HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!  I hope everyone has a safe and great holiday weekend!  Jason and I are going over his parents house in a bit for our dinner.  I actually just got done making two disposable cake pans full of the Eclair cake - one is for their house and one is for our house.  All I have left to do is put the chocolate frosting on top!  I'm so ready to just kick back and relax...

Yesterday was a very bad day for me.  The chest pain ended up becoming so bad the night before last that I just decided to skip the x-ray and go straight to the emergency room instead when Jason got off from work, so we spent the entire day at the emergency room trying to figure out what was going on with me.  I got stuck with needles at least 6-7 times for IV and blood work, had a urinalysis, an EKG, a chest x-ray and a CT scan.  They gave me some Maalox for acid reflux reduction and Morphine for the pain.  All they found was a slightly elevated level of something in my blood (forgot what) and chalked the diagnosis up as chronic acid reflux.

UGH - WHAT A WEEK SO FAR

Good Tuesday morning to you all!  Today is my day off and tomorrow was suppose to be my day off as well, but my boss finagled the schedule so that I could have Thanksgiving off.  What a nice supervisor I have - especially asking her kinda last minute.  Things have just been crazy as of late as you can tell with my lack of posting.  Last week was a little hectic.  One of our individuals had an incident with an ankle sprain and then while I had one of my days off, the person training me had pulled her back out trying to assist the individual with the sprained ankle into bed one night, so she was out for a few days and I had to run the show.  She came back yesterday, but she was still on light duty.  Now she is back out of work because she is visiting with her husband's parents out of town from now until Monday.  Luckily, I won't have but one of the individuals to work with because the other three are going home for the holiday. 

I really do love my job and I really couldn't have asked for a better one.  I think I'm finally happy with what I'm doing.

Yesterday was a busy day for me.  I had to run up to my job's admin building and hand in my written statement on that individual's injury that I just mentioned above and while I was there, I had one of the staff member's meet me up there and bring me some chicken salad that she had homemade.  I wish I had a picture of it to post here, but it was so good that it didn't even last half a day.  I ordered cranberry and almond chicken salad and bacon ranch chicken salad.  Both were so incredibly delicious that I will definitely be ordering from her again.  From there, I had to go pay my water bill and then get on the phone with a bunch of people for appointments and bill related stuff and then went to work at 4pm.  I can honestly say, I'm glad I have a day off today...

My sleep has been awful these past two nights.  For the past three days, every time I swallow something, my chest gets a sharp pain.  When I go to bed, I get very bad sharp pains in my back to the point where I could just about cry.  For the past two nights I have done absolutely nothing but toss, turn and cringe in severe pain.  I told Jay that I can't take it anymore - I'm making an appointment for the doctor today.

Other than that, I'm ready to stuff my face on Thanksgiving.  Jay's mom and dad doesn't know that I have the holiday off yet and they won't know until I don't leave their house to go to work on Thanksgiving day - I want to surprise them which is something I probably shouldn't  be doing with two people who have a heart attack history.

I'm making the above dessert for Thanksgiving - it's an eclair cake.

I might have a couple of drinks on Thanksgiving and unwind.  I think I deserve it after the crazy 3 weeks I've had.  What all are you guys doing on Thanksgiving? :)

HAPPY MONDAY

I hope everyone has a great Monday!  I know it's too soon to tell how it's going to go, so well wishes are always good.  I ended my classes this past Thursday and spent three whole days working with my ladies.  So far, so good!  I have to get ready here soon in a bit to go perform my three med passes up at the workshop at the Disability Board and when I go into work tonight, I'm sure the women training me is going to watch me do the medication administering tonight during my shift.  Assuming all goes well with my med passes, I will be cut loose to administer meds.

After tonight's shift, I got two whole days off.  I'm so ready to relax honestly.  I may just spend Tuesday in bed and play some FFXIV, grub on some snacks and catch up with my phone calls.  I need a "me" day.  I've been busy since my classes started, so a day to myself is very much needed.  It was so cute - my first whole day working with the ladies, one of them colored me a picture to bring home.  I posted it up on the front of my fridge.

ALMOST DONE WITH CLASSES

Good morning, everyone!  I had a little bit of a rough Monday, but I got through it.  I woke up with one hell of a migraine and it lasted pretty much all the way until lunch time.  We finished our therapeutic options Monday and went over benefits, sexual harassment and cyber security.  I was just glad that I got out of class early because I was in desperate need of relaxation.  I even got an hour and a half lunch on Monday which was quite nice.  I went to Arby's for lunch and tried their deep fried turkey club sandwich and it was so good...too good actually.  That sandwich is dangerous.

Yesterday we had First Aid and CPR certification, got to meet our residential directors, and went over the computer program that we will be using to document the individuals that we work with.  These next two days I have med tech training and then Friday I will be starting my first day of on-the-job training with my ladies.  However, I will be working first shift Friday due to it being a holiday.  I did stay after and sign up for benefits yesterday with one of the HR ladies, so I got that out of the way.  I'm really excited that I have benefits now because it has been a few years since I've been able to get anything done - so I'm looking forward to revamping my health, dental and vision.  Since I work for a state agency, we get pretty awesome benefits - we have Blue Cross Blue Shield.

HAD MY JOB SHADOW YESTERDAY

Well, first and foremost - HAPPY SUNDAY!  I have today off, so I'm just going to do some light cleaning and then relax.  I got about four more days of class and then I begin working with the ladies!  I'm working with 4 lovely ladies who are all 50+ years old.  I was a bit nervous about my home visit yesterday, but once I got through the door, I was fine!  They were very welcoming and made me feel right at home.

One of them wanted to show me her bedroom which all of their bedrooms are very pretty and well kept.  But when this one particular individual showed me her room, I spotted Hello Kitty and told her how much I love Hello Kitty.  Funny thing was, I already knew prior to my visit that she liked animals, so I wore my dress shoes that have a kitty on the tops of them and I told her, "Look at my shoes!" and I pointed to them and she got all excited.  It was SO cute!  After I had gotten home that afternoon, I get a call from my co-worker and she left me a voicemail and said, "Her sister wants to see your shoes because she keeps talking about how much she likes them!" So, I sent my co-worker a picture of them and she is going to try and hunt them down.  Haha!  I kinda figured that she would like my shoes...

And so during the visit, my co-worker informed me of pretty much all the general care of the ladies and how to use the computer and the kind of routine that they are use to, etc.  I took notes for my own personal use and then had a paper that I had to fill out to bring back on Monday about the kind of things that I observed while at the visit.

My visit was only 4 hours, but I learned a lot and in just that short amount of time, I fell in love with them all!  Before I left, I whispered over to my co-worker and said, "Do they all like hugs?" and she said, "Oh yeah!  You can go give them a hug!" and I turned the corner and said, "Who wants a hug!?" and they all got excited!  It felt so good!  They asked if I was coming back tomorrow and I said, "Nooo, not tomorrow, but I'll be back to work with you all after next week if that's okay with everyone!" And they all shook their head in agreement.  It was truly heartwarming.  <3

So yeah, I have 4 more days of classes and then hopefully I'll start Friday with actually working at the house.  I'm really looking forward to this.

Sorry there are no pretty pictures to look at today - this is just an quick update post today. XD

IT'S BEEN A BUSY, BUSY WEEK!

As you all know, I started my new job as a Community Home Training Specialist with the Anderson County Disability and Special Needs Board on Monday, October 30th.  Regularly I have had class with two other ladies.  There is one lady that comes pretty frequently along with us, but she has a different job title, so she doesn't need to take all the classes that we are required to take because she won't be working directly with the special needs population.  I think her position is somewhere in administration.  The first day was a lot of information, so much so that I ended up getting a migraine from trying to retain it all.

There is a lot to go over when you work in this field - information ranging from abuse and neglect, medicaid fraud, polices, human rights to proper lifting techniques, emergency protocols, medication administering, first aid and CPR.  I always had to take a defensive driving course and take a driving assessment where I had to prove that I was able to safely and properly drive a mini bus that seats 15-16 people and had to do so with 6 or 7 people on the bus with me.  The instructor stands outside and evaluates.  I also have to take therapeutic options and that's basically learning proper restraint techniques which may needs to be implements in imminently dangerous situations.