Well, here it is– the night before the last official day of my internship (I’ll be returning next weekend to help with a giant fundraising event, but school starts this Monday!) At 5 p.m. tomorrow, my car– which is currently packed full of Costco grocies, thanks Mom & Dad!– will be speeding down I-80 for my longest stay in Iowa City since December. Some days I thought this day would never come, at other times it seemed to be looming far too quickly in the future. My father asked at dinner tonight (thanks for that, too) how my summer was overall. When people ask me how I am, I usually reply “Fabulous” and they can decide whether I mean it sarcastically that day or not. But “fabulous” is about the only word I can think of to honestly describe the past three months. (Ok, “fantastic” “awesome” “super great” would all work, too.) This summer included turning 21, a trip to the hospital, one incredible trip to Vegas, some bonding with the boyfriend’s hometown, many miles logged on the half marathon training calendar, and of course– one kick ass Lady Gaga show. Sure, there were lots of times I was lonely for my friends in Iowa City, missed Germany, thought my family would drive me absolutely bat-shit crazy, and was a little bored or slightly less enthusiastic about my internship. Those times were quite few, however, and since my internship was the sole reason I was here for the summer in the first place– holy life-changing experiences, Batman. No seriously, it was that awesome. I really, REALLY love my job and I’d like to think I’m really good at it. I learned so much more and have so much more experience in journalism/ PR/ events/ design than I thought I would, and definitely more than my three years of college classes combined. The summer is not over, however– 713 will be bidding it a proper farewell this weekend, and there’s no where I’d rather be. In the meantime, I’ll leave with you some photos of one truly kick-ass summer.

Waking up in Vegas

Low potassium makes for a pokey arm

Not sure I ever told you about my new wheels...

Perez Hilton at One Night in Chicago

Currently I’m supposed to be putting in some hours at work, but the kindness of my boss coupled with a signed doctor’s note for rest means I’m off today.  To SLEEP!!  And let my blood return to normal.  Won’t you come along with me for this emergency room tale?

So it was after dinner about an hour or two and my head HURT.  Like, oh hey this headache is kind of getting in the way of me doing normal things and is generally making me very agitated.  I woke up quite tired yesterday so chalked it up to that until a massive wave of nausea hit like OhmygodI’mgonnapukeNOW (but thankfully didn’t.)  I was officially sick, so decided to just go to sleep.  Laying down wasn’t great, however.  Methinks I psyched myself out a bit and got oddly scared about what it could be– I just felt off– so instead of trying harder to sleep, I went downstairs.  And ate a brownie, but that’s just normal me, nothing to see here.  That’s when I noticed I felt kinda dizzy and my eyes were blurrier than my normal terrible vision.  NOW I’m freaking out, and spend a good chunk of time wavering between “Oh it’s nothing” and “I should text NPH because I’m not living through the night.”  I tried laying down again and this is when I noticed there was a massive pressure on the right side of my head and upper arm, like something was pushing on me.  This spread into a numb, tingly feeling along pretty much the right side of my body, and about now is the point when I went downstairs and alerted T-Bone that something was up.  My mother was oddly calm about it as I’m sitting on her bed crying because the room’s kinda going in and out of focus, and after listening to what’s up she decided the hospital is probably a good bet.  She suggested something about drinking a G2 since I could just be dehydrated after my run, but I assured her I had drank so much water afterward, that would be impossible (and I really did.  Heinous amounts of water.  And a very nutritious meal.)

Thankfully the ER was deserted and they got me in right away, first finding out that my blood pressure was pretty freakin’ high for me, though I was was equally freakin’ nervous about being in the hospital.  I also had a low fever and was shaking because apparently Methodist West has a harem of polar bears roaming the place who need the air conditioning set near arctic temperatures.  I got dressed in a hospital gown (and was wearing my most God-awful, way too big, really old undies because I had THOUGHT I was just going to bed) and got a bunch of blood drawn and got hooked up to a blood pressure machine and got a saline IV hooked up in my arm.  Methinks perhaps the giant needle stuck in my arm for three hours eventually hurt worse than anything I was in there for in the first place.  A bunch of people came in, each one asking if there was any way at all I was pregnant, causing my mother to possibly need medical attention more than myself.  The doctor kept asking if I was on “street drugs” and then did a bunch of coordination/ strength tests to see if I’d had an acute stroke (um, no.)  He sent me for a CAT scan anyway, which thankfully came back negative (so did the pregnancy test– rest easy, mother) though my blood work showed a pretty low potassium level.  They gave me some giant horse pills and a prescription of potassium and told me to eat lots of prunes daily because they actually have much more potassium than bananas.  My sodium levels were also off so we had to wait until my IV had dripped its full liter of fluid in me before leaving.

My mother, while I’m thankful for her driving me and remaining calm while internally I was quite freaking out, is not perhaps the best to have in an ER situation as 1.) She’s no good after about 1 am and I feared she’d rip the IV out of me herself so we could go home to sleep and 2.) “I don’t want to say I told you so, but I told you so.”  Because THAT’S what someone in a hospital bed wants to hear.  Yes, some of the reasons I was in there could be chalked up to dehydration, though not because I didn’t drink plenty of water after my run.  It’s actually because I drank so much, I peed all the time, and your body naturally gets rid of a certain amount of potassium every time you pee.  All the water diluted the salt in me, so even though I had SALTED nuts after my run and a bunch of other things you’d think would have nutritionally benefited this situation, no dice.  The doctor said this also could have been a progressive thing– lack of potassium in my diet + lots of sweating during event set up at work + running + only drinking water and not “watered down Gatorade a small pretzel” = feeling like shit.  And low potassium can cause the “tinglies.”  And he thinks there was a migraine somewhere in there.

In conclusion, sorry that was so long.  I feel better today though very tired, so will nap in between the timing of my football-sized potassium pills.  At Adventureland on Saturday I’ll have to drink something other than just water, and boy oh boy I sure can’t wait til prunes become a staple of my diet.

I just  kneed myself in the eye.  Let’s not ask how this happened.

So today was my last day at the hospital.  Just a typical morning of waking up too goddamn early to ride a bus full of far better looking, higher achieving students than I… UNTIL I went into the child psych clinic to get the papers from our mailbox and BAM “This will be the last time I ever do this.”  <–Sadness.  Weirdness.  Not sure how to feel-ness.  You see, I’ve held the same job for longer than I’ve been a student in college.  That’s a long time.  We’re talking winter breaks, summer breaks, snow days, in between classes for over two years.  While part of my perfect work world was shifted this summer when our department got merged with another and my lovely boss abandoned us, for the most part, it’s been a pretty smooth, fun ride.

I am (was?  SAD) ferociously good at my job.  If there’s one thing no one can fault me, it’s that I’m extremely loyal and extremely good at whatever work I do (we’re not talking schoolwork here, people– just go with it.)  I know that hospital like the back of my hand, am oddly protective of our psych patients, have clocked more hours there in the past two and half years of my life than I have in class.  My job was not a bed of roses– often it was mundane, boring, tedious, pain-in-the-ass busy work– but it was my job and I was damn good at it.

Enter my two co-workers, K & D, full-timers, moms just a few years younger than my own.  We weren’t super close when I first started, I was just another student who would scan charts for a couple months then find something better.  But then they realized I wasn’t going anywhere.  And together we weathered break-ups, divorces, their sick kids, my hangovers, perhaps their hangovers, deaths in the family, shared inside jokes to make the horrid time at the hospital just a little more bearable.  They were the surrogate moms who would Tsk Tsk when I came in with bar stamps on my hand on weekdays but then give me Tylenol, ask “Where are your gloves?!” when I showed up half-frozen, and made THE BEST peanut butter Cap’n Crunch cereal bars and cream cheese salsa dip for office parties or just because. Today, when I walked in and saw them, I was like “Holyfuck this is gonna suck.”

And it did.  Everyone brought in a bunch of food (the sugar coma definitely eased the pain of the good-bye) and I got some cards and I made K & D cards and my boss cried and gave me some presents.  But then 4:00 came (okay, 3:52– I always skip out a bit early to catch the bus) and I was like Well, catch you on the flip side and IDIDNTCRY but almost did.  On the inside, folks.  Brittney cried on the inside.

So technically, I am currently unemployed.  Way to be even more of a bum than I already am… AND, save for one final next week, my semester is O-V-E-R.  It went supercalifragilistically fast.  Let’s not talk about what comes after this one.  If it was this hard to say Peace Out to two ladies I see a couple hours a day, I don’t even wanna think about when I have to do it to NPH or my pops.  (Ooooh, Brittney’s being all serious– weird.  Usually this is supposed to be funny.  Now I’m just uncomfortable.)

In other news, Miley Cyrus got her Grammy nominations revoked today.  I am beyond pissed.  “Party in the USA” is an goddamn lyrical masterpiece and YOU KNOW IT.

Congratulations, you’ve been awarded a study abroad scholarship!  What a sweet way to start my day.  It’s not like I’m getting handed thousands of dollars to learn how to sprechen, but my program is throwing a couple Benjamins my way to lighten the load that feels pretty heavy given my penchant for going downtown every chance I get often.

T-Bone’s playing arts and crafts time in the kitchen currently, glueing some shit to a giant map of the world for some fundraiser for church.  If she’d like to move said map out of the way of the pantry, I could eat lunch, mmmkay?  Thanks.  Christmas carols are also wafting from the living room (Norman Rockwell ain’t got nothin’ on this family.) 

Later I will be baby-sitting my neighbor boys who I haven’t seen in eons.  They’ll probably be taller than me and think I’m the lamest person on earth, but whatever.  I changed them diapers once upon a time, ya hearrrd?  The worst part is, at least the older one has definitely learned how to tell time, so I can’t pull the old “OMG IT’S SO LATE, time for bed!” when the sun has barely set.  Yep, I was definitely that baby-sitter.  Should God have a lapse in judgment and have me bear kiddies, I will most certainly be that mother as well.

Ick, it’s basketball season.  I pure straight hate basketball. 

AND NOW KIDDOS, democracy in action.  Or at least an awesome example of where some very public bitching will get you: the hospital is canceling it’s dumb dumb dumb program to solicit donations from patients.  As avid, loyal readers of this, my dear blog baby, you are all well aware that I was not exactly a fan of the proposed plan.  I’m sure my well-thought, eloquent, and completely level-headed opinions against it were weighed heavily by the geniuses behind it.  HA.

It rained, meaning the outside of my car is clean, so I DETAILED the inside as well.  I hadn’t so much as vacuumed it since April.  There was still a bunch of grass and straw on the floor from when I mud-wrestled at VEISHEA (ohhhh boy, if I had only been blogging then!)  It also smells like cupcakes because I put in a brand spankin’ new air freshener.  So basically, I’ve been more productive today than I’ve been all week.  Go me!

I’m off to go make pie crust for the mother (she’s what one would call Pie Crus’tarded, and yes, that’s a real word.)  She’s going to make three pumpkin pies, for like, other people.  Pffffffffff.  What is this, the season of charity?!  Oh speaking of, I feel SO GUILTY when I go by those Salvation Army bell-ringers.  So I guess today I’m thankful for, you know, the stuff everyone’s usually thankful for.  Warm house/apartment, family, money, food, friends, real Charlie Brown-type stuff.  Oh, and the fact that KAYLA AND SAVANNAH are coming tonight!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  See Mom, I do have female friends.

The irony is not lost on me that I HATE hospitals yet work in one.  I spent about ten hours in my place of employment today, though I went for moral support for a family member instead of a paycheck.  Holy suck balls it smells bad there.  And is creepy.  Thankfully it was nothing life-threatening and he was able to have an outpatient procedure sooner than they thought and I should be DONE with being in any medical facility for visitor/patient purposes for a while.  Luckily I brought my hospital badge so was able to save $1.69 on lunch.  Way to go, employee discount!

GUESS WHAT?!?!?!  Bestie might come visit on Saturday.  I am piss-my-pants excited.  Tomorrow my two girl besties from high school will finally return to our blackhole of suck hometown and we’ll get to go out for Savannah’s 21st birthday and have fun girl time and tell secrets and hang out in the Subway parking lot and be super awesome!  And now there’s a possibility that Bestie will get bored at home in Illinois, return to 713, then traverse to visit moi next weekend?!  Woah-uh, awesomeness overload.  Mostly we’re trying to pack as many activities (Stepbrothers reference, obviously) into our last two weeks of friendship as possible.  He would also really like to shoot guns off the back deck with my father since he’s in awe of Iowa’s lax gun laws in comparison to the ones governing our neighbors to the east.

My mother would very much like us (or even apparently just me, should he not be able to come) to attend church on Sunday morning.  Apparently it’s “the rules.”  I will not mention how “the rules” seem to change everytime I come home, depending on what “rules” she’s feeling like making up at the time.  We grew up going to church most Sundays and I’m definitely not opposed to it.  In college, however, sleeping in has trumped going to church about 98% of the time.  I am definitely more religious than the vast majority of my college friends, and this has nothing to do with my Sunday morning worship attendance.  When I come home it’s nice to go and see all the old ladies who watched me grow up, but our pastor who was BOMB-DIGGITY has left and now it’s just weird and people look at me like “Ohh the liberal from Iowa City is back, I wonder if she’s withchild.”  Not to mention if Bestie and I rolled in together, they would presume he and I are dating.  (Mom, you know me telling them “no, we’re not dating” would so not work on those Lutheran women.)  I can handle all of Iowa City and the tri-county area assuming this, but those church ladies are too much to handle.

Apparently there’s a large stink over Adam Lambert’s performance at the AMA’s last night.  I did not see said performance, a quick YouTube search doesn’t provide me with anything interesting.  He kissed a guy and simulated oral sex on one of his back-up dancers and grabbed his crotch a lot.  The first one is so Madonna and Britney, I seem to remember them getting a lot more praise than flack for that.  The third point of contention is straight outta Michael Jackson’s book, and the glove that did a lot of that very self-gropeage just got sold for an ungodly outrageous amount of money.  So really Adam Lambert just needs to get off his knees and those 1,500 angry phone calls to ABC needn’t have been made.  Personally I like the guy for some reason, and I haven’t ever really heard him sing.  His fellatio-centric stage time had to have been more entertaining than Jennifer “I couldn’t act or really sing my way out of my marriage to the most hideous man ever even if I tried” Lopez falling off the back of one of her dancers (which I did find video of online, and homegirl did a pretty good job of making it look like part of the performance.)

If you’re thinking about having kids, you should probably just adopt.  Don’t be selfish and have your own.  There’s plenty of perfectly good babies who need homes.

I’m re-reading A Million Little Pieces because I don’t know, I’m oddly fascinated by drug rehab I guess.  An excellent movie you should watch is 28 Days (with Sandra Bullock, not 28 Days Later with zombies.)  The phrase “chemical dependency” really rolls off the ol’ tongue.  I also really like the word “environmental,” in case you were wondering.

Happy Veteran’s Day!  All the banks in town were closed, yet we hospital workers still had to show up.  Huh.

As if four months in Germany wasn’t enough to look forward to (if you’re bored, sometime count how many times I’ve talked about studying abroad in the last two months.  Get a life, Brittney) my family and I will be setting sail on a CRUISE to the Cayman Islands for the new year.  As in, get back home January 4th, fly to Europe January 6th.  I like to stay on my toes, people. 

Some people on Facebook are making their statuses one thing they’re thankful for from now until Thanksgiving.  Since I save my Facebook statuses for stuff that really matters (i.e. GUESS WHAT BITCHES, I’M GOING ON A CRUISE! … okay, it wasn’t exactly like that) perhaps I’ll do it here. 

Today, drumroll please, Brittney is thankful for Caffeine.  Is that lame?  Well, it’s the truth.  That’s been the overlying theme of this lifetime week.  Sometimes people see me bleary-eyed, straight outta bed, puffy eyes/face/snotty-nose, heading to work, and they stare.  Little children scream.  Boys I know on the bus tell me I look tired.  Thank you, young sir, I really thought I look simply as ravishing as I feel at SEVEN-THIRTY IN THE MORNING.

My boss announced at our staff meeting today my LAST DAY AT WORK!!!  December 10th.  I have so many fun countdowns going on right now. 

My best friend Kayla (is it okay that I finally used your name?  I feel the entire blogosphere knew anyway) wants me to tell the world what I once said were my two most hated things in the world: beer pong and the elderly. 

Off to our last PRSSA house meeting of the year.  And then to the Vine with my main IC bitch Lauren.  And I feel a freakish amount of other people I know will also end up there because the Vine is like our place, mannnn.  (I recently saw Fast Times at Ridgement High for the first time, I sincerely apologize.)

During my Monday morning perusal of the Daily Iowan to count how many of my friends got to personally meet some of Iowa City’s finest over the weekend, I found this article which addresses the very reasons I picked up the phone on Day One of this blog and say “Yo Pops, I’m hoppin’ mad ’bout some shit goin’ down.”  If you really don’t want to read the piece, or the Press-Citizen’s version of events here, essentially the hospital will begin asking patients’ permission to put their contact info in a database and solicit them for money.

I’m not particularly fond of the DI’s reporting on it, as it seems the side in favor of this policy basically wrote the article.  This is problem numero uno I have with the profession I’ve chosen to go into.  While PR is spun to us in class as unicorn and rainbows, press releases and event planning, it’s often hard to forget the giant elephant in the corner with his Spin Doctor shirt on.  No matter how much the spokespeople try to gloss this over as “low pressure…ethical…everyone else does it” (<–which um, HELLO, I was taught in like second grade that should never be an excuse for something) the fact is that it’s over the line.

 While I’m extremely glad they are not asking Medicaid and Iowa Care patients to participate, this is such a skeezy, low brow move for such an “esteemed” high-class place that we’re supposed to be running.  People are at the hospital because they are sick, because there is something wrong, in which medical bills will need to be paid.  Let’s try to now catch them in a very vulnerable, anxious state, in which they are already filling out dozens of forms.  Do they not think patients realize the hospital exists?  That they’re just sitting around with their checkbooks going ‘Gee, I sure want to give back in some way, but I just don’t know if UIHC will want this money.’  I understand that signing the form will only put them in a database, that no one is holding a gun to their head and demanding five bucks, but at the end of the day it’s solicitation, and outright asking people for money sucks.

As for the argument that this would somehow affect patient care, that those who consent would be treated better than those who don’t, I don’t think that’s an issue at all.  That thought never crossed my mind when I found out about this a few weeks ago– I have faith in my co-workers, who are as disgusted by this as I am, that nothing like that would even be considered.  While many days I wonder how we can have so many CEOs making bank while 200 fellow employees were laid off, at the end of the day they’re still human CEOs making bank…

The UI Foundation does some great work.  Not only do I know many students who work for them, but many of the administrative staff of the foundation have come to speak with my PR workshop class.  These people are good at what they do, they’ve taught us some great things about fundraising, it doesn’t even sound like a half bad place to work.  I can see how some might try to pose a legitimate argument that they’re just trying to do their jobs, that these people, after the bills are paid, may want to be informed of programs they otherwise wouldn’t know anything about.  None of this relevant as far as I am concerned however, this entire idea is tacky and completely out of line. 

 Iowa has one of the smallest percentages of alumni who give back in the Big Ten– let’s work on increasing that before we cop out and start taking advantage of many of the patients who have to go to our hospital, not who choose to.  Hospital employees are not having this either– many of the reception staff who will have to be trained how to administer these forms have flat-out said they will not go.  I don’t see how, from a relationship-building standpoint, this idea could ever work out in the long run.  People will be so turned off by this that I can only see negative things coming from it. 

In the Press-Citizen article, someone from the foundation is quoted as saying she’s surprised people are even questioning this program after the Pappajohn’s announced their $26 million gift.  Are you high?!  Does this not seem like the most contrived announcement, hiding behind that gift, to make this program seem like no big deal??  She makes it sound like the patients should be thanking them when she says they’re simply “offering the opportunity to grateful patients who want to help make a positive impact on the lives of others.”  That is the dark side of PR.