I will never know you the way others do, being apart of your every day life is not what I am meant to be. I will see you in a different light than others who you associate with on a day to day basis. The way we know each other will be different. The time you spend with me will be unpleasant but necessary. You are fighting for your life. I will be with you during the most intimate and yet humiliating time for you. Your body will do things you don’t understand and feel ways you cannot describe. We will experience joy, hope, terror, and faith together. You await the future with anxiousness and wonder. While you try and survive this grim and lonely experience, feeling deserted and alone, I will be with you. It will be an honor to witness your strength, your courage, your fears and your miracles. You will never know this, but I care more than words can describe. While I can never know how you feel, I love you, I care about you, and I will do everything in my power to help you.

Your fears will be my fears. You stay in my thoughts day and night as I try and imagine your pain. When I leave this dreary hospital each night I stop to think; what if I was the one not returning to a happy, healthy home tonight? Would I be strong and courageous as you are? Would I have the faith and the hope that you do as you continue your fight to live? Would I be able to smile as you do? I cannot describe the pain and the thoughts that I have each day.
Before I lay down each night, I will pray. I will pray for you and for strength to know how to help you. I will thank my Heavenly Father for my health, for my job, and the miracle it is to know you. You come to me for help, and in return you will influence my life more than words can say.
You are my patient, and I am your nurse.
I thank God that I have the privilege of knowing you.-- Keeli Huntsman

guardian angels

Just in case is sounds like I hate my job, I hope everyone knows I really love it. Today I found a present in the breakroom with my name on it. Everyone said it had been sitting there since Christmas Eve. It was then most beautifully illlustrated book called "the night before Christmas" Inside the cover is written "Our dear Suzy. We are so grateful that you so tenderly watched over Clint last year, especially around christmastime. He loved you so much, now it is his turn to watch over you. We will always remember "the night before Christmas" we spent with you. Love Dave and Kathy Layton.

Last Christmas eve I was lucky enough to be working. At the first of my shift Clint said with tears in his eyes, I prayed that you would be my nurse tonight. I spent Christmas eve in his room reading scriptures with his family and we all took turns sharing our testimony of Christ. It was one of my most treasured Christmas memories. Clint died three months later. I do know that he is watching over me. Along with many other people I have grown to love. I know I have this job for a reason, I know that because of it I have many angels watchign over me, and I have many angels to watch over here on this earth. Maybe that is why things seem to just work out for me. I have alot of guardian angels on the other side...

the hospital floor

I've been here before, staring at a hospital floor listening to a little boy sleep. This boy is a big little boy. 28 years old with two little boys of his own... The floor I remember was dirty and there were 5 other kids in the room with that little boy,Manuel was his name. Tonight the floor is clean and the patient is sleeping alone. It was quiet then, and it is quiet now, I had tears then and I have tears now. Manuel had no parents... my patient has parents. Parents that ask me "Suzy is he going to live" "Suzy how long until we know if he will die". What do I say? Yes, most likely he will die, your little boy? No. Insteady I tell them that he is a fighter, that if anyone will make it, it will be their son. I've said these words dozens of times before to many tired parents. Never really believing them. I hate that I can't believe them. I hate that they never seem to be true. I hate feeling what I felt in Ecuador four years ago... heartbroken and heavy.However, I love that death is not the end. I love that I know there is a purpose behind all things,I love that time goes on, that people heal eventually, I love that because of my savior there can be hope in many hospitals, hope given to many people staring at the floors.

Good.Day.

I HATE running errands by myself, especially grocery shopping. I feel that grocery shopping/cleaning/cooking are all torturous tasks when I have to do them alone. I am always begging todd to just study downstairs while I clean, or to come grocery shopping just because I hate to do it alone so bad. Yesterday was a busy full day of errands like shopping and cleaning and laundry and food making, but I had so much fun all day cause Todd did everything with me, and then we finished the night off by driving to Idaho, signing GLEE at the top of our lungs and playing air guitar to christmas songs. It takes exactly 3 hours to get from my house to moms.GOOD.DAY.

Patience

Todd and I have had a year of lessons in patience, and I still feel like I am in the beginner class. It has been a frustrated anxiety ridden year with many decisions, a lot of waiting, praying, crying, struggling, alot of peaceful times, then times of doubt and worry. I'm exhausted even writing all of those words. And the lesson still continues. This dental school thing is consuming my thoughts. Todd has two interviews this week, and I am having a hard time being calm about them. One of the interviews is at USN, Todd and I will both be crushed if we do not get in there. It is putting so much pressure on him and I. I'm freaking out. It's so out of my control. I know that we will go where we are supposed to when we are supposed to but it sure is going to suck if it isn't to USN next year. I've felt so at peace at times during the last year and I keep trying to remember that. But unfortunately I'm struggling to make tonight a peaceful night. It is a night of worry and fear. I know that even if it might be hard to accept everything will work out how it is supposed to and This.will.end....

Christmas Caroling

I bought stockings for all the patients at work and stuffed them with all sorts of goodies like booties and candy and an orange and someone made pillow cases, and someone else made beanies. I wrapped them each up a puzzle. They turned our perfect and tonight we delivered them to each room and sang christmas carols in their rooms. There were many tears shed by the patients and many thank you's from them. It was a sweet day. Todd only has five more days of finals! He didn't have to take his physics final yesterday. He went to take it and the teacher called out his name and told him to meet him in his office. Todd thought he was in trouble or something. But it turned out he has the high score in the class and the patient says he could get an F on the test and still have an A so he said he didn't have to take it. How cool is that? I'm so proud to be married to such a smart boy. Who knew he was a genius? I scored much bigger with him than I even originally thought.

U.E

Just spent the last hour manually irrigating NS in and out of my patiets bladder trying to get a clot the size of a dime out of his urethra. He is my favorite patient I've had in a long time, which means he probably will be one I will get super attached to and then he pass away. Not one of those who I have developed a really really special bond with have survived through transplant. Anyways we were having a ball in there, I was singing to his clots trying to charm them out of his bladder and he was teasing me that I was literally crazy and kept pretending to call the psych ward. His wife had a baby last week and I was his nurse that day, we spent the whole day wheelchairing up and down to the maternity floor to visit his wife. He got to be there through the labor, he puked through the whole thing and literally looked like a dead person when it was over, but he was there holding her hand. I was standing outside the door when she had the baby, my patient called me in about 3 minutes after she was born. It was really really special. I made their baby a little pink rag quilt, it turned our really cute. I will always remember him and I am praying every hour that God will give him a miracle. It looks grim right now, only time will tell the will of the Lord. I do know that he and his family have forever touched my heart.

Homesick

I don't think I've been this homesick in years. Todd and I have had such a fun Christmas filled day. We went Christmas shopping, and hung out together, then went to the festival of trees tonight. I have been really feeling in the Christmas mood. Tonight we had a half hour drive home from Festival of Trees and we were listening to the christmas station and so many memories just came flooding back. Like all of us together singing in the car on our way to Grandmas in newdale, the constant christmas music on in the house, listening to mom sing as she cleans the house, the permanent fixture of treats always on the cluttered counter, at one point I was even getting nostalgic for the block of cheese Lamar brings... yes it was on of those nights. I thought about putting up the Christmas tree at home, and everyone sleeping in the same room on Christmas eve. I thought of dad going out on christmas day to buy batteries for our toys. I thought about how awesome it was when mom would tell us we could sleep in cause it was a snow day, I thought of the hanging the half eaten by mice christmas decorations all around the house and those bells that used to hang by the old phone, the freaky faceless angel that went above the fireplace, the equally freaky Mr and Mrs Clause decorations for the bathroom. I thought about driving home from basketball games and falling asleep listening to bobcat radio. I thought about when Wyatt and I would make countdown chains out of red and green paper to hang around the house. I thought about wrapping presents in mom and dads bedroom watching that little t.v. I thought about peeking for presents in moms closet, and trying to break into dads office where the big ones were locked. I thought about Rhett and how much I miss him. I thought about Grandma Robison and a lot about Mom. I miss being little. I miss being together. I wish I would have known how much I would miss it.

However, home to me now is wherever Todd is. Right now he is holding me and playing with my hair as I cry and write this post. I'm grateful we have our own Christmas memories... like singing songs and slow dancing as we put up the Christmas tree, and drinking hot chocolate while walking around the neighborhood, and planning out what presents to get people together, and constantly listening to our favorite christmas mixes on itunes, and I love that my very own house can smell like the mall when I make candied almonds, I love how far we have come together since our first christmas. It is now our third one together (fourth if you count while we were dating) and I'm very grateful that I can buy Todd something other than a free netflix trial, and rewrapped wedding presents like in the previous years.

Todd has a hot cup of hot chocolate waiting downstairs, Cobie Callat is on itunes and it is snowing outside... even though I'm homesick I'm glad I have an amazing life and a best friend to spend this season with.

Mudding, Digging, Four-Wheeling

Ya know what I love most about having little brothers? You can convince them to do just about anything. This weekend we went to my parents cabin in Island Park and went "mudding" or "digging" or whatever you want to call it on the edge of the lake. I convinced Lincoln that it would be fun if he stood in the middle of the lake and we would spray mud/manure water all over him. He laughed and said "ok" This was almost as good as the time we convinced him to run through a nasty smelling stagnant mud puddle with only his whitie tighties on. Love my little brothers.

Even more Cali.

More California

California.

Our summer in California was quite the adventure. We lived in the bay area. Todd would work monday through thursday and we would play and travel every weekend sleeping in our car and eating canned food. I will never forget our of our little excursions and will always be grateful for the day we broke down and got a GPS to navigate that crazy state. I'm wanting to get back into my blog, but have to catch up just a bit. Sorry for pic overload.

San Francisco

San Francisco. Peace, love and marijuana. We love that place.

NYC

Apparently we love NY.