AnneLyze

Four. Tires. Slashed.   I. Am. Mad. I had a nice weekend.  I love my new job.  Ben is back to college and loving life.  Sam is terrific. Everything that matters in my life is good. And then I got up Monday morning, on the same side that I always get up. My neighborhood was all buzzy with activity for 7am on a Monday.  Vandals had struck and randomly left 14 cars with slashed tires, mine included.  The police had come and gone, doing the very minimal amount of detecting, having spent less than one hour investigating the vandalism. The two cars belonging to the two neighborhood busy bodies were untouched as well as the President of the Common Council and the head of NYS NAACP. The tow trucks were starting to arrive as I walked to the bus stop to get to work. Arriving, I discovered I had no work ID and no office keys, but the lovely receptionist let me into my space.  I called my insurance company, arranged for a tow truck and a...

"I survived…."   We have all said it, both in jest and seriously.   It is used in a very generic fashion, to the point it almost dilutes or equalizes the emotional punch not defined by the very definition of the word.   To say I survived an earthquake, a pimple on prom day, a tsunami, freshman year in college, running a marathon, a broken relationship, the Holocaust, a bad day at work, or a car accident, takes away from the individual experience and the meaning it brought to the lives of those affected.   I have survived some very emotional, heart breaking things in my life, for sure, but it is impossible to compare my journey to someone else's.   Definition of SURVIVE ( Merriam - Webster dictionar y ) intransitive verb : to remain alive or in existence : live on : to continue to function or prosper transitive verb : to remain alive after the death of survived by his wife> : to continue to exist or live after < survived ...

"Why are you here?" Asked Father Joesph. A simple question, but yet not.  For the fifty new employees of St Peter's Hospital, there may have been fifty different responses, including the obvious, needing a job.  I looked around the auditorium and wondered if anyone else felt the profoundness of the moment. I have worked with cancer patients since 1993, given chemotherapy since 1998 and I was done, cooked, fried, over it........  I couldn't do it anymore and a new job appeared at the right time and the right place and I took a leap of faith.  When I hike, I will come to a spot when I need to trust in my boots and in my body and just take the step.  This job change required me to trust in my head and my heart before taking the first step and it turned out to be far easier then I hoped. Feeling unburdened, I leapt and have landed in a good spot. I am the Community Liaison Nurse for St Peter's Hospital Cancer Care Center.  What a title!  I ...

I have an announcement to make.  After doing the same job since 1993, I quit, no really, I did.  I waived the white flag and got a new job.  As of July 20, 2015, I will be the Community Liaison for St Peter's Hospital's Cancer Care Center. I have been a Chemotherapy Infusion Nurse forever and up to a few years ago, I loved every minute of my job, but then as life changes, so did I.  The irritations of management and, I am sad to admit, the patients, started to eat into my empathy.  I felt sucked dry at the end of the day and needed everyone of my days off.  The very same patients that I found courageous and remarkable, were kinda on my last nerve.  I no longer wanted to hear that they hated needles, didn't want to get on the scale, and checked info on the web and felt it was more reliable than me.  But more than anything else, I don't have ONE MORE DEATH TALK left in me. It was time. Twenty three years working giving chemotherapy is enough, I pa...

I went to the car dealership on Tuesday with my tail between my legs, ready to beg.  It was time.  I was 8000 miles over the lease limit and had a large crack in my back bumper.  I had been dreading this for months, but I needed a car and it was time to girl up to the task. "What do you like about your car?  Do you want to buy it or are you looking for a new car?" "I hate this car, everything about it, but if my only option is to buy it, I will." "What?......Why do you hate it?" "First my ex husband bought this exact same fucking car two weeks after I did and it ruined it for me. Second it has a large blind spot and I keep slicing my right passenger side tire on the curb because I can't see it. And third I am 8000 miles over my lease AND I have a big crack on my back bumper." " Oh..............Let me look into this for you." And the wait began.  I took out my book.  Three chapters and 100 pages later he returned with th...

"I believe in God, only I call it nature." Frank Lloyd Wright I went to church last Saturday.  My cathedral was a snowy path through the forest.  The choir was the birds in the trees singing "hallelujah", accompanied by the acoustic trickle of the brook next to the trail.   I rested my weary body on a pew made of rocks and the hand of God was the warm sunshine on my face and the cool snowflakes falling from the trees.  The service lasted most of the day, but the blessing has stayed with me.  Thought I would go back again tomorrow.