Holidays as a Nurse

So, I have been scheduled off for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  Part of me feels bad that I won't see my residents on either of these days.  I should just be happy I got them off, but that thought popped into my head last night.  I won't see them, and who knows how many of them will get to go to their family's house to celebrate.  How many of them will be stuck there, how many of them won't even get a visit?  It is a sad thought, and that contributes to my sadness that I won't be there to see them those days.  It is pretty unexpected that I'd be having these thoughts about the holidays.  For example, I have to work Thanksgiving evening, and I'm really not too upset about it.  Would it be nice to have the whole evening to spend with the family? Of course, but my in-laws are amazing and moved dinner up to lunch time so I could still be with them, so I still get to see them and eat the amazing meal that they make!!  So, I still get to see Mike's family, so going to work isn't so bad.

It also unfortunately is a huge source of bitching amongst certain nurses.  They think because they have worked there for over a year and a half, that they are given a pass from having to work holidays.  And they are making the rest of us who are just accepting what we were given and trying to make the best of it miserable.  I really don't understand this.  People going into nursing should know that working holidays is part of the deal.  Maybe you'll get the better choice of shifts because of seniority, but you do not get out of working holidays all together.  If you want to work M-F, 7-3, with no weekends, and lots of time off for the holidays, you should consider a different profession.

Anyway, I am glad that I will be working/sleeping while the whole Black Thanksgiving thing is going on.  What a way to show you are thankful what you have, by shoving people out of the way to get to a TV that is 50% off.  The chance of physical injury because you want to buy some stuff really cheap just doesn't make sense to me.  What was wrong with waking up early on Black Friday, and by early, I mean 5 a.m., not waiting in line for the entire day on Thanksgiving so you are one of the first in line when they open at 6 p.m. Thanksgiving Day?  The only things I think would be worth it would be needing to be buy appliances for your house. Or maybe people with a LOT of kids and can't afford much.  Otherwise, I see no need for it.   Wake up early on Friday, and get your sales, but keep Thanksgiving where its supposed to be, eating lots of food and spending time with your family.  I'll end my yearly rant on this now. :)

In other news, I have officially worked every shift possible at work.  The last one was the 7-3 shift, and I've always been a bit scared of it because the girls who work it make it sound so stressful.  But it wasn't bad at all.  I was actually thankful that I got a call for someone having UTI symptoms, because it gave me something to do with my afternoon.  It was less fun working with the 2 nurses that bitch the most, but they kept it to a minimum around me thankfully, so I'm ok with that.  There is some drama/stress going on right now that we are all upset about, but there is nothing we can really do about it right now other than learn from it, so I'm kind of tired of talking about it.  I'm just done with all of the bitching going on at work.  I just want to go to work, do my job, go home and enjoy what little time I get with my husband.  But lately, its been a call about something or some mandatory meeting at the last minute for too many of my days off.  It kind of puts a damper on your days off.  It is hard enough to stop your brain from going into overload thinking about what happened on your shift, but then when you do and you get a call from your boss.....it ruins it.  

I am off today, and we bought tickets for Catching Fire a few weeks ago at the iPic theatre.  I am really excited about this, because we got the premium seating again with the reclining seats, pillows and blankets. :)  You can order food and drinks and they bring it to you.  The last time we did this was last year, and we loved it.  I am pretty excited to see this movie.  When my friends were all going nuts over the books and the first movie, I opted out because it sounded terrible.  What possibly could be enjoyable about reading about a bunch of teenagers fighting to the death?  Well, in typical fashion, Mike started watching the movie, and I got sucked in.  The books are so much better, and are worth it to read before you watch the movies, but the movies are still good without reading the books, too.

I also have officially killed my first pair of nursing shoes.  I bought these shoes in March, and they are amazingly comfortable, and my feet barely hurt after being on them all day.  The brand is Ahnu, and they are patent leather slip on shoes.  They look like clogs but without the huge platform.   8 months later, the patent is coming off, the sole is separating from the shoe, and the insert is destroyed.  Plus, they smell worse than my Nikes do.  But I ordered the exact same pair again and they should arrive today or tomorrow, and I'm super happy.  My feet are super happy.  I know Dansko shoes are really popular, but I wore them for clinicals my first year, and yeah, they were comfortable, but when I wore them as a PCT, I fell twice in one day and never put them on again.  The platform was just not good for my ankles, which tend to roll a lot.  So, Ahnu is now my go to brand for my nursing shoes, and they look dressy enough that I'm not self-conscious about them.

Anyway, back to the holidays.  I went super lazy this year for our Christmas cards.  I ordered customized cards, and our return address already printed on them, so all I have to do is write the address on the front.  I'm pretty happy about this, and won't feel like the overwhelming task like it usually does. I, of course, am slacking on making my list for Christmas.  It is bad that I keep thinking of nursing stuff, like a pulse oximeter, or a tympanic or temporal thermometer.  I have found some cute nurse wine glasses on etsy.  :)

Oh, and we had the Ditka Dash this weekend.  Of course, I'm not running it, I'm also not signing up for anymore 5ks until I can confidently run a 5K without stopping.  That is my goal I'm going to work on for now.  Otherwise, its gonna be fun to see everyone with mustaches and aviators. :)

Passing Away

Death is an inevitable part of life.  We like to try to control it, predict it, prevent it, delay it.  But ultimately, it is going to happen when it is supposed to happen.  I have had experience with people I was caring for passing away, I've done the after death care before.  It has never been a pleasant thing, but some are easier to deal with than others.  Most of the residents that have passed away at work have been on hospice, so its been more of an expected and managed passing.  They were comfortable, we medicated to maintain comfort, and they went peacefully when it was their time to go.  I haven't actually been there at the actual time of death, so I think that has helped me handle the loss a lot better.  It is easier to think of them being gone like they just moved out, rather than to have experienced the time of death so you know they aren't coming back for sure.

Last night was my first experience of a resident passing away on my shift, and it was unexpected.  To have just seen them shortly before, letting them see my nails because they liked my nail polish, telling them I'd see them later and that I hoped they would sleep well that night......to getting a call barely an hour later that they were unresponsive on the floor...it just floored me.  I did the best that I could, I stayed with her, I directed people to get help, to call 911, to call the family.  I wanted to do CPR, but luckily the care manager with me reminded me she is a DNR, and had the sheet to prove it to me.  All I could do was hold her, stroke her hair and her back, crying while we waited for the paramedics.  I knew she was gone, but part of me wanted so bad to hope that maybe the paramedics could do some sort of magic and bring her back.  Maybe I was wrong, maybe she did have a pulse, maybe she was breathing and I just was not assessing her properly.  I wanted so, so, so much for there to be a way to save her.  But there wasn't.  She is gone.  

I think I handled everything as well as I could have given that it was my first experience as an RN of managing the death of someone I was caring for.  I had no idea what to say to the family, but I felt so strongly to share with them how happy their mother was that day, how she gushed over my nails in her usual fashion, how positive she was all the time even when she wasn't feeling well.  They seemed to have really appreciated that.  I'm sure there are things I can handle better next time.  I know now to make sure the paramedics and police officers tell me the time of death before they leave.  I will hopefully keep it together and not cry so much next time.

I'm not going to go into the lack of help I received from the other nurse on duty, because I'm absolutely done with her after how she behaved last night.  That is all I will say about it.

I slept really well last night, and today I am off with my handsome hubby.  I want mostly to relax and de-stress after the awful day I had yesterday.  I worked a double, and it was honestly a bad day from the start.  I had a sick resident in the morning that I almost had to send out, but instead got STAT orders which sucked a lot of time away from when I was supposed to be training.  I apologized to my preceptee, because I had to take over a lot of it to get us caught up.  I did let her take over once we got caught up.  Anyway, today, I'm going to have a nice day with my hubby.  Simple as that.  And we are making my friends chicken tacos for dinner again, and I'm excited!!

RN to BSN

A lot of my classmates have either started or are about to start programs to complete their BSN, which is Bachelor of Science in Nursing.  I missed being in class a lot when I graduated, but the mental break was so beneficial to me.  I think Mike appreciated having the break of his wife not being crazy from studying.  Now that I am nearing the one year mark of working as a nurse, I need to start thinking about more than just surviving one shift at a time.  I'm not going to be at my current employer forever, and I really don't want to be hindered by the BSN only requirements a lot of hospitals are starting to attach to their job listings.  I need to just get over my fear of Chemistry and just do this already.  And the dreaded paper writing.  I hate writing papers.  That is why I stopped being a psychology major because I envisioned having to get my masters, and doing research, and then writing the dreaded research articles and trying to get published.  Ugh, no thank you.

I was registered for Chemistry, but I changed my mind at the last minute.  It turned out to be a good thing because of the hectic mess that developed at work.  I would have been pretty screwed.  We finally started training some new nurses this week, so hopefully this will resolve the problems with the schedule.  Which, I never thought about the day when I would be training the new grads!  I still feel so much like a new grad even though that label isn't really appropriate for me anymore.  I guess I should be honored that my boss thinks I'm ready to precept the new nurses.  Honestly, I just didn't anticipate that I'd be training other nurses at this point.  But I do like it, and happy that my preceptee has confided that they feel more comfortable with me than some of the other nurses who have not been so nurturing as preceptors.  I guess they have forgotten what it was like for them to be a new, terrified nurse.  I haven't, and I don't think I ever will.  How can you get mad at them later for their mistakes, if you didn't give them a good foundation to start and rush them on just the their second day of training?  Sure, it may have taken her longer to get through a med pass than if I were doing it alone, but I've been doing this for over 9 months now, this is her first week, how would I ever expect her to be as fast as I am?  I don't, and I don't want her to be fast.  I want her to be safe and accurate.  Speed comes later.  So, I hope they are spared from the eat-their-young-nurses as much as possible so they don't feel terrified every day.  Because we need them to stay and not go running for the hills!!

Anyway, once they are up and running (not for the hills, I mean, lol), I should get my set schedule back.  *yay!!!*  This is important to be able to sign up for classes.  I really just gotta get over it and get it done.  Chemistry will never just vanish from my nursing to-do list, unless I'm content to never better myself.  Which I am not.  So, chemistry will happen this next semester.  It just has to.

The part after that is researching RN to BSN programs.  I want to do it online, and I want it to be through a good school, just not just pop up online school.  I have always gravitated towards Northern Illinois University.  I just feel like this is where I should go.  I need to do a lot of research, and make sure I'm picking a school that will work best for me, both content and money wise.  But I'll be pretty surprised if I don't end up at NIU.  Also, I get tuition reimbursement through work, so that will definitely be a huge incentive for me to work hard, so I get all that money back hopefully.  I really don't want to use financial aid if I don't have to.  So we will see what happens, and just make it happen.

I have today off from work, and its been lovely just lounging, sipping my coffee.  I'm trying to talk myself into going back to the gym today.  And then maybe if I do that, I'll reward myself with a pedicure that I so desperately need, or I will settle for some soup from Panera.  Damn is that stuff addicting.  I have a lovely date night planned with this really handsome man tonight that I am really looking forward to.  Just don't tell my husband, he might get jealous. :)

Doctor Orders

I'm pretty over families who show up maybe once every month or so telling me how I should do my job.  Every diabetic patient I have ever cared for had their sugar checked before meals, and insulin given before meals.  There is a reason for this, there is research, science, and like, doctors and stuff, totally backing up me checking your mum's blood sugar before dinner.  If I need to give them insulin, its best to give it before a meal, so they don't go hypoglycemic.  Checking their blood sugar after a meal will only show a totally normal rise in blood sugar after meals (which everyone goes through), and if you are giving insulin based on this number, you are giving them too much, and they will be hypoglycemic later on.  So, when you give me attitude for doing my job the way its been ordered for me to do it, and the way scientifically and medically is the norm to do....you are forever on my idiot's list.

I really don't mean to come off as if I can't handle when people question me.  I'm totally ok with that, but this particular family regularly does this, and some of them are actually really rude about it, and I'm just done.  I believe my nursing license and training and experience, and more importantly, the doctor's license and training and experience trumps your 30 minute google education.  Maybe ask me why, and I can explain to you the physiology to you, and actually educate you, rather than acting as if I'm totally incompetent.  I also can't go rouge and decide to check your loved one's blood glucose and treat it with insulin whenever I feel like it..... I'm not a doctor, and I can't go around shooting people up with insulin without a doctor giving an order to do so.  I realize you may have taken it upon yourself to do this when you had your mother/father living with you, but you didn't have a license to protect.

Also gotta love when a family member asked me to wipe off the lancet needle with an alcohol swab and use it multiple times to save them money.  $10, the typical cost for a 100 lancet needles, is certainly not enough to have me risk my safety for you, sir.  Nope, Nope, Nope.

Moving on, today I have a spa day scheduled.  I'm getting a massage and then a facial.  I really need a pedicure, too, but I'm worried if I schedule it before the massage, they won't be dry enough and will get messed up, and I'd rather just go straight home after the massage and facial.  So, maybe I'll save that for the weekend.  I'm pretty excited for all the time I am going to get to have with Mike this week.  I am starting to feel like I'm able to get some balance back.  Still nervous that the new nurses still haven't been scheduled yet.  I really do want my normal schedule back, and the longer it takes for them to start orientation, the longer it will be before I get back to my set schedule and being able to plan things in advance again.

I am trying to get myself back into gear with running, and weight watchers.  But, it is so easy to eat comfort food when you are stressed, and justify Starbucks when you are working a ton.  And broccoli cheddar soup is healthy, right?  Man, I love that soup from Panera!!  Anyway, I really do want to get back on board, and now that I'm not working a bunch of overtime, I really don't have any excuse.  But, today??  Panera or Toasty Cheese probably is happening.  Just being honest!

I guess that is all for now. :)

Rainy Wednesday

So, for some odd reason, I am up super early today and feel exhausted still from my shift last night.  I am working a reasonable number of hours this week thankfully, and I even got my weekend off.  Of course I was a bit busy.  I had to run downtown to pick up my packet for the Hot Chocolate 5k, then I needed to do some super important makeup shopping, grabbed some lunch, and then off to 3 1/2 hour appointment at the salon to get my hair done.  Which went amazingly.  I decided last minute to schedule my hair appointments on Saturday, and threw caution to the wind and scheduled with a new colorist because it would have taken too long to get in with my normal girl, and I saw my friend from nursing school for my haircut instead of my usual guy.  It really worked out great, my hair is a lovely brunette with some red/violet tones to it with some minimal highlights.  My nursing buddy even curled my hair, and it was really cute.  It stayed curly all night, and even into the next day, with very little hairspray.  It worked out perfectly for us meeting up with Mike's parents for dinner then a show at Improv to see Chris Katan.  Too bad his opening acts were funnier than he was.

I was nervously checking my phone all day on Saturday to see if my coworker ended up calling in sick for her shift on Saturday.  She tried like hell to get out of it, and I was really worried about her screwing everyone over by just calling in.  Luckily that didn't happen.  I really do hope that this crap slows down once the new nurses that were hired are cleared to start training.  I have to request off my normally scheduled off weekend in December to make sure our plans to see Wicked with Mike's parents aren't ruined, as well as our reservations at the Drake for afternoon tea the next day.  Everything else is so up for grabs until the new nurses are ready to go on their own.  But oh well.

Sunday we did the Hot Chocolate 5k, and I'm so happy we were able to make it!!  We power walked our way through, because running has just not had a space in my life right now.  But we were certainly not the last ones to finish!  The chocolate goodies at the end were super delicious, and we had a really good time.  We also looked really cute in our matching pull-over sporty hoodies that they give you in your swag bag.  I think I definitely want to do it again next year!  We were pretty exhausted afterwards and took a 4 hour nap when we got home, and still went to bed early that night!  It was a great weekend off from work, and I was so thankful that I had both days off.

Everything else is going the same as it has been.  It is really nice that the holidays are coming up, and even though I'm working on Thanksgiving, we still get to see Mike's parents that day for a lovely Thanksgiving meal that isn't microwaved.  We had made reservations because we felt really bad about asking them to move things up earlier, but they ended up moving things up early and insisted on it.  It made me feel happy that I won't miss out on Thanksgiving with them.  It will be a bit rushed, sure, but that's ok with me.  Mom-in-law and I are still getting to make our annual visit to the craft fair at the Odeum.  It is important to me to keep up certain things even though my schedule is different now, and getting off of work isn't as easy as it was before.  I find a way to make it work. :)

I am hoping that nothing else happens to make my life more hectic work-wise, because I need things to slow down a bit so I can feel like home isn't just a place to sleep.  I miss my set schedule, knowing when I can plan things and when I can not.  I need the work/life balance thing back.  Some of the positives to this is I'm earning brownie points with my boss, and becoming more confident in my abilities.  But, oh what I would give to not be living on Panera and Starbucks right now!!!