UltraCast 102 #2 has been released on a new website, UltraBaby central. This new site will be mainly maintained by UltraGirl and will mostly be in both English and Japanese. We will continue to put pointers up here when we release a new podcast, but be sure and look at the new site frequently too as there is a new blog as well as photo albums. We hope it will be a place that grandmothers love to go.
Go to the new site to check out the podcast from your browser (with pictures even) or to subscribe and listen in your itunes or on your ipod. For those who are itunes/ipod challenged there is even an mp3 version available for download.
In some browsers it seems like the text on the page doesn’t download until after the whole podcast has finished downloading. Stupid, but we don’t have any control over that. Maybe you can start listening to the podcast while waiting to read UB’s intro to the episode.
Welcome to what must surely by now have become a treasured part of your weekly routine, the UltraCast episode 102 (about 31 minutes total including 27 minutes of pure conversational bliss) starring the supercilious UltraGirl and her ignoble sidekick UltraBob. This week we discuss progress in the pregnancy, preparation panic, proficient plumbing, and alliteration. I hope the audio quality is better in this one, I think we started with a better recording than last week, and I tried not to ruin it. Pimpin’ ain’t eas’y and it turns out neither is audio recording and production, at least for me.
Feast your eyes on the fine photos below and then listen to the podcast (player above, direct file download below) to figure out what in the doohickens these pictures … ummm … depict.
Music for this podcast was provided by the inimitable Jonathan Coulton. Also mentioned in the show: Nicki’s Diapers we’ve had great service from them so far, and have no reason to think you wouldn’t also. Finally, and I promise this has nothing to do with anything discussed in the show, You Have To Burn The Rope and that’s final.
Oh yeah, and here is that audio file.
UltraMom the student here. I just got back from my 5th or 6th experience at the Nursing Home as part of my C N A class, and decided to bore you with some of the details and observations while they are still fresh (relatively speaking) in my mind.
We each got to choose our hall today, and I chose “200”, along with Darla, Donna and Geronimo. “200” is the rehab hall. No, I don’t mean recovering alcoholics or cocaine users; I’m talking about residents who might actually, through recovery and some hard work, regain the mobility and ability to leave this place. This is a pretty active hall, and there are some marked differences between it and “100”, where the Alzheimer’s patients call home, or even “300” and “400” where many residents need help with most of their ADL’s or Activities of Daily Living. Like in many professions, medicine is chock full of acronyms, some of which I’m starting to get down.
When we got to the hall, somewhere around 6:30 A.M., the residents were in various stages of getting ready for breakfast. Some were seated in the dining hall, and asking for coffee or cocoa; some were still getting dressed and others were “dining in”. Unlike breakfasts down the other halls where many of the occupants need to be hand fed, most of these guys and gals could manage on their own. Except, of course, for opening the cardboard carton of milk. I don’t know about you, but I have vivid memories of these cartons from school lunchroom experience. It was a lucky day when you could get your carton open without resorting to knife and fork to pry the glued on cardboard apart, and an even luckier day when the spout stayed rigid and intact enough to drink out of without dribbling milk down your shirt. I would say my success rate in opening milk cartons without tools was about 50% today.
One of my assigned tasks was to take vital signs, which I have done about 3 times now. Everything you need is on the cart, and when you put the blood pressure cuff on an arm, the oxygen meter on a finger and press “start” you soon see digital readouts of those statistics, plus a pulse. The ‘ear thermometer’ is wonderfully fast and simple, a vast improvement from my days of sitting in doctor’s offices with an uncomfortable metal thermometer clamped in my mouth for 5-10 minutes at a time. My jaw aches just thinking about it! Respirations are done manually with a hand on the chest timing the breaths taken. The ‘victims’ were wonderfully patient and helpful, as I often had to try the blood pressure several times to get a reading. I don’t know if I wasn’t positioning the cuff correctly or what, but I was really slow!
Then it was time for me to help Jeanette with her shower. My previous experiences with showering had not been that great, so I approached the room with a little trepidation. But this was a whole new experience. “Hello,” said Jeanette when I explained why I was there. “I am going to need at least 4 towels and washcloths, a clean nightgown and Glen, the physical therapist,” she rattled off in a businesslike way. Yes, Ma’am. Just then Geronimo stopped by to see if we needed any help. “Yes!” Jeanette. “Maybe we can do it without Glen and surprise him!” It turned out Jeanette had broken both her legs in a bad fall on icy steps. There were not in casts however (I don’t know if they had ever been), but were swollen and covered in bruises and steri-tape. Our job was to help her, with the aid of her sliding board, get seated in the shower. I cheered Geronimo on as, with Jeanette’s precise instructions, he positioned the board and helped her get across it without putting pressure on the damaged legs. Then the shower curtain was slid shut, a nightgown handed out and a disembodied voice “I can handle it from here. I’ll call you when I’m done.” Easiest shower I ever gave, including ones given to myself. I stood around outside the closed bathroom door, waiting to hear a sound that would indicate Jeanette was finished when my instructor passed by, making her checking-up-on-the-students rounds. We stood chatting in the doorway for 5-10 minutes, when an employee showed up, responding to Jeanette’s call light, which was flashing above our heads!
Delores eyed my badge as I got her fresh water. “Kathy McDonald, Great Basin College, student” she read. “You aren’t a student are you?” I assured her that I was indeed a student and her roommate joined in as we had a little chat about the things people could accomplish in their ‘later’ year. Later, when we regrouped for class discussion, someone mentioned that “Joyce”, recovering from breast cancer, was 54 years old. “That is really young,” I commented. “It’s young for someone in here,” opined cute little 20-year-old Erika. “No,” I firmly corrected, “it’s young for ANYONE.” I got a few sidelong glances, but no further argument.
The way I look at it is that I am not going to get younger. I know people have tried: fountain of youth, anti-aging, cryogenics, but I don’t think anyone has succeeded. That said, anything I want to do, I have to do it now, or when I’m even older. As a matter of fact, so do you!
Tired, but still learning,
UltraMom
