New Orleans orders mandatory evacuation - Yahoo! News
I hope and pray that all who are involved stay safe and take all the necessary and suggested precautions.
I have a close friend whose family suffered severe loss during Katrina, so please take heed.
Take care of yourselves and yours.
Carpe Diem
Nothing changes until something moves.
(Or someone)
Carpe Diem
I hate lovin’ my job. (yeah you read that right)
I love my job. In fact I brag about what I do, and where I work to fellow colleagues, friends and family.
I work as a Senior Staff Nurse on a 22 bed Level 1 Surgical / Trauma ICU. (Yeah, it get’s a lil busy where I work) We treat and see just about everything under the sun. Everything Surgical you can think of post-operatively.. Ex-Lap, Cholecystectomy’s, Tracheostomy’s, Post Heart Cath, Esophagectomy’s, Carotid Endartectomy’s, etc. The list goes on. On top of the Surgical portion we have the Trauma portion of my job. You name it we take it. Traumatic Brain Injury, Gunshot, MVA, MCA, etc. And there is just an innumerable number of injuries that can and do happen with Trauma. Orthopedic, Spine, Vascular, Plastics, Neuro, Neuro-spine, Ortho-spine, etc, etc.
The only thing we don’t treat directly.. is a fresh post-op open heart surgery, fresh post-op transplant surgery’s (which include the IABP and ECMO).
We do bedside surgical procedures that most hospitals and facilities would take to the Operating Room.
The list goes on. As a nurse we have an amazing amount of autonomy, the physician-nurse relationship is above par.
OK
So here’s why I hate lovin’ my job.
My job is 70 miles away in one direction. Yeah. I have to spend close to an hour and half one way in my car now due to the congested construction traffic in the city.
So my 12hr shift translates into a minimum 18hr day. AND that is dependent upon me getting out on time for my shift. (we all know how often that happens) Now think about if I have to work 2 days back to back. 2 12hr shifts = 2 18hr days, therefore I’m left with MAYBE 6 hrs of time outside of my drive and my work.
As you can see the drive alone is quite a burden. I have been doing that drive and working at my job for 2 yrs now. At first, just the midnight shift would be the problem. I would get too tired on the drive home, so I would have to pull over to take a nap, just to get home safely. Eventually that nap became a standard with my nightshifts. Well now I’m nodding off during the day shift drives. In fact I nodded off so bad on two separate occasions that I started ‘brail’ driving. (Yeah, y’know waking up to the sound of the rumble strips on the side of the road under your tires)
I was willing and able to look over just about everything to keep up my job, until my personal safety came into question.
So after a long sought summer. I found and accepted a job closer to home. Luckily I get to stay with the same Hospital System. I’m simply moving to a different campus. A campus that is 3.3 miles away from home! So with this new job, I can walk faster to work than driving to my old job!!!
It unfortunately will not be a comparable job position to the one I currently have. I don’t live in the city, I live in the smaller community area. So I’m transferring from the big rural city hospital of 13 floors and 8 wings per floor to a 3 floor small community hospital. Heh heh.
I’m transferring from the ICU setting to the PACU (recovery room).
So a huge adjustment, but a very big sigh of relief.
I’ll keep you posted on how it goes. I start in 2 weeks!
Carpe Diem
Yep, I’ admit it. I’m a snacker.
There was a time in my life when I would snack so bad that I couldn’t stop eating sometimes. We would be watching one of our many favorite TV shows, and I honestly could eat a whole bag of chips in one sitting. It was so subconscious. It was horrible.
That was a major hurdle for me this past year. Learning how to either not snack at all, or to snack more healthy.
I have pretty much eliminated snacking at home. If I do, I grab a yogurt, or some strip-cheese. Every so often I’ll binge on a good pint of ice cream or some cookies, but it’s few and far between.
So now my problem was me snacking at work. I mean in a 12hr shift, nurses exert and use up a CRAP LOAD of energy. And… getting a formal lunch break is unheard of these days with the staffing shortages that have no end in sight. So I of course solved the no lunch problem by eating throughout the day. Yep, snacking.
So I had to figure out how to satisfy my hunger pangs at work, without shoving too much crappy food down my throat. I mean I take a great leap forward with my home habit and then fall 10 steps backward by eating nothing but candy and junk at work.
So I thought I’d share some of the ‘more’ healthy things I eat at work that get me through the day. Now by no means are these things the picture of health. In fact most have a good bit of fat content. But they have a great taste and aren’t as horrible for your body as that Hershey’s Chocolate bar, or a bag of M&M’s. Which I find are so readily available to nurses working in a hospital. 
So in no particular order here is what I snack on throughout the day to keep my metabolism in check at work.
Hostess Mini Muffins- great for the on-the-go breakfast snack
Quaker Oats Oatmeal To Go(sorry for the blurry pic)- also a great breakfast item. I actually eat a lot of these. It’s also a great way of reducing your cholesterol! 
Kellogg’s Special K Bar - this actually surprised me how good they taste
Nature Valley Roasted Peanut Crunch Bar - another surprise on how good these taste
Cutie Pie Snack Pies- sorry these are just darn good, portable and great tasting. Yep this is the one snack that’s just all around not healthy, but a vice I’m willing to live with. The funny thing is these has less fat than the Peanut Crunch Bar. 
(Once again, none of these are the epitome of health, but they are also not candy bars!)
Let us keep in mind, the more weight you lose, and the more muscle you gain, the higher your metabolism gets. So your body will burn calories way more efficiently and your hunger pangs will be more frequently. I have trained my body to have a snack or eat a small meal every 2-4hrs these days. So I’m not only keeping my metabolism at a steady level (instead of the roller coastering effect most of us have) but I’m not STORING any of the fat. I burn it up throughout the day due to my frequency and size of my meals.
Even if only one of these items helps, it’s better than nothing at all.
Baby steps folks. Baby steps.
Carpe Diem
I wanted to share this article I received months ago. It’s an article written by Gina Bret, a columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. It’s describes the response some nurses had when told ‘Patients aren’t always satisfied with how well nurses communicate, according to a recent Medicare survey.’
Here’s what they had to say:
Come walk in our shoes for a 12-hour shift. Come see the joy, the tragedy, the comedy, the 100 ways we are pulled and pushed, then rate my “pleasant greeting,” “answers call light in timely fashion,” “states name of patient.”
Use the bathroom now, because you might not get the chance again until your shift ends. Wear comfortable shoes. Don’t worry if they’re clean. They’ll end up with blood and vomit on them.
We are the patient’s advocate, the doctor’s eyes and ears and everyone’s scapegoat. We can page your doctor, but we can’t make the doctors magically appear. We check your stitches, wipe your blood, drain your pus and empty your bedpan.
Nursing is a tough job, but we’re tougher. We’ve been yelled at by administrators, supervisors and doctors. We’ve been kicked, slapped, punched, spat on and sexually harassed by patients in various states of delirium, mental illness, arrogance and intoxication. We’ve even had chairs and food trays thrown at us.
We work mandatory overtime, weekends and holidays. We eat Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners with co-workers.
We deal with families who ignore visiting hours, bring food to patients on restricted diets and insist on staying the night even though it’s not a private room. We deal with the Florida son who orders us around to show a parent he’s neglected for years that he cares.
We cannot be at your side every waking minute.
We have 10 other patients. We cannot answer five call lights at once. We can’t stop doing CPR on a patient because you ran out of tissues. We are not maids, beauticians or cocktail waitresses. We are professionals with college degrees.
We hate that we can’t spend more bedside time with you. Swearing at us will not make us move faster. Taking better care of your health would help. Quit smoking. Lose weight. Start exercising. Stop drinking.
How do we survive? We ignore the nasty comments, the demanding relatives, the crazy staffing grids. We count to 10 before speaking. We pray every morning for strength and wisdom, patience and empathy. We drive home tired and frustrated, telling ourselves over and over, “I’m not the nurse I want to be, but I’m the best nurse the hospital staffing allows me to be.” We fall asleep praying for the ones who won’t survive the night.
There is no finish line, ever. Nursing is demanding and fulfilling, and we can’t imagine doing anything else. Nothing beats washing blood and glass off a car crash survivor, stabilizing a broken neck, saving a diabetic’s leg, keeping a cancer patient in remission. The day we send a patient home we relish the unbelievable resilience of the human body and spirit.
We did not become nurses for the hours, the salary or the glamour of it all. We became nurses to make a difference.
We don’t ask for much. One sincere thank you makes all the thankless hours worth it.
I think this wonderfully sums up A LOT about what we do, what we endure, and how we feel.
Have a great day.
Carpe Diem
