Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Squashed

More handspun!


Hello. I am roving.


All spun up.


In skein form.

Details:
This is 4oz of superwash merino roving from Sakina Needles in colorway 'squashed'. I believe I have about 170 yards of worsted weight yarn. No overtwist this time! I am working on attempting to spin yarn finer than worsted. Spinning is my new obsession. So fun.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Whose blood are you covered in?

I am now rotating through a county psychiatric ER, and I used the above line to open a patient interview after introducing myself. Exciting times. I was on call last Sunday, and an agitated and violent patient had to get tasered. The situation was terrifying. I remained safely in the nurses station while the patient was being subdued; I am not trained to take down patients, and I have resolved to myself (and repeatedly promised to Raul) that I will not try.

I am glad that Thanksgiving is coming up and I will have a bit of a break from this rotation.

Monday, November 3, 2008

Life

No posts for the month of October. Hmm. Things have been busy, and well - I kind of lost my groove there for a couple months. It was very hard to come back from rotations after having 2 weeks vacation. And I came back to night float. Sleeping on a gross plastic mattress in an office at the VA is way less preferable to sleeping in my own bed, at home with my husband. And let me tell you, during those two weeks, few things could have been more annoying than to be repeatedly woken from sleep by nurses that don't know their patients to go see patients that really can't tell you what's wrong. I truly enjoy psychiatry, but I like sleep more.

And then I went to a geriatric psychiatry rotation, and that was wonderful at first. My patients were very high functioning for the most part, and they were largely admitted for the management of mood disorders. I found the therapeutic relationships that I was able to establish with those patients to be immensely satisfying. But well, they got better and were discharged. The patients that have been admitted to my service lately can be generally described as severely demented or delirious, admitted for management of behavioral problems. Caring for a demented patient is extremely challenging. It is often impossible to explain the therapeutic purpose behind your actions - how do you explain the need for postural restraints to a patient that is severely cognitively impaired. They can't understand that they are a huge fall risk, and you're worried about them injuring themselves. They just know they are unable to get up out of the chair they're sitting in. And the management of agitation...it's such a fine line between good control of agitated behaviors and oversedation. In these interactions, sometimes it is difficult to see how I am actually helping these patients. And one of my co-interns attempted suicide last month. It was a lethal attempt, and he has not yet demonstrated significant neurological recovery. It is so sad. He is a beautiful person, and we are all holding out hope that he recovers. These last couple months have been hard, and I am tired. I'm only working about 60 hours/week, but I am have been so tired. It is helpful to remember that life won't always be like this - I look forward to my third year of residency when I no longer have overnight call, and I will get to work ~40 hour weeks. And I had a good week last week. I got sleep. I was able to have dinner with Raul for 5 nights in a row (gasp!) and I was able to remember that I actually have it pretty good.

So, though I have been neglecting the blog, I haven't' been neglecting the hobbies. Spinning is fun. Here are some photos.





The middle skein is 4oz of superwash merino wool from Chameleon Colorworks in colorway 'Taos'. This roving was super soft and luscious and very fun to spin. I was attempted to spin worsted weight yarn, but it came out a little heavier than what I was aiming for. I am making a baby surprise jacket from this yarn. Pictures to follow when I finish it (hopefully this week.) The skeins on both ends are 8oz of superwash merino pencil roving from Crown Mountain Farms in colorway 'I Feel Free.' This was also very fun to spin. I am thinking this may become a Tomten. I am still getting the hang of spinning. At present, I am able to spin worsted weight yarn fairly consistently, but I am noting lots of overspin in my finished yarn. I'm not sure if the problem is with my singles or my plying.
 
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