girl in greenwood

Thankful 2008
Thankful 2007
Thankful 2006
Thankful 2005
Thankful 2004

It has been a very busy year, with lots of good things and lots of bad things too - and yet I have a great deal to be thankful for.

As always, I am beyond thankful for my smart, funny, creative, thoughtful, strong husband. We have held each other up this year in countless ways and I can't fathom life without him.

And equally important, I am thankful for my fun, loving, generous parents who provide unconditional love, handyperson advice and labor, and more laughs than anyone else's parents I know.

I am super-duper thankful for our new house! Moving, painting, and the millions of other projects we've taken on have been hard work and lots of money, but I think it's all been worth it - every day I look around and think that I can't believe I live in such a nice home.

I am thankful for the chances I've had to reconnect with old friends this year - between Facebook, Google, and some fortuitous travel plans, I've gotten in touch with quite a few people who were important to me in the past and that makes me happy. (Keith, I'm looking at you as one example! And Emilie, you & Derek are another!)

I am thankful for the friends I've stayed in touch with after nursing school, and for the new friends I've made at work, because both groups are available for nurse talk whenever I need them.

I'm thankful for all our excellent friends from various other backgrounds who are fun and loving and help us see the world from different angles.

I am thankful for my continued employment in this lousy economic time - and I am even more thankful that my coworkers are so excellent and fun and loving, and that I am proud of the work I do at Big County Hospital.

This may sound strange, but I am thankful that I have had the experience of helping several people pass from life into death this year - because it has strengthened my belief that hospice nursing is the right path for me.

Finally, I am very thankful for the good health that my family and I have. I care for people who are sick and broken in thousands of different ways and I am profoundly grateful that my loved ones are not fighting those battles.

Now I have a request for you, my dear readers. In honor of our beloved friend who died this year, please do one small thing - think of a friend or relative or someone who you've been meaning to call but have been putting off for no good reason, and call them just to say you love them and are thinking of them. You'll both feel good afterwards.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Labels: fall, family, thanksgiving

# posted by girl_in_greenwood @ 10:25 PM 3 comments

The House of Hope and Fear: Life in a Big City Hospital
by Audrey Young


I loved this book and read it in a few hours becuase I was so fascinated. I work at the hospital that Dr. Young describes with honesty and affection. In her stories about patients, doctors, families, and aspects of society, the reader gets a view inside a public hospital and the people who work and are treated there.

There are two reasons why I would recommended you read this book: First, it would help you understand why I choose to work at the county hospital and why I am so proud of the work I do. The other reason is more political: reading about the patients who end up at the county hospital seeking primary care - the homeless, the addicted, the mentally ill, the underinsured, the unemployed, the desparate - is the best argument I can think of for universal health care.

Just one fact pulled from the book: the United States spends more than twice as much on health care than any other country, and yet our health outcome and life expectancy statistics are nowhere near the best in the world.

Labels: book reports, medical