The Frontier Nursing Service

I have now been back from Kentucky for four days - jet lag is waning and I am settling back into life. I spent my week there learning and perfecting my clinical skills as a Family Nurse Practitioner. Our group at Clinical Bound was especially great; there were only 9 of us and we spent a lot of time just getting to know each other. I hope that at least some of these friendships will be long term and our paths will converge again. The grind of school work has given me such tunnel vision that it took a week at Frontier to reset my
view. I came back with a much renewed sense of purpose in both my professional calling and my place in Frontier's wonderful history. I cut and pasted the story of the Frontier Nursing Service and Mary Breckenridge below; it tells a little bit about the history of her work.





Mary Breckinridge was the nation's foremost pioneer in the development of American midwifery and the provision of care to the nation's rural areas as founder of the Frontier Nursing Service.
Breckinridge, descendant of a distinguished family that included a U.S. vice president and a Congressman and diplomat, lost her first husband and two children to early death. She turned to nursing as an outlet for her energies, committed to "raise the status of childhood everywhere," as a memorial to her own lost children. She spent time as a public health nurse during World War I, and became convinced that the nurse-midwife concept could help children in rural America. After additional nursing studies and midwifery training, she went to rural Kentucky and began work in 1925. In 1928 her service was named the Frontier Nursing Service, and was for several years entirely underwritten by Breckinridge's personal funds. Designed around a central hospital and one physician with many nursing outposts designed to compensate for the absence of reliable roads or transportation, the service featured nurses on horseback able to reach even the most remote areas in all kinds of weather. Within five years, FNS had reached more than 1,000 rural families in an area exceeding 700 square miles and staff members of FNS formed the organization that became the American Association of Nurse-Midwives. Breckinridge masterminded the fundraising and publicity necessary to keep the service growing. The Frontier School of Midwifery and Family Nursing, another part of FNS, trained hundreds of midwives. The FNS hospital in Hyden, Kentucky is now named the Mary Breckinridge Hospital, and it operates today, with a new Women's Health Care Center, still fulfilling the mission that Breckinridge created in the 1920s.

SNL Video

Greetings from Frontier

So I am far away from home. Thursday night I flew to Kentucky for the next step in getting my masters. There are nine of us Family Nurse Practitioner/Nurse Midwife students who will spend 8 days in Hyden, Ky before we start our clinicals. Although it is very, very hard to leave home, everything has gone well. It is still summertime here and warm. We had to pass a rather brutal physical assessment test this morning - all of us students bonded over the misery and tension we went through. From palpating the skull to testing for the vibratory sense of the big toe, I passed. The instructors are keeping up a rather brutal 12 hour a day class schedule. In some ways, it is a bit like summer camp. We all hang out and someone makes us food. We have to take turns in the shower. Although I don't remember having any booze at summer camp. It feels a little bit like being in different world to be in rural, Eastern Kentucky.
One of the best parts of having to travel so far is getting to indulge in a little recreational reading. I started the Vampire Teen Romance novel, Twilight, that is insanely popular. I have gone through it so quickly, someone had to drive me into town to Walmart to pick up the next two installments. I am a little too tired to form a cohesive thought and I need to write a paper, so I better stop stalling.

Tension face

I know it is an abuse of the blog format to use it to whine about ones day..but the kids start school tomorrow, I have an urgent care final and I fly cross country for 8 days of intense school training on Thursday. To say I have a lot to do would be a gross understatment. It has been a struggle all day to get things done and to try to do spend fun time with the kids. I was teetering towards overload when our dishwasher broke and prompted to drain a gallon of water all over our floor. In the same month that we emptied our savings to replace our roof and our washing machine broke. I just hope that my face tonight is not what my kid's remember while I am gone. ARRRGGGH. I hope I feel a lot better after downing a Mike's.


***Gross Parenting Comment Follows***
One question you never really want to know the answer "Why does it smell like poop in here??"

Mother Superior Jumped the Gun

My head is spinning at the constant political buzz. My Dad,who is a life long politically active democrat, likes to give me updates from the nightly news. He always seems suprised that I am already informed from having my homepage set to BBC America. I can't quite escape political info even if I would like to. It has been kind of fun to hear all of the chatter about Palin and her elevation from hockey mom to vice presidential candidate. I had heard of her previously from a profile in Vogue, where she came off as a pretty impressive woman. I don't particularly want her anywhere near the White House, but it has been fun to watch such an odd ball choice ripple through the country. It is seems to be the only exciting thing McCain has managed to do during his entire campaign.
A day doesn't go by when I don't think about how I have no idea what is really going to make a person a good president. I actually thought that our current president seemed pretty moderate and reasonable 8 years ago. (Not that I voted for him). I do think Hillary Clinton would have made a pretty competent president. I believe pretty strongly in the power of government to have a positive impact in people's lives. As a member of the lower-middle/middle-middle class, I have benefitted a lot from government help. I don't really mind paying a lot in taxes. At the same time, I do think that libertarians have some really good points about the damage that bigger government can cause. I definitely know I do not want anyone in government trying to turn America into their idea of a Christian Nation. I just have to make the best decision I can and hope that our little constitutional experiment can hold together for a little longer. Since Washington is practically a guaranteed Obama state, I am a little envious of swing state voters, who seem to matter a bit more than I do.

Had me a blast

I know that I am not the only one who barely posts any blogs during August...just when I think I can't get any busier, something else pops up. The last few weeks have been all about working on enjoying time with the kids. We have gone camping in Olympic National Park and had two Japenese Exchange Students for a weekend. We got a trampoline for Hamda's birthday. I cut off all my hair. The Grandmas, the girls and I went to see Mamma Mia!! We have been enjoying watching the Olympics. The biggest event of August has been marking Hamda and Shkuri's one year anniversary as Biggerstaffs. We finalized their adoption in court. At the moment I don't seem to be able to reflect on the first year here; it's hard to imagine them not always being a part of our lives.

The kids seem to be a bit tired of summer now - they now utter "I am bored" with a frequency that was unheard of in June. I used to insist that I would never be a Mom who would want their kids to go back to school (I would enjoy every minute of my time with them), now I am really looking forward for September 3rd!!
On September 4th, I head back to Kentucky for a week of intensive courses on physical assessment and skills (learning to do a pap smear, sutures, and remove a cockroach from a toddlers ear, etc.). When I return, I am going to start my nine months of clinicals to finish up my Masters Degree. This is going to involve my normal M,W,F work schedule (which provides our family with health coverage), plus ten hour clinical days on Tu and Thu. I am very excited about my ARNP clinicals, but very anxious about working 45+ hours a week. I have not worked full time since Isaac was born, and haven't ever wanted to. Luckily, 3/4 of the kids are in school full time and both Grandmas will be there to pick them up from school. Ariel will take the kids to school two days a week and I will do the other three. The next two weeks are going to be a major race for me to finish my last course, check off my to do list, and complete all the kids back to school stuff. Such an exciting time!!
I have been thinking about all the things I can do to reduce stress and anxiety, and one thing I came up with is to stop worrying about the election. A patient went on ranting (among other things) for a long time about the evils of Obama and what he would do to this country...I kept my mouth shut about how crazy she sounded, until I realized that I have a similiar fearful response to what might happen if McCain wins. It is pretty stupid for me to feel anxious about what might happen in the future. I will cast my vote and hope for the best (which is of course, Obama) and leave it at that.

Mucho Miscellany

1. I think we may have figured out one way to have four kids without going a bit crazy. I am facing a 40 hour work week (1/2 clinicals, 1/2 work) in the fall, and had decided we needed a housecleaner. Instead, we all started cleaning the house together on Saturday mornings...Ar organizes the kids with a to do list, I clean the bathrooms. Of course there is some whining, but the kids all get their allowances upon completion, so it goes pretty well. I am very impressed with how well the kids can do things like mopping, sweeping, and vacuuming.
2. Never doubt the power of the jinx. Yesterday at work, I did the unthinkable. I uttered the word quiet at the end of my shift. It had been such a great day after two weeks of being slammed. You are never to utter the word quiet in a hospital. Within a half an hour - a patient went into a-fib and likely had a heart attack and my other patient had a blood transfusion reaction (which involves a sudden fever of 103 or so and rigors so bad he was shaking his bed).
3. Pandora Radio is one of the best things I have ever found on the web...a friend of Ar's was listening to it at http://www.pandora.com/. You can create your own radio station by picking one or two of your favorite songs and it streams songs they think you will like. I have Clash Radio while Ar has "Wicked Cool" and "Strange Folk". It plays a lot of music I have never heard, but really like - especially songs by decently well known bands that don't normally get played on the radio. I don't know why it thinks I like Belle & Sebastian, though, because I don't.
4. Hooray for summer and farmer's markets. I have a CSA share and am blowing the rest of my grocery budget in an orgy of fruit and berry eating. Yum. Tonight I have been struck by the dessert muse and am going to make a raspbery-peach trifle.
5. Tomorrow Ar and I are taking 3/4 of the kids to Vancouver, WA to sit in on a talk by Tom Sine, who wrote The New Conspirators and started the Mustard Seed House in Seattle. He is one of a handful of people on the forefront of the 'emergent church' that are community oriented and focus on social justice. It is right up the alley of what we have been doing in our home church group. My understanding of the bigger picture is a bit fuzzy...hopefully, we will all learn a bit more. One of my favorite books written about this type of church is Irresistable Revolution by Shane Claiborne.
6. I think we are going to have an outdoor movie night next weekend. We will probably watch Howl's Moving Castle. We are trying to pick a movie that is good for kids and adults - not an easy task.