that is not enough.
So now they are arranging a way to 'even out' a 'pay disparity' between those who take OB call and those who don't, because the OB census is 'way down' and 'they have to stay twenty-four hours in the hospital away from their family'.
These people don't bat an eye to stay up all night in the main O.R. making money.
They complain when they are in the hospital only getting a stipend when they are on O.B. and 'business is slow'.
I asked for confirmation that to take more work from the O.R. for O.B. 'to make it fair' is going to take away from others whose only work part-time is in the O.R. (I work denser work hours with disproportionate call).
I was told 'yes'.
In my pocket was a bracelet I had hand-made of the finest amethyst and faceted moonstone beads. It was a gift to our CNO (Chief Nursing Officer, number two in command at the hospital). After the meeting, I walked over to administration, to try to put it on her desk. They have all kinds of security there. I buzzed and put my smiling face up to the camera at the door.
She came to the door! We sat and she asked me 'why'? (I had promised her one a while ago)...
I said, simply, 'Because I love you.'
She makes beautiful needle work, and I've bought a quilt of hers in a raffle for my mom. I know she works hard and does a lot of 'managing by walking around'. (I got to know her over the past two years on our computer anesthesia record project.)
Her bracelet was called 'Purple Rain', and she laughed when I told them she could say it was designed by (my last name).
I didn't ask for anything in return.
I was filled with love and gratitude, and I thanked her for making this a nice place to work.
Contrast...
It all has to do with the heart...
My Patient
She is improving in ICU. I spent some time in the room with the nurses and with her mom. I also asked our electrophysiologist (cardiology specialist) about the high heart rate, and does it warrant a further work up? Fortunately, no, it's normal response to the severity of the illness. It's compensatory to the hypotension. Just like tachycardia in response to a fever. It's the body's way to heal.
The night after the surgery was horrible. I came in last week on my day off. I heard (once she was getting better) that the first night the nurse worked so hard draining drains and transfusing and working pressers--that she was crying the whole time, and the mom was crying. They were crying together because there was so much to be done and everyone was pushing themselves to the limit wanting to do their best. It was mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausting to care for someone that sick.
But it paid off.
And she is getting better.
I told the mom, 'The nurse now has a new respect for me. She knows what I went through the whole six hours of the surgery. Only I couldn't get my surgeons upset. It would have been counterproductive. I dealt with the blood pressure and metabolic changes the whole time while making sure the patient was asleep and pain-free.'
Most people don't get it, what I do. They see the smiles and the jokes about the reason anesthesiologists are so happy is because we put the propofol in our coffee as a creamer (it's milky white)....
I walk the edge for my patient with them, between life and death, and I fight really hard for them. It's in my training. I do this every single day. No matter if I get paid for it or not. It's called 'being professional'.
Now in the ICU room, on our visit, we were talking about normal things, the mom and me. About how I got the funniest feeling the other day that her daughter my patient is supposed to be some inspirational person or something like that--for a whole LOT of people. I also shared with her the script for the skit I'm supposed to have a role in for tomorrow--they are filming it for the Medical Staff Annual Meeting. It's an honor the Chief of Staff invited me to be in it. It's hilarious and to hear her laughing in that ICU room was the most healing thing of all...
It meant LIFE was present!
I'm intuitive. And between the Reiki I requested, for her, and my being at the bedside a lot and talking basic medicine stuff with the family and the nurses, I 'sensed' my patient knew on some level I was there and it was going to be okay. Everyone else did too.
It all starts with the energy.
Then it takes the love and gratitude and skills of the team. Including the angels--both incarnate, and disincarnate--including you.
Double Stuck
I worked on someone yesterday and again today. I can't tell you why. I can share I worked with a different team than I usually do. I was a stickler for the antibiotic. The patient had missed a dose, and I wouldn't let the case start without it.
I called the pharmacy and the recovery room where the tube system station is--at least six times each, making sure it was coordinated and got to me quickly so I could give it to the patient. (is it here yet? did you send it?)
At the end of the procedure, the little Vietnamese member of the team, walked up to me with a smile.
She said, 'If I ever need to get anesthesia I want you to do it. You are SO SOOTHING!'
Later tonight, on my way to the parking lot to go home, a colleague also asked me to do the anesthesia for her mom's knee replacement. (this one works part-time, like me, and we are close--both kicked out of OB, and now, very thankful to be away from that part of the hospital and the drama that goes with in on the nursing side.)
One of the things people in my group, the 'takers' do not seem to understand, is that by going through the heart, and doing the right thing, people are absolutely drawn to you. And they have a good experience. By word of mouth, people know who genuinely cares about them, when they are sick, and vulnerable, and who is only paying lip service to them and going through the motions because they are only interested in the money.
I have had people refuse to have surgery without me.
I have had special requests where I have been permitted to go to a plastic surgeons' office with special privileges for a day--because they had no pain when they woke up the last time I worked with them at another office.
I have had people switch hospitals away from where their insurance sent them, to have me watching over them where I practice, not the other place.
I come in on my day off, for these special requests.
Is this 'fair'? Is this something you can tally up and divide like a piece of pie to make sure no one gets the bigger piece? I think not.
It just IS.
You can't quantify it. And you certainly can't force people to go to someone they don't want to have do their anesthetic when they have a choice. And they ALL have a choice, that option. Only they don't know it, for the most part. Only those who work in the hospital know.
It just IS.
Dichotomy
I am a single parent--in the physical state; in the spiritual state I get a lot of help from Ross!
The less time I have with my son, the more precious it is.
Tonight, we went out for pizza to the same place I used to go on Friday nights when I was a kid. I remember the jukebox, and the little fireplace our family used to like to sit next to, and the fun of being together. I used to adore playing the pinball games!
We had the same thing tonight as I did forty years ago--pepperoni pizza with root beer.
Anthony got to play the video games.
What I love about the place is that nobody has 'updated it'. It looks old, and well-loved. The money 'CHANGE' machine looks forty years old LOL. So are the video games, they are antique.
I like places that aren't trendy and perfect. I get so tired of society and marketers telling me what to like and how to live!
I think plantation shutters turn the home into a jail. With all the bars. And you can't ever really open the windows all the way, on the sliding glass door shutters, to get all the light in.That post in the middle is in the way.
I can't stand 'energy saving lightbulbs'. Yes this is Earth Day. You know who I am! But I don't see any benefit when they cost damn near ten dollars and throw off inferior quality light. It's 'bluer'. It doesn't have the same incandescent spectrum.
You would think with all these people going solar nobody would care if we use an extra watt or two on each of our bulbs, you know?
I don't like granite in my kitchen. Granite belongs right where it's found, in the mountains, and not some crazy strip mine to take it out. Granite kitchen means somewhere else in the world there is an ugly hole in the ground. It's not renewable and it never has been!
I see people cutting down trees. Big ones. Trees cool us with the shade. But the 'ecosystem' here is to rip everything out, kill the whole damn hillside, and put little drip lines with weird non-native plants and all the bark stuff all over it.
It's ugly.
And it's counter productive.
Why not let Nature take the hill and design it?
I adore the green grasses that turn to gold in the summertime, all over the large hills with no housing developments on them. The mustard bushes add the perfect color, and create wonderful habitats for the birds.
I tell you, when mankind gets off his high horse, and allows Nature to create instead--just like in the forests, and the beautiful deserts, and the hillsides, and the arctic...and allow harmony for all the various lifeforms...now THAT will be Heaven on Earth!
When we stop living in our minds, and start experiencing Life with our Hearts--all this change is going to happen. Our Hearts are not 'random emotions'--it is the Wisdom and the Intelligence that is connected to the Universe of All That Is--which we feel as 'right or wrong for us', that 'sense in our gut' or 'inner knowing'--to follow this is what is meant by 'living in our hearts'.
Ross is happy. He wants to speak.
Ross
Contrast.
Contrast contrast contrast contrast contrast.
Carla has no boundaries--not from her workers who annoy her with their ways and extremely low vibration--but they are One team, and Carla has helped them, often taking extra call for them when they were sick or had a death in the family.
She and her patients are One, all brothers and sisters from Creator--and her patients and their families SENSE it.
And Carla is One with the Earth! Carla has an understanding at a higher level of expertise than the average aluminum can-recycling citizen who means well and cannot fathom how the very THOUGHTS that go around inside their head are just as polluting if not MORE! to the total experience on Gaia in fact because they contribute to the general lowering of the vibration of the Collective on the globe!!!!!
This is why Carla and I invite you to go into that quiet space which is inside your heart, with no distractions, not even while you are driving and relaxed or going fishing--but to block everything else out, and just for a while, experience being a Child of Creator.
Be alone with it. And realize you are never alone!
(he smiles mysteriously--clap! clap!)
Aloha and Mahalos,
Namaste,
Peace,
Ross and Carla
The Reiki Doc Illuminated Twin Souls
