Weather, work and more friends!

Well, another week has flown by! I can't believe how fast the time goes! In my last post, a friend of ours, a former resident of Hawaii, reminded me that winter is the dry season and summer is the wet season in Hawaii. While I did know that, I think Mother Nature is a bit confused! We have had a lot of rain lately! Some of the roads up the mountain from us have had to be closed due to flash flooding. Jenna and I saw sides of roads filled with water Friday on the way home from school. On Tuesday of this week, the road to the top of Mauna Kea (ma-naw kay-a) was closed because of snow! Also this week, there was a TORNADO on Oahu!! That is very, very rare as far as I know! There was some great footage on the news and quite a bit of damage! I guess you never know what kind of weather you might get over here! Kind of reminds me of the midwest! :-)

I have just completed my second week of work and things are going very well. I have been seeing a few patients on my own and I am beginning to feel comfortable with the computer system. Next week I will go with a different nurse and meet a whole different set of patients. I think I am going to be given "my own" patient (vs. sharing with another nurse) next week too so I can learn how to manage all aspects of their care by myself. I think it will be OK. Learning the policies and procedures is the hard part and hopefully being more on my own will help with that process.

AJ continues to be busy with Kona Queen, although he hasn't been working quite as long most days. He has been able to be home on the weekends, which is nice and he gets home a little earlier in the evening. We can dinner together as a family again!

Jenna is doing great in school. She made the honor roll again for 2nd quarter. We're very proud of her. She works very hard. She has started to go to the after school program now that I am working. She likes it. She has been able to get most of her homework done before I pick her up. That is a huge help!! She continues to take hula lessons and she likes that a lot.

We had a great time with our friends Dick and Jody. It was so great to have them here!! It worked out great and I think they had a good time. We went to a luau last Friday night. That was great! Last Saturday we went to South Point, the Black Sand Beach and the volcano. We saw several turtles at Black Sand Beach. We only had to walk about 3/4 of a mile to see the volcanic activity. There was a huge plume of smoke rising into the sky. The lava was flowing right into the ocean and occasionally you could see red hot lava flying into the air! It was quite a sight! I've posted some pictures of this too. On Sunday, we went kayaking across the Bay to the Captain Cook Monument to go snorkeling. The dolpohins were out in full force and they put on a fantastic show for us!! There were several pods of 10-20 dolphins (at least) swimming very close to us. They were jumping in the air, doing flips, spinning in the air, and slapping their tails against the water! It was SO COOL!!! I tried to get pictures, but it's hard to know when they are going to jump! AJ tried to get a few underwater pictures. They turned out OK. I posted the best ones. I never tire of seeing the dolphins! It is my favorite thing to do in Hawaii. After the dolphin show, we had the pleasure of seeing all of the beautiful fish while we snorkeled! What a treat! After we got back from snorkeling, we went to the beach and cooked burgers on the grill. We were hoping to see a few whales, but...no luck! Oh well, we had aleady had a fantastic day!!

We were sad to see Dick and Jody leave us on Thursday. We were very happy that they could come and spend some time with us! We have more visitors coming to see us in the next few weeks. Some for a night or two and some a little longer. We look forward to everyone's arrival! We are praying for safe flights and good weather!! That's the latest update, so until next time...aloha!

Work, weather & friends

I have officially worked 2 days plus a few extra hours. On Monday, I just did paperwork and orientation stuff. Not as boring as I thought it would be. There was another gal that started the same day as me. She is also an RN that will be working per diem (as needed). She and I are the same age and have a lot in common. We hit it off right away! It will be fun to work with her...hopefully I will be able to see her once we are done with orientation. On Wednesday, I met again with the nursing supervisor and went over policies and hospice Medicare criteria. That was a little dry. Thankfully I had heard most of it before at the Health Department, so it wasn't all foreign! After meeting with the supervisor, we went to a staff meeting where we did chart audits. Not a fun job at all! But it helps me to see what needs to be done. Then we attended another meeting! This one was with the whole team (nurses, CNAs, social worker, counselor, and MD) We discussed how the patients are doing and what needs they have. That was pretty interesting. Another nurse and I left this meeting early to go and admit a patient. That was a good experience. The process is basically the same as what I did in Darlington. I just have to learn their paperwork. They do most of their charting on computer, so I have to learn that program too. I was supposed to be off today (Thursday) but I went in for a couple of hours so that I could see how to enter all of the data into the computer and see how to finish the admission paperwork. Tomorrow I am going on 2 visits with a nurse and then I am going on two visits by myself! That's pretty quick, but I think I am comfortable with the visits. The paperwork and computer will be the biggest challenge.

We have our first visitors of 2009 here now. Dick and Jody Tuescher are here for 9 days. They have been pretty much on their own since they got here since I started working this week, but I think they are having fun. Last night we took them to Huggos on the Rocks, the restaurant by the water that we like to go to. Friday night we are going to a luau, Saturday to Volcano and Sunday kayaking and snorkeling. It should be fun! I'm looking forward to going to Volcano. We haven't been there yet since we moved and I'm curious to see what the lava is doing. When we were here in 2007, the lava was running on top of the ground and we were able to hike to it. We got some really great pictures! I hope we are as lucky this time!

I'm going to talk about the weather now, so if you don't want to hear about it, quit reading now!! As you are well aware, it is winter. Winter in Hawaii is hardly winter! The ocean gets quite a bit rougher and it rains a bit more, but that's about it. If you ask someone who has lived here for a while, especially those who have lived here all their life, it gets darn right cold in the winter!! AJ and I have laughed several times seeing how people react to the weather! It might get down to 66 or 68 degrees at night, maybe even 62 farther up the mountain, but that's about as cold as it gets. You'd think it was 30 the way people dress over here! I have seen so many people wearing sweaters, coats, sweatshirts, and even stocking caps in the morning!! It's so funny to us! These people have no idea what cold weather really is! Actually some people have said to us, "How do you live in that kind of weather?" When I tell people that I am from WI, sometimes all they say is ooohhhh. Like they feel sorry for me or something! It's pretty funny. Anyway, I hope winter is being a little nicer to all of you enduring it! We'll try and send some warm weather that way!!

That's the latest update. I'll let you know how work is going and how our weekend went next week. So until next time...aloha!