Blog 7: Blood, Brains, and Toilet Paper

 Warning: There's a little excess blood and gore in this one! Just warning you!

  Hello and Happy New Year! After many months, the blog is back! Since the last blog, I somehow managed to graduate from an LPN to RN program and now I'm waiting for my "ticket to test" from the Florida Board of Nursing. In the meantime, I hardly know how to act... My nursing school journey from the beginning prerequisites to graduation with my associate's degree has taken me nearly 3 1/2 years,... now to have no more homework,  clinicals or care plans, research papers, or "make-or-break" exams hanging over my head feels a little surreal! I think most of my friends wrote me off their social calendar long ago, but if anyone's up for an afternoon coffee run or a weekend ski trip, I'm FREE!!! Once I pass state boards, I will continue to work as a registered nurse at the same hospital where I currently work as an LPN, which should be a fairly smooth transition, I hope! I'm a little nervous and intimidated with the level of responsibility and accountability of an RN in the emergency setting, but I know everyone and I'm comfortable with a lot of the procedures, so once I have all the charting down, I think I'll be ok! I'm guessing I'll spend a lot of time praying that I don't kill someone for the first year or so! 😆

    In the months since the last blog, I have had some interesting experiences that I would really like to write about, but these are all overshadowed by the mass casualty situation after the NAS Pensacola terror attack... I feel like that day deserves it's own blog, so I'm going to leave it out of this blog in favor of reserving a blog solely for that experience. 

    In the last semester of nursing school, I had to do 90 hours of preceptorship along with my clinical rotation. Basically this means that I had to spend 90 hours shadowing a nurse, just one-on-one, instead of a whole clinical group. I did my preceptorship in the Critical Care unit/ Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit, and was literally blown away with the experience! My precepting nurse was a specially-trained CV-ICU nurse, which meant that she was responsible for open-heart bypass patients directly from the operating room. I'll never forget my first patient with my preceptor, Ms. Gwen,... An older gentleman straight from the OR post-CABG (CABG=Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting) surgery... The poor ol' guy had an arterial line, a Swan-Ganz line ( a huge multi-lumen IV in the neck), three chest tubes, an exterior pacemaker, a Foley catheter, an ET tube and ventilator, and incisions on one leg where the veins for the bypass were harvested. The sheer amount of IV pumps and tubing looked like a mass of spaghetti and the number of monitors made my head spin, but my mind was literally BLOWN when Ms. Gwen said, "Ok, let's see if he's got a rhythm yet!" and turned off the pacemaker... the patient did NOT have a heart rhythm or not much of one anyway, so she turned the pacemaker back on and... Ka-thump, ka-thump, a heartbeat!!! She literally sat there and turned the patient on and off! "Now he's dead... and,.... now he's alive!" At any rate, by the time my 90 hours were complete, I had gotten fairly comfortable with the whole CABG patient post-op process... not that I would feel ready to do it on my own AT ALL, but I understand all the meds and how to set up a chest tube and how to use arterial lines, so I know it will be extremely helpful in the long run! Kudos to any ICU nurse, though! They do some crazy scary stuff! In the ER we keep them alive long enough to send up to the unit, but the unit has the job of actually fixing the problem! 

   Whatever the ER lacks in medical finesse, it makes up for in spades with the crazy, psychotic, and the traumatic... This fall I was part of a 5-hour code situation. A 53-year-old female was found unresponsive in her house during one of the first cold spells of this season. She lived alone in a shed-style house with concrete floors and no heat, so her body temp after lying on the floor for hours was extremely low, around 72 degrees when she came to us. The doc was ready to call the code almost immediately, but protocol says that death cannot be declared until the body temp is 86 degrees or greater... this is because lowering a body's temperature actually reduces the metabolic rate and can prolong organ function. That meant that CPR had to be done on this poor lady until her body temperature was at least 86 degrees. Amazingly enough, she did have some cardiac activity, but nothing that was adequate. We pumped warm fluids into nearly every orifice of her body: warm Foley flush, warm gastric lavage, warm IV fluids, and a warm enema, all while using the Artic Sun, an inflatable warm "blanket" that blows warm air on the patient's skin... Even with all the warmth, her body temperature took five hours to reach 86 degrees.... and she received "high-quality" CPR the whole time! We were all exhausted around the 3-hour mark, so LifeFlight was able to bring their Lucas, a CPR machine, that we were able to use for a couple hours. I was not there to witness it, but people in the room at the 2-hour mark say that the patient actually opened her eyes and looked around for a couple seconds... I wonder if she saw the trauma room or if she was seeing eternal life? 

   A couple months ago, EMS called in a trauma-code, a gunshot wound to the head. From the report, we understood that it was a middle-age man with a gunshot wound to the left temple. He had a pulse at the scene so EMS "scooped and ran." He lost the pulse on the way so they started CPR. We all gowned up in the trauma room and waited,... the trauma surgeon leaning against the wall and the pharmacy dropping off the trauma blood,.... nobody getting too excited because gunshot wounds always tend to be a little disappointing if your expecting blood and gore. Then EMS came through the door and I think we all peed our pants a little! This guy had a gaping cavern where the left side of his face used to be! I could see brain and bits of eyeball and bone all down in this gaping hole in his skull! We all looked at each other like, "What the world are we going to do with that? There's no fixing that mess!" The doc initiated the massive blood transfusion protocol but we could see the fresh blood coming out the top of the guy's head... The paramedic just shrugged when we all glared at him, and said, "Well, he had a pulse!" Once the code was called, the dead man became a dead crime scene and the crime scene investigators came in and did their thing... I walked by the room later and the poor guy had a red biohazard bag tied around his head. 

   Recently, on a Saturday, EMS called in another gunshot wound to the head. I happened to be standing near a radio when EMS called the report. The paramedic said, "We are coming to you with a 63-year-old male from the Walmart parking lot. He shot himself in the head on Thursday. He's vitally stable and alert and oriented x3".... We were all confused and the charge nurse asked the paramedic to repeat himself,... but, yes, they were bringing in a gunshot wound TO THE HEAD from two days ago. In summary, this poor man had such painful diabetic neuropathy that he was tired of dealing with the pain, so on Thursday evening, he shot himself in the right temple with a 308. The shot knocked him out and he has no memory of whatever he did on Friday, but Saturday morning dawned crisp and clear, and he wasn't dead so he decided he needed food and toilet paper. He hopped in his car and drove to Walmart, where he was spotted by a shopper while waiting for a parking space. The shopper asked him if he was ok, and he said, "yeah, I'm just waiting for a parking space." But the shopper freaked out anyway and call EMS. This guy came to us walking and talking,... he stood up from the EMS stretcher and walked to the trauma stretcher. He did have a hole still oozing in his right temple and one tremendously black and swollen eye but as far as he was concerned, it was just a scratch. The CT showed the bullet embedded about to inches into his brain. He was transferred to a hospital with specialized neurosurgery to get the bullet removed. Everyone was talking about how depressing it would be to try to kill yourself and screw even that up, but I think God must have some amazing plan for that man yet! I wish I would have had the nerve to tell him that, but I didn't. 

   While I have learned a lot about trauma in the last few months, most days at the ER are still filled with the endless abdominal pains, dog bites, "chest pains," that somehow turn into STD checks, ect., ect... So many people pass through the ER on a daily basis, and so many of them are sad, angry, unhappy people... Recently, a mother and father of four beautiful children, one of them six months, had a car accident. Both parents were on drugs. The dad went to jail and the mom and the kids came to us. The mom slept off her high in one room while our staff babysat in another. Eventually, the mom snuck out of her room and was gone before anyone could stop her. The cops caught up with her a quarter mile down the road and drug her back, but the look in her eyes was one I won't soon forget. She had a look of absolutely no care, completely cold. Thankfully, DCF came for the kids, but still, she was going to literally leave her kids at the hospital... just completely abandon them. That's a new low for me! And now four more children are in an already overwhelmed system! So sad!

   That's all for this time, but hopefully I can get the blog about the NAS Pensacola attack up fairly soon! Keep your eyes peeled for it! Thanks for your best wishes and prayers while I was in school and please don't stop! I still have those state boards to pass! 

   Happy 2020!

Blog 6: For the Children...

    After months of "radio silence," I'm back with a few words to write. First, an apology and an explanation for the time that has passed since I've last posted. I've been prioritizing... School work and sleep unfortunately takes precedent over posting blogs. Now that I'm safely on the other side of the spring semester, I've got a few things to write about...
    The longer I work in this profession, the more I feel like I view the world through different lenses then I used to. Just when I think I've pretty much seen everything, something happens that leaves me in tears for the entire drive home from work. Not that every experience is negative, but the negative does seem to stick around a little longer... At any rate, I'm actively putting the old adage of turning lemons into lemonade to the test. Let me explain... If you've been paying attention to our local media the last few months, you may have noticed story after story relating to child abuse. I've never really paid a lot of attention to these stories except to feel a momentary pang of pity for the child that I don't know and have never seen... until recently. Several weeks ago, I had the pleasure of meeting two of the most beautiful little girls in the world, with a jail bird for a mother and foster parents who somehow let these little girls get into their meth stash. I don't know if they will be OK, because we sent them to the local children's hospital and I have no idea what happened after that, but it literally broke my heart. The youngest of the two hadn't been to sleep in days, and as we were waiting for the pediatric ambulance transport, she fell asleep in my lap. It just blows my mind how anyone could cause harm to something so precious.... I can't remember if I already wrote about this or not, but  awhile ago, we had a 11-year old girl who had ran away from a group home in Montgomery and made it to our area... We think that she may have ended up in a trafficking situation, but, she was located by law enforcement and her social worker drove down to take her back to the group home. Obviously, the group home was worse then whatever she was experiencing here, because she literally bailed out of the car as it was going up the ramp onto the freeway... The poor child was one big road rash from head-to-toe. It took one of the paramedics and myself close to 2 hours to clean all the gravel and debris out of her skin... A few months ago, a 14-year-old girl showed up in the ER with abdominal pain and turned out to be pregnant, which isn't so unusual except that she was in foster care. A week later, she was back with an STD.... I'm pretty sure I already wrote about the cute little man that was brought to us by his grandma and ended up staying for hours until DCF could come get him. His daddy was allegedly trying to kill him, his mama was in jail, and his grandma couldn't handle it all, so she left him with us and walked out the door without looking back. There are more stories like these... but I think you get the point. And then, sometimes we have to take care of the perpetrators, the ones who committed terrible acts of abuse against an innocent child. How do you stay neutral in this position? A few weeks ago, someone was arrested for child abuse and hung himself in his prison cell. I wasn't at work when he came in, but I heard from the other nurses about it... He was given care just like any other patient. To me, that situation sums up the nursing profession! I look up to these nurses that can put on their "nurse face" and walk into the room and just do their job when they know that the person lying on the bed has committed some of the most unthinkable acts on an innocent child. That is true mental strength and fortitude! I'm not sure I'm there yet!... Interestingly, I've found a way to channel my frustrations from these experiences into something that will hopefully be a positive experience... A few days before the little meth girls, I had a patient with a broken foot who was a child advocacy manager with a program called Guardian Ad Litem. In short, Guardian Ad Litem is an organization or an agency that is the legal voice of the abused, neglected, and abandoned child. Guardian Ad Litem works closely with the Department of Children and Families or FFN (Families First Network) to make sure that a child that has been placed in foster care or with a relative is safe and properly cared for. I don't even know how the conversation got started but the lady with the broken foot told me about a great volunteer opportunity with the Guardian Ad Litem for pretty much anyone who had a heart for abused children. She wrote down her number on a piece of paper and told me to call her if I ever got serious about volunteering my time. Well, a few days later, when the little meth girls came through the ER, I decided maybe it would be a good idea to see what becoming a GAL (Guardian Ad Litem) was all about. I've met the local GAL team, taken a couple of classes, and been assigned a CAM (a child advocacy manager) who happens to be the same lady I met in the ER! I'm ready to take on my first case, hopefully, starting this next week! This means I will be assigned a child that is placed either in foster care or with a relative and will be responsible to visit that child at least once per month, basically just to make sure the provisions of the case plan are being met and that the child is doing well. However, I can spend as much time as I have with this little one. I can take him for ice cream or to the park or just spend time reading him books. If it's just an hour or two every month, it's something positive in his tragic little life! I'm so excited about it! It seems a little crazy to start something like this when I'm still in school and life is so hectic, but, hey, it's only once a month unless I have time for more visits! As much as I'd love to be married with a little family of my own, I kind of feel like this is a chance to learn about the foster care system and how it all works. Who knows, years from now when I can be a little more self-sufficient, this will turn into more than just being a GAL! As we all know, God works in mysterious ways!
   In other ER news, I've pulled two bugs out of ears recently, which, in the scheme of things isn't very exciting, I know, but it really is so satisfying! One was a long skinny cockroach and the other was a bed bug... People at work know I have this thing about getting things out of ears and come get me for the job. I bought this little gadget off Amazon that is a camera otoscope that connects to your phone. This way the patient can hold the phone and see what I am doing in their ear. I can look at the screen as well instead of always having to pull the otoscope off the wall where it's attached. It's literally only $28 on Amazon! I'm telling you, it's the coolest thing ever!
   During my clinical rotations this semester, I got to make a couple rounds through surgery. I don't know if surgical nursing is really my thing, but I do find surgery very entertaining! It's very fascinating to watch people being put to sleep... one minute they are awake and talking and the next minute, they are out like a light and floppy as a rag doll. The nurses and the surgeon were very good about letting us get as close as we could without entering the sterile field, and I got to see some pretty cool stuff up close and personal... a thyroid removal, a cancerous mass removal, a human bite repair, and, of course, a good ole' colonoscopy with a GI bleed. I am also fascinated with cauterizers (I'm not sure what their technical name is...but anyways) I love how it zaps the vein and sends up a little whiff of smoke, a little human BBQ.... 😝 That's weird, I know! Which reminds me, I have one of these at home now if anyone has a bleeder that needs cauterizing! I was helping on of the PA's with a head laceration a while back and we used one of the ER's one-time-use cauterizers. We only used it for a couple zaps (He let me do it! I was so excited! LOL!) After we were done, he handed it to me and told me to clean it up and take it home. He said it works really good for starting fireworks... ??? Do I especially look like a person that spends a lot of time lighting fireworks? I guess I must, Idk???
   The summer semester starts on May 29. This semester is only 10 weeks long, so it's going to be fairly intense! From what I understand, we'll be in class or clinical 3-4 days a week, which will put me back to working every weekend. I've gotten to know my classmates fairly well by now, and I have to say, it's going to be entertaining! Most of us have to work as well as go to school, so we are all tired and a little hysterical on those early, early clinical mornings. It's made for some really, really, good laughs and some good times,... I am so lucky to have classmates that are easy to get along with! I'm excited for this semester, but I'm also nervous and dreading the lack of sleep and early hours. I usually have to drive an hour or two to clinicals, and the drive home is pure misery! I've already learned where good parking lots with shade are along the way so I can pull over and get 10 minutes of shut-eye! I've also spent a lot of money on delicious Tropical Cafe smoothies for the drive home, but it's worth it if it helps me stay awake!
   I'm guessing I won't post again until I'm finished with the summer semester, for better or worse! Wish me luck! Thanks so much to all of you who posted encouraging messages on my last post! I read all of them! Much appreciated!
Have a wonderful summer!
PS. If any of you are bored in the least, I can forward you the volunteer information for the Guardian Ad Litem program!!!! Out west, it's called CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates). Look it up on Google! Get involved! I think you'd be great!

Blog 5: Hopeless Hobos and Toes in Tupperware

     Well, hello everyone! I know I am about 2 months late, but the latest blog is dropping tonight if I have to stay up til the beautiful rare blood wolf moon (or whatever) goes down and the sun comes up! To be honest, I've had this blog in my mind for weeks... I started writing it over my Christmas holiday, but I never finished it. For some reason, the months of November and December were sort of heavy and depressing when it came to my work, and the resulting blog was heavy and depressing. Since I couldn't seem to find any humor to post along with it, I just canned it... This blog will probably still be a little heavy, but now I have some great humor to mix in with it, so here goes!

    I am officially a nursing student once again. I started the ADN Mobility program on January 7. My life went from busy to literally hectic, but I am determined to keep this blog somewhat current. However, if I have to go back to nursing school, you guys have to go with me! As a result, you will be getting a mixture of nursing school experience along with the ER stories. I have classes and clinicals Monday through Thursday at this point, and I work at the ER on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I only do a 6-hour day on Sunday, so I can take my heathen self to church at least once a week! I always feel like I drag into church late and sit there looking groggy for most of the service, but, I can't say how much good it does me! If nothing else, the simple act of sitting there and just being part of the group, after all week of just being me by myself... it feels amazing and I am thankful to be part of the Church of the Living God.

    I got into nursing because I loved the "mission field" aspect of it, (as well as all the blood and gore, of course.) I've long loved the idea of returning to Africa as a nurse someday... However, as time goes on, I am coming to realize what a mission field I already live in and the sheer responsibility I have to leave that witness for Christ. I feel like I've probably said basically that same thing a hundred times before, but it's true! I don't think we,... all of us in our comfortable little Mennonite bubbles,... can fully comprehend the hopelessness and sadness that we pass by every day! This Christmas season, several situations made this very clear to me... 

• My ER sees a LOT of the area's homeless population, sometimes on a daily basis. Sometimes more than once a day... it's not unusual for one of our regulars to be discharged from the behavorial med unit in the ER for psych issues and check right back in for some fabricated physical ailment. To be honest, most of these people really aren't healthy. They are addicts, alcoholics, underweight, riddled with various ailments from severe athletes foot to HIV and hepatitis and more. We all know they are in the ER for the proverbial "3 hots and a cot." If they are unable or unwilling to change their lifestyle, there isn't a lot we can do to fix them... I feel like we as nurses get so jaded and used to seeing these people that we tend to ignore them sometimes... "Oh, it's just Mr. So-and-So here for chest pain... he's crying wolf again!" In the week before Christmas, one poor man such as I've just been describing to you came to our ER... He was treated and eventually discharged. He had nowhere to go and no one to help him, so he tried to check back into the ER... (Before you ask, yes, we have shelters and halfway houses, but for whatever reason, they wouldn't take this guy!) I guess things got a bit heated at triage so security and law enforcement got involved and trespassed the guy off of the hospital property. With nowhere to go, he walked up the street to a local wound care clinic and laid down next to some bushes... 3 days later, after some heavy rains, he was still laying there... He was dead... I don't know why this got to me as much as it has... I wasn't involved in his care in the slightest,...but for some reason, it has really stuck with me. I imagine him lying there in the rain, his body losing every shred of life and warmth, becoming stiff with rigor... and nobody cared enough to stop and check on him... for 3 days! For 3 days, people walked in and out of the clinic and he was laying there! They said they thought he was sleeping! I can't imagine the depth of his hopelessness as he lay there and felt the life draining out of him... Maybe he didn't care, maybe he was ready for life to end, but I can't help imagining that the innocent little boy he once was still lived somewhere in that time-worn spirit and wished to live... What little boy at age 10 or 11 says to himself, "I want to live a terribly sad and hopeless life and die by myself by some bushes in the rain?" This poor man once had dreams and hope and spirit. I still think of it and tear up... and I picture my own little nephews and the life they have ahead... Oh, if only I can see that little boy in all my patients. To look past that awful exterior and into that little boy heart and shed just a little ray of Hope in the dark! I truly feel like this is part of my calling in life! This is just as "mission fieldy" as Africa!
• Also in the weeks before Christmas, I "helped" with my first DCF case... (Department of Children and Families, for those of you who were wondering) We had a lady come to the ER with an approximately 2 month old infant. She initially checked herself in, but it quickly became pretty clear what was going on... She needed help with baby. "Baby momma" was in jail and grandma (our patient) had custody. The siblings of the infant were already in foster care but for whatever reason, our warped justice system saw fit to put this infant in her care. She had psych issues that she was dealing with as well as the added stress of the little baby. This particular evening, the baby daddy had come looking for the baby and sought to end his little life. Grandma came to us for help and law enforcement was called... Eventually, with Grandma's mental state becoming clear, DCF was called for the little baby. Law enforcement told Grandma that the baby was going into foster care, but after some weeping and wailing, she left of her own volition. We were left for hours with the cutest little thing you ever saw... by the time DCF arrived we had all taken our turns feeding, changing, and entertaining the little guy. The last thing I saw of him was his little warm brown eyes and chubby cheeks as they wrapped him in a warm hospital blanket and carried him out into the cold winter night... I pray that his little life changed for the better that night! At any rate, it was entertaining to watch some the most stoic, "battle-hardened" nurses become cooing, blubbering idiots over that little guy! I loved it! 
• Once again, in the weeks before Christmas, I was at work and in charge of the lower acuity part of the ER... I was sitting at the nurse's station doing some charting when one of the people in our little sub-waiting room said, "Hey, I know that girl!" It was one of my friends from my first CNA job. I hadn't seen her in probably 3 or 4 years but we had kept in contact for awhile by text message. As a new CNA, I had looked up to her and admired her. She was a lady that had her act together. She knew her job and she did it well. She came in every day with her clothes ironed with creases and not a hair out of place. She walked fast and worked faster.... But, this day, in my ER, I saw her sitting there, barely recognizable... she looked homeless. She was wearing an old coverall suit, hair and face dirty, one leg slung over the arm rest. Her daughter had driven her there and now sat with her in the waiting room, looking embarrassed and barely making eye contact. I got her into a room and pulled the daughter out to ask her what in the WORLD was going on? From what I understood, after a bad break-up and a bout of unemployment, my friend had started making some bad choices and ended up pretty much destitute... she lived with her daughter but I could tell things weren't going well. My friend sat there and spun a delusional yarn about a spider bite that she imagined was a snake bite because snakes are prettier than spiders and weren't as evil as spiders. She had a big open staph sore on her leg and a nasty boil on her hand... those things don't get there overnight. I know something was going on involving drugs and/or alcohol but how can you help someone that doesn't want help? I tried talking to her as delicately as possible but she was paranoid that she was going to get committed to the psych unit and just kept trying to convince me of her sanity.  Eventually, we discharged her with antibiotics for her skin infection and I gave her my phone number again and told her to call me if she ever needed anything... She's never called and I honestly don't ever expect her to. I think she knew deep down that she was in deep trouble but, if I know her at all, she won't want to be a "bother" to anyone. She'll just try to deal with things on her own. I catch myself watching for her now, because I know she lives only a few miles from the ER. I don't know what more I can do??? Pray, I guess... I have a feeling that someday she'll show up in the ER again on a stretcher after a heroin overdose. I think about her often. It eats at me a little... What can I do so she doesn't end up dying all alone in the rain by some bushes?     

    On the lighter side, a few Sunday mornings ago while most of you sat in church, I treated a dapper 83 year old gentleman for an STD.... He came in with his beret, golf sweater, and shiny leather shoes, talking about "some girl done gave him an STD." He said he knew where she lived and that he was calling the health department on her a** and she was going to jail! When I went to give him his IM Rocephin in the hip, he was wearing a pullup😒... I wanted to ask him if he thought it was time to retire, but I didn't... I put on my nurse face, gave him the shot, and listened to his tale of woe. Maybe his discharge paperwork should have been specific... "No more hookers off Cervantes, sir!"                     

   A couple days ago we had a interesting GSW to the foot.... poor guy accidentally pulled the trigger of a loaded 12-gauge when it was pointed at his foot. It literally blew his big toe slap off his foot. He came to the ER on a stretcher but his toe came in in a maroon colored Tupperware container neatly nestled in a bed of ice... His foot was too mangled to reattach the toe, but no worries! The toe was very useful as entertainment for all the ER staff! I even have a picture of it if your interested!            

   I have a fascination with conscious sedation! We do quite a bit of conscious sedation in the ER for dislocated bones, cardioversions, ect... Conscious sedation is when the patient is given a drug that sedates him enough to make him not remember the procedure or barely remember the procedure but not knock him out completely like general anesthesia. A commonly used drug is Versed, also known as midazolem... if this name looks familiar, it may because you've read about it being used as part of the lethal injection cocktail, but anyways, it is some pretty amazing stuff. I love watching people get Versed... sometimes, it works so fast that their eyes don't even go closed... you just get this empty stare while the doctor yards around on their bones. 👀 I got to watch a chest tube get inserted in a guy after he was sedated with Versed a few weeks ago. The Dr was having a hard time getting the chest tube in and kept stretching the incision open wider and sticking his fingers in... the patient couldn't move but he kept making the worst groaning and moaning noises that you can imagine. Later after the chest tube was in and the patient was conscious, I made it a point to go in and ask him if he felt anything or remembered anything. He told me that he didn't remember a thing... Even after all that noise he kept making! I thought surely he wasn't "out" enough! 

    Well, it's almost 2 am. I could ramble on for a while yet but I think this is enough for this time around! I still have a few stories from my list to post, but this blog is already a bit loooonnnggg.... I know it wasn't all light and fluffy this time around, but, if anything, I hope it reminds you, me,... all of us, that we are God's eyes and ears... Let's take a moment to stop and really see those people around us with that look of despair in their eyes because we can offer hope, even if it's nothing more than a smile! 

1st Peter 3:15