Monday, June 30, 2008

No Good Words Will Suffice

I had to share with everyone. Here goes...

I had a dream last night that seemed like it went on forever, but it was very quick. I was in Mammaw and Granddaddy's house. I walked in the front door, and I rounded the corner through the doorway of the kitchen to find Mammaw sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper. I was startled, because in my dream I knew Mammaw was in Heaven. Mammaw sat her paper down and said, "Hi Love! I just wanted you to know that I'm still here, even though you don't think I am. I still am." Next thing I know, I see her in the den and Granddaddy is sitting in the den. She had her hand on Granddaddy's hand and she sat and watched him as he glanced at the TV. "I love you" she said to Granddaddy. Then I saw her in the kitchen again washing dishes. She looked at me and simply said, "I'll visit you in your dreams sometimes. I love you. And oh, before I forget, tell Anita my hair grew back." And with that I woke up. I walked down the hallway, wrote everything down, and not too long after that I had to get up for work.

Apparently, Mammaw was very concerned about telling Anita that yes, indeed her hair had grown back.. :) It was a very nice dream, a pleasant surprise. I hadn't dreamt about Mammaw in quite sometime, and I just couldn't keep that one to myself. Had to share.

:)

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Happy Birthday Manda!

I hope your birthday dinner was a nice evening for you as opposed to what you were possibly dreading. I would like to leave you with a special little song just for you...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cncW_TTSYU&feature=related. I don't know for sure if this will work, but I'm going to try. Love you Manda! Sorry we didn't get to talk talk long but I really do hope the night turned out well!

Saturday, June 21, 2008

I'm Alive :)

Hello All! Sorry it has been so long since the last post. I fear that I have officially turned into an old woman. Though my 24th birthday is drawing near, I still feel I am far older.... Since I got my new job, I have to get up much earlier than I'm used to. I've gotten used to getting up early now. I don't like it ( LOL) but I've gotten in the habit of it now. I have to travel as part of my job, so that means a lot of times I have to get up even earlier to be on time. I have to follow my doctor where he goes. By the time 9PM rolls around, I'm starting to yawn and the eyes are getting heavy. It's a very sad sight to see. The girl that didn't turn into a pumpkin until at LEAST 3am, has now finally met her match...

I'll give you a bit of a run-down of what a typical day at Tidewater Eye is for me. :)

I normally get to work around 7:45 or so, depending on how kind traffic was to me that day.
Dr. Pavilack gets to the office around 8:30 (if he's feeling motivated... ;) but that gives me time to set up the exam rooms a bit. I stock his eye drops. Make sure our numbing drops are full, the florescene drops are full, prescription pads are there, eye drop instruction sheets and consent forms are in the drawers for me; stock the alcohol swabs; AND, the most important thing of all: Because my doctor is a corneal specialist, he sees a lot of his post-op patients that have to have sutures removed from THEIR EYEBALLS ( OH MY LORD). So I have to make sure that there is a 15 blade and jewlers (which are curved tweezers) in each exam room that he sees patients out of. This is Dr. Pavilack. I know the picture is little but it's the only one on google I could find... lol. He's really goofy looking and acting (with his goofy jokes) but he's VERY nice.



The day starts with patients who range from problem visits (scratches on their corneas, ulcers on their corneas, we had a spider bite on the cornea the other day...eeeww) to regular routine COE patients, which just means that your eyes have been dilated and you are having a regular exam at the slit lamp with the doctor. I'm in the room with him whenever he's with a patient. I write the prescriptions, drop instructions, changes in medications on their charts, code their office visits and diagnosis on their encounter forms, write the recomendation (when they are to return) send his dictation, assist in suture removal when he has to take them out, put florescene drops in people's eyes who have infections or corneal abrasions (the florescene helps pick up where the problem area is on your eye and allows the doctor to see it with a blue light when they're at the slit lamp). By the way, the slit lamp is the microscope that the doctor puts up to your face and shines that bright light into your eyes when you come for your exams. I also write down all of his dictation for new patients (in case the dictation he dictates gets lost) and I get doctors on the phone for him if it's an emergency and he needs to talk to them. Last week he had a work in patient that had been washing his car with a power washer and it got away from him a bit and it sprayed the ground. This blew some dirt in the man's left eye. He said it didn't hurt, but two days later is peripheral vision was becomming blurry. When Dr. Pavilack examined him, he took one look at him with the slit lamp and said, "Your retina is detaching. You need to go to our retina specialist right now." If your retina detaches, you go blind and that's it. There's nothing doctors can do for that yet that's been approved by the FDA. ALWAYS wear glasses when you're working outside. That man went blind in that eye we later found out because it was too far advanced. I see a lot of these:


These are corneal ulcers. You can get these by being poked in the eye or some sort of misc. trauma. I've seen some pretty gross stuff. But for some reason the corneal ulcers really get me. This one in particular is very bad because it has encroached upon this persons' vision; so most likely, they can't see. Like I said, really gross.... By the end of the day, I wash my hands a lot. ;)

Then I get into what I like to call "I love Grid-lock, aka 5 o'clock Traffic" and I dream about my weekends. But it's really good. I really like it. I'm catching up on some much needed rest this weekend. Kiel went on a canoe trip with his dad's church this weekend. AND, (I thought Anita would be interested to know) Bess, Von's girlfriend (the crazy one that lives here) FINALLY moved out!!! Yay! So that's good. I'm enjoying nice quiet things. We definately have to get together soon. I will have to take some pictures of me in scrubs. That's another plus. I'm starting to skip around in topic so it must be time for me to go...lol

I love love love you ALL! :)
Tina

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

I'm okay!

So...I'm here and I'm just busy in a weird, not doing much way. :)

But I have news. I bought Jelly Shoes from Target tonight for $2.50. They were in the little bargain section and they come in two different sizes: S/M and M/L. Guess which one I bought? :)

Amy wanted to buy some too so we could match awkwardly at our joint birthday party (yes, Mom, there will be a party.), but they didn't fit her.

Mine, however, fit like a glove.

Be jealous. Everyone else is. :)

Is Amanda still ticked?

Any news on the hemlines of Amanda Jo Hedrick? The last I see is one angry chic. Hope she's okay. And what about Christina? And Anita (alias AJ for Anita Jr.)? and Travis? Does anyone know what's happened to them out there????

Monday, June 16, 2008

NY take 2

went back to NY again this past weekend. a lot of the weekend (on my part) was spent waiting around for the others to wake up and get ready to do stuff... i love renae, her family, and her NY friends though so it was great to see them all again so soon. i also got to go swimming with maegan and morgan which was fun (i wanted to go swimming last weekend but didn't get to). mark (anthony) came over to matt's house on saturday night and he is hilarious (i didn't see him last weekend). we had a campfire with dark chocolate s'mores on saturday night and i spent probably 3 hours in the hammock (outside, not in matt's room) by the fire just swinging and listening to the boys be silly.

here are some pictures from a photo shoot we had at a cemetery up the road from renae. did i mention that i love renae? cuz i do.

*this stone is quite tall if i do say so myself. it took skill getting on top of this, i used renae for help but jumped off myself :)*

renae took like 5 minutes to do this pose. there was a lot of talking about it and then about 2 seconds of doing it :) good job, nay.

renae and i had to climb up this tombstone (?), it was actually like 5 feet off the ground... which is kinda tall i think... like 8" shorter than me...


i was trying to get down from this one, there was really no ledge to step on... just a sloping thing that i kinda slipped down... the picture we took posing on the top of this one wasn't as cool as this one. ha!


we went to 'twin cone' for treats after the cemetery. i had a black raspberry soft-serve cone. mom, you would have loved this place's cones! it was amazing. renae had some sort of ice type thing which she proceeded to spill ALL down the front of her... figures. :)


Wednesday, June 11, 2008

NY Take 1

i went to NY this past weekend to visit renae!!! somehow i set daniel (my gps) to shortest distance and not fastest time... so i got a tour of back-roads in new jersey for about four hours before i actually got there. it took twice the time it was supposed to, but it was alright in the end. kindof an adventure :)

this is at matt's house... and yes, there is a hammock hung from the walls in his room. it's my favorite thing ever... mom, mandi- don't you think we need one of these in our room?!

here we all are... that's matt notaro... this was shortly after we had a bit of a tiff that involved him drinking a water bottle while laying on the ground and me tipping it up to get him wet... he was a baby and ended up pouring the whole thing on me... oh well... :)


me and renae were twins, yay! this is when we were trying to figure out what to wear to Six Flags Great Adventure the next day.



this is us on the ferris wheel at great adventure. it was 95 degrees this day. needless to say, 9 hours was way too long to walk around and stand in line (at least an hour at all rides, 2 hours at most...)... we also had to drive +2 hours to get to this place and get back to the church afterwards. it was a long day.


i forget which ride this is, but the picture was taken from the top of the ferris wheel. i don't even remember if i rode this one or not... ha!


so, i was a bit nervous going to great adventure because i hadn't ridden any coasters or rides since having surgery and even though i can't barf, there was the potential for miserable times and possible foamies... but thankfully there was none of that. renae actually felt sick on one of the rides and i didn't so i was very happy that everything worked out. renae and i also decided to be thrifty at the park so we grilled chicken the night before and packed chicken salads and snacks so we wouldn't have to pay millions of dollars for food (and probably not have anything that i could eat anyways.) i got out of the whole thing having only to pay $10. i bought an italian ice and a frozen lemonade (both $5)... i know what you might be thinking (or at least mom might be thinking), isn't that like way too many carbs/sugars?... the answer is yes... i am aware. however. i was also aware that it was 9 million degrees and i wanted to cool my inner-core temperature before i exploded or imploded, one of the two. so it was a fair compromise.

i'm going back to NY tomorrow to see renae again! her friend-boy doesn't have a way to get up there and was telling renae's friends he was coming (and they were telling renae) but had no real way of ever pulling it off. i told him he either needs to get up there or tell renae he's not coming so he's not a jerk... he took my advice and we're leaving tomorrow :)

<3

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Baa Haabaa!

This afternoon Amy and I drove to Bar Harbor to take in the sights and seafood. She punked out and had pulled pork, but eh...to each her own. :)

Here are some of the sights:









Alas, I still have not tasted lobster, but I did try something that I'm pretty confident that none of you have. Tonight I had Lobster icecream. Not even just lobster flavored icecream, this icecream has real fresh Maine lobster in it. You can see little red bits in the icecream. It was...really sweet...with a hint of fish...and a tinge of butter. When I was describing it to Amy and the girl that was working there I said, "It's not horrific..." and the girl behind the counter said, "Are you sure?" So...turns out it's not a local favorite either. Too bad... :)

Sunday, June 1, 2008

i made it!

i set out yesterday morning at about 6:15am to drive back up to philly for my last 3 weeks of summer classes in hopes that i would skip all the horrible traffic and the bad weather that would most certainly would be coming that afternoon. IT WORKED. I got here in 5 hours and 15 minutes and got all my stuff inside at just about the time that the sky decided to gully-wash. as you can hopefully see, the rain was so intense that is was overflowing out of the gutters outside of my window. it was kinda crazy.



oh yea, my new sunglasses made it in one piece too. i was quite elated.

<3 jess