My life as a nurse... the ongoing saga

First things first... here's the latest cute picture I have to share of my precious mushroom boys.

I'm in a funk lately, and I don't know exactly why.  Although I frequently make pessimistic statements sometimes, I really haven't been a pessimist since I left high school and all it's angst behind.  I know I'm tired almost all the time now.  I'm sure that's a side-effect of hard work and too much stress.  Often on my days off I sleep just about around the clock, when I used to try to get household chores done, catch up on reading for fun, knit, and just generally do whatever relaxing thing I could think of doing.  I hate that I sleep so much.  I have so many things I want to accomplish on my days off.  (Like blogging... though at this point I'm sure no one reads this but me)

I suppose I had unrealistic expectations for life as a nurse.  Of course the (much) larger paycheck is making life financially easier.  It seems that Money really is not the only thing.  (Although I am happy to report that I have a new beautiful oven, new countertops, a new sink, and now the L-man is putting up new siding, and has already installed a new custom mahogany front door.  So, even though the house is definitely no bigger, it is looking nicer all the time.  Oh! and about 70% of our debt is paid off too.  So that's all very nice... and all within the first year of my new employment.  

I think I just have to take a further degree of separation from my job.  Mentally and emotionally that is.  But given that nursing is an intensive mental and emotional job, that may not be possible.  My positive well-being is very closely linked to my ability to get my patients through the night.  I find myself actually praying for my patients, and I don't even know who I'm praying to., or what I'm praying for.  Sometimes, with some patients, it's hard to say whether living or dying would be the greatest blessing.  Especially in my particular specialty.  

What's peculiar about nursing is that while we are in the business of caring, there is a certain emotional detachment that we seem to cultivate, to insulate ourselves from the humanity of our patients and their families.  We care... but only just so much, and only while the family stays within their ordained boundaries.  When the family actually does what a good, caring, and reasonably intelligent family should do, and questions the appropriateness of the care we provide we medical professionals get very irate.  It's funny to see sometimes, from an outside perspective just how offended we all get when we are questioned by family.  I say we, because I do it too.  We all want our patients to just do exactly as we tell them to, and never question.  

I suppose I'm going into all that because I have a patient right now, and a family that are from a different culture.  And none of the nurse on my unit can deal with the family, because to them it's too foreign, too strange. They don't understand that it is just a wife and an extended family, very worried about a good man who is at death's door, and they don't know why.  I seem to be the only one who can deal with the family of this man.  Thank you mother, for raising me to be more accepting and more culturally aware than the average person.  

Well, that's enough for one post.  

Limping into the 21st century

According to my sister, I'm now much closer to being cool... I've joined Facebook. I'm still trying to sort out what all this is about. I've found some old friends there, and that's nice. I'm definitely enjoying being able to reconnect with people I haven't talked to in so long.

It gives me a sense of perspective. Life has continued for all these people, even though I haven't been there. Which is not to say that I think I'm not important, just that I take myself too seriously sometimes. In my own world, I am the center of the universe. My family enables me. I get my way a lot. In their words (and my own) I am a princess. I don't like things to be too difficult. Which is not to say that I don't fight for what's important, just that I keep it to a minimum at all costs. So, in my normal center-of-all-things attitude, I forget that my friends have continued on in their lives, falling in and out of love, moving around, having children, in other words living, even though I am not there. I suppose it happens to everyone to some extent, we can only concentrate on some many things at once... something/someone ends up on the shelf.

So welcome to reality, princess!

Also, it's been a few posts since I added some pictures. So here they are:

I don't have a baby anymore! He's very much an independent toddler.


They are phasing me out... don't need my help pushing on the swings, going down slides... I can just sit back and watch, and take lots of cute pictures.

not so whiny today

I guess that in my last post I was so busy being self-indulgent that I forgot to mention the important fact that I did in fact graduate, with honors, and successfully passed the horrid, dreaded NCLEX (nursing licensing exam). I am an real nurse at last. And I'm really sure that I've found my calling. It's that ever-elusive dream of 'what-I-want-to-be-when-I-grow-up' finally in my grasp. I don't think that I want to do exactly this aspect of nursing forever... but there are so many exciting areas to explore.

Right now, I work in the burn unit, an admittedly challenging, not-for-everyone place to be. We take everyone at my hospital, insured and uninsured, and give them exactly the same treatment (this of course, is why I chose to work at the hospital that pays the least... a philanthropist at heart--and the experience is better, educationally). And let me tell you, treatment for burns is *hugely* expensive. Between the dressings, the antibiotics and other medications, and the surgeries, we are talking tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The patients are difficult: the meth-lab explosions, the abused, the elderly... and the stupid (Darwin awards could be handed out regularly). Of course what everyone always thinks of are the wounds... the oozing, gory, yucky wounds covering huge portions of the patient's body. I still love it. It's a niche... and it's mine.

But I'd also like to try flight nursing. (For the uninitiated, it's the nurses who fly in helicopters to the scene of the accidents, extract, stabilize and transport the patients back to the hospitals.) Apparently I'm a bit of an adrenaline-junkie.

Then when I'm a bit older, I'd like to go back to school, get a master's degree and work as a nurse anesthetist. (They make the big bucks.) And finally, I'd like to return to school again for a PhD so that I can teach the next generation of nurses.

It's nice to have goals.