Sea-legs and Gimbal-hips

It's been awhile since posting, but it has been busy here, computers are hard to come by with all the folks on board, and the hookup is unreliable. If you don't save as you go, you lose everything.  I'm using a keyboard that I think was left over from the Persian Gulf Mission, when someone spilled industrial strength coffee ladened with 5 scoops of sugar and maybe some jam from the PBJ sandwich.  They must have leaned over the shift key a lot, because I really have to hammer on that key to make contact.  So, now that I have rationalized my poor typing skills, I would like you to imagine standing on a 2x4 balanced on a tennis ball---and then type. I daresay you would have as many typos.  I say stand, because right now, sitting in a wheeled chair will send you carrening across the unit and plow you right into a stretcher.  We're really rocking and rolling today ... odd because the sea looks calm. 

It was calmer yesterday, but I have definitely developed sea legs and gimbal-hips so I don't notice it much of the time.  I have one patient who has been in isolaton the whole 12 days she's been here ... she and I have suffered in the "penalty box" (as one of the doc's calls it) way too long.  Not bad for me, because I can get out of there...but she's completely cut off from everything ...with the excpetion of the large window where she can see out to the nurse's station.  So, I thought I'd give her a treat, since she was improving...put a mask on her, got her into a wheel chair, and took her and her son up to the "lido deck"  (that's what we ngo's -non government officials) call the smoking deck. It's also one of the nicest places to view the sunset.  Moving a wheel chair on the ship is no easy matter...especially when you are pushing AGAINST the roll.  Plus there are 2 inch high metal doorjams in some areas, so we have to lift the chair up and over.  It was comical, but we managed, and she was fine for the first few minutes, with the breeze in her face, in the shade shielded from that hot equatorial sun.  Then I noticed her getting a little slumped over...stoic as usual, and getting slightly green around the edges ... she was getting seasick! She was fine when she couldn't see the horizon, but a little fresh air, and a lot of wheel chair shifting (even though I was holding it locked and steady)  --- and it was all over. 

So quickly we swooped her back over the door jam with the help of a few able bodied corpsman (more of THAT later), and off we went back into the penalty box, where she curled up thankfully and pulled the covers over her head.

So much for critical thinking on THAT matter, but you just don't learn Seaworthiness 101 in nursing school.  Come to think of it, much of what I'm doing you don't learn in nusing school!!!  And yet ...I'm doing it! 

And to the comic relief of my patient, once she peaked out from under her covers I got her laughing with my now infamous Popeye impersonation.  Isolation gown, with a mask over your face, with controlled ventilation, and little airconditioning, you tend to sweat.  As I sweat into my right eye, it stings closed and I leap around with sweat stinging, and me swaggering and squinting my way through the rest of my nursing care.   She loves it ...physical comedy is big here ... and this landlubber does it with style (if not grace).

Well, time to do the sailor's jig again!   Until next time ... Ahoy!