eric135

I've been feeling a bit under the weather for the past week. Roomie has been seriously ill and I think I'm trying to catch it. I've decided to take it easy for a while. On my days off, I have been spending more time catching up on sleep and watching tv. It takes most of my remaining motivation to make it to work. I haven't been to the gym in over a week.

It's been touch and go at work too. I'm sure it's just that I have insinuated myself into everything (a habit I really need to get a grip on), and that I have too much on my plate (again), but sometimes, people make me crazy. Most of it has to do with some really shaky critical thinking skills on the part of some of my nurses. Some of it is the attitude of a few physicians that don't quite understand the concept of medical emergencies happening in the dead of night. A few nurses that think they really shouldn't have to work any holidays. Nurses that want to transfer patients to the ICU because "they might could possibly maybe code," even though they haven't taken any vital signs, or performed any kind of physican assessment. In other words. The Usual.

Which is probably why it's a good thing I have stopped doing work from home.

I'm back to work Saturday and Sunday nights.

A few days off the grid

The past couple of days, I decided to spend a lot less time in front of the computer on my days off. So after I got home Monday morning, I limited my computer time to an hour or so a day. It's not that I think the computer is a bad influence, or is a waste of time. The computer has enabled me to do a lot with less time. I just wanted to take a break from it a bit. No checking my work email. No blogging. No newsgroups, or yahoo groups, or listservs.

So we spent some time watching television and getting caught up on our shows.

I'm really very impressed with Threshold and Supernatural.

I'm not as enthusiastic about this season's CSI: Miami. It just has a totally different "feel" compared to the other CSI shows, and I think the story lines are just too unbelievable. But I still like the original CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and CSI: New York.

I've also been catching up on my reading. I'm working on the latest Dune novel, Battle of Corrin. I'm also reading the second book of a trilogy based on the World of WarCraft online game (I got hooked on it, even though I don't play the game).

Holiday Schedule

I've put out the holiday schedule for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years. Publication of the holiday schedule always means my popularity will suffer a few dents and dings over the next few weeks. There are a lot of nurses who simply did not understand the ramifications of being a hospital nurse, rather than going into, say, stock market brokerage, or loan underwriting, or fanciful blooming plant propagation, or domestic cattle gynecology. I just don't understand it. I mean, someone HAS to be there 24/7. Most of my folks are accepting the responsibility of sharing the holiday coverage. But I also have a line forming outside my office, with nurses clutching photos of their toddler-age children, or with their booked airline tickets, or with their selection of fonts for their New Year's party invitations.

One nurse can't understand why I don't just staff with agency and pool nurses over the holiday. I couldn't believe she didn't know that nurses work agency and pool so they can Never Work A Holiday Again During Their Lifetime.

I'll get through it. I just have to watch my temper, and my tongue. Oh, and I guess I should take down that poster advertising openings for H&R Block Tax Prep classes that I pinned to my door (no I didn't really do that but...)

Really, if you don't want to work holidays, you just can't be a hospital nurse. Just get over it and move on (and those tax prep classes are filling up...)

We've had a bout of Crazy Virginia Weather

The past couple of days, it's been cold and rainey. Temperatures have dipped into the 50's. We're running the heat in the car, and we might have to turn on the heat in the apartment (something about Phoenician blood being a bit thin due to the summer heat, making us more sensitive to cold -- sounds good to me). Downright nippley, as I used to say in college.

We went grocery shopping yesterday, and it rained on us. You would have thought the sky had opened up with battery acid, based on our reaction.

Winter is coming, and I can hardly wait!

Thoughts on Boo Hoo

There was a blurb on CBS News early this morning about crying in the workplace, and how shedding a tear can keep folks, particularly women, from climbing the ladder at their workplace. Particularly damaging are crying episodes in a meeting, or during a heated argument among co-workers.

I admit that I have shed a few tears at work. I have never cried about a patient, even the ones that have died under very unfortunate circumstances (the patient that died on her 60th anniversary), or patients that have particularly sad courses (the 20-something firefighter that lost two brothers in 9/11, a mother to breast cancer, who discovered he also has cancer).

Two of the co-anchors, both female, suggested that crying in a male co-worker was a good thing -- sensitivity and all that. I guess it could be. But by the time these patients get to me, there has already been a lot of crying. A lot of sad faces. A lot of empty apologies from people that don't have anything to offer except a hollow-sounding apology.

By the time they get to me, they need something more. They need someone to anticipate their needs. They need someone to relieve their pain. Relieve their hunger. Relieve their lonliness. They need someone to turn away well-meaning visitors (when they are exhausted). To get a roast beef sandwich (when the green jello tastes like copper). To get a new IV line on the first stick (when the IV pump beeps incessantly). To ask the physician for Dilaudid (when the morphine is as effective as salty water). I guess I could cry while doing this, but I'd end up tripping over my own two feet (and I'd miss the vein).

There were two occasions when I did lose it at work. The first time, looking back on it, seems silly now. I was frustrated because I couldn't get a blood pressure on a patient, after trying to do so with four automatic vital machines. I guess I was tired, or just plain emotionally strung out. I mean, I should have just gotten a manual pressure and been done with it. I actually had to walk into an empty office, put my face in my hands, and boo-hooed for 10 minutes.

The second time, it was about a month before I threw in the towel at The Old Place. I was just exhausted emotionally from the conflict between me and my boss and the team leaders. I usually seek out conflict (it's a flaw in my personality -- I have to constantly guard against it), but that night, I was tired, and couldn't see any light at the end of any tunnel. Friends of mine were quitting (or being fired) at an astonishing rate. Every time I clocked in, I had to steel myself before walking onto the unit. A few times, I would have to get to work 20 minutes early so I could sit in the car and gather the strength to put in another 12 hours. So one night, I just had to excuse myself, lock myself in the bathroom, and, again, put my face in my hands and boo-hooed.

I see quite a bit of crying in my line of work. Not just patients and their families. Nurses come to me when they are upset about this or that. Or I have to call them into my office, because I am upset about this or that, which sometimes makes them cry.

It is a tough call, when a co-worker starts to cry. Crying usually happens when The Utter Truth is revealed about some situation. At times, what people tell me when they are crying is exactly what I need to hear (because it's the truth, or it's that person's perception of the truth). So if (and only if -- iff, if you're fluent in Boolean logic) my relationship with that person is strong enough, I try to keep the conversation going, while giving them a safe place to cry. Almost always, I get what I need to fix some problem.

I don't know if that's really therapeutic. I never learned it at a leadership seminar (do any of us ever learn anything at any of those?) But it seems to work. At least for me.

18 minutes

I bought one of those automatic air freshener things last week. The one they had at Fry's was made by Air Wick, but Renuzit also has one. I put it in the room with the litterbox, and it really does work well. It's powered by two AA batteries (included), and can be set at every 9, 18 and 36 minutes. We have it set for every 18 minutes, and it is doing an excellent job covering up the litter box odor (except when BoyKitty first goes poop -- for some reason, when he goes, it can seem like a status post cholecystectomy patient on the Adkins Diet used the box).

This stuff totally does not work. The package encourages you to "not give up even with the stubborn stains -- just keep on applying it." So basically, you end up spreading the stain evenly over the entire floor. Doesn't do zip for litterbox odor. Of course, after it didn't work after four applications, there was a lot of "told-ya-so's" from my room mate.

I can be a bit gullible where the kitties are concerned. We also got that automatic litter box, where it digs itself out whenever a kitty has activated the motion detector. Waste of money; we ended up throwing it out.

We did like the gadget that melts this wax cake (about the size of a large Reeses Peanut Butter Cup), which worked well but only lasted a couple of days. The one called "Wedding Day," despite the name, actually has a pretty masculine fragrance (as opposed to the ones that make the apartment smell like we're constantly making jams, jellies and fruit pies).

Squat

  I've introduced the Squat into my workouts. There's just so much in the "literature" (read: muscle mags) about that move being really effective in building strength and mass. I also like it because it's one of the multiple-joint compound movements, which I like (such as the multi-hip machine, cable pull-down, chest press, tricep-dip). At first, I was a bit nervous about using this move, because even Arnold says it can be bad for the knees, but I'm sticking with very low weight (my first warm-up set is just the bar), and my body seems to remember a pretty good form from years ago, and so it hasn't been bothering my knees. And I know it's hitting the muscles.

To prevent injury, even though it's not commonly done, I do my leg workout after I do my upper body workout. So it's 30 minutes on the eliptical, then my upper body workout, then legs, then another 30 minutes on the eliptical. This way, by the time I do the squats, I'm pretty warmed up.

The main disadvantage to doing squats after arms is that my shoulders are sore  holding the bar across my back.

More about food...

I love those bags of frozen chicken breast tenderloins they have at Fry's Grocery (I'm sure everyone has them, or at least the bags of frozen breasts). I don't have to plan on any kind of defrosting. I put 6-8 of them in a baking dish, smother them with some kind of barbecue sauce or other kind of marinade, and bake them at 400 degrees for 35 minutes. Any other frozen food (except frozen dinners -- which we're kind of getting bored with) requires too much planning.

Podcasting, RSS feeds, and other technological marvels

I know I go on and on about nurses not being good with computers, and that it's left non-nurses behind the steering wheel regarding many nursing issues. So it's with some embarassment that I admit I have not been able to get on the bandwagon regarding the latest hot items, podcasting and RSS feeds. I was thinking about this after Maria's podcast interview with  Kent Bottles of SoundPractice.net. With most podcasts, I don't bother, but I'd never heard Maria's voice, after these years of reading her blog, so I decided to see what these podcasts are all about.

So I click on the link. It takes 2 hours and 20 minutes to download, since I'm one of those last hold-outs for dial up. Which might be why I don't listen to podcasts. [Although, I did chuckle when Maria was asked one of those "two part questions," and after Maria answered the first question, she had forgotten the second question -- That is ALWAYS happening to me).

So I was Doing My Time on the eliptical machine this morning, listening to a Don Henley CD. Most of the folks have mp3 players, strapped to their biceps (I'm personally thinking Deep Vein Thrombosis, but I guess such thoughts are part of my job). Some might be listening to podcasts. I've thought about purchasing an mp3 player, but there's that download time again. Besides, about once a month, I drop that beat up old CD player and it's survived many falls from the top of the eliptical machine. Doubt most mp3 players are built that tough.

And what happens with the mp3 files if you decide to kill your iTunes membership? Do you get to keep those somehow? What, exactly, do you OWN, especially when you've paid, say, 99 cents to download? I guess you can burn everything onto CDs, but don't some people have thousands and thousands of mp3 files? Do they burn all those?

Then there's RSS feeds. I don't use them. I know there are RSS readers that automate checking blogs, and will give you all of the blogs that you read on one page. But my blog reading is something I do for sheer enjoyment. Time isn't really an issue there. And I like to see how blogs evolve with the author. A new background here, an updated personal photo there... those usually don't make it into RSS readers. And can you read the comments on other people's blogs? I don't think so, and some of them are so entertaining.

So I'm not really a believer in the two big things going on with the internet. As with any other tool, my adoption of that tool is based on how it impacts my productivity. It has to get something done, or I won't bother.

Appetite

I have found that, unlike years previous, I really don't like lifting weights that much. I have a hard time getting motivated to go through it. I do like the effect it has, but I only work up the motivation to go about once a week, when my original plan was to go twice a week (and most literature suggests four days a week, working one split -- one section/half of the body -- twice a week).

I also have been eating more. I hope it's just a phase, but my appetite can be really difficult to control. Some of it is that, over the past 2-3 weeks, very suddenly, I doubled the amount of time on the eliptical machine from 30 minutes/day to 60. I'm craving more protein (breakfast has gone from Special K cereal or sometimes a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich to a chicken breast with some pasta). I believe in listening to one's body cravings, and most of the literature encourages increasing protein intake to 1 gram for every pound of body weight, so at 150 pounds I think am still taking in less than half of that. Also, I'm thinking that too much protein in my diet will aggravate my gout.

I'm starting to gain an appreciation for why there are so many nutrition supplement ads in these muscle mags I read. I'm starting to read them. I know eventually I'm going to get the idea in my head to use some of them.

Serenity

We saw Serenity at the theater today. We didn't watch the TV series, but the trailers looked good. It also got some good reviews. I thought it was a good movie. Yes, Matrix Moves (even a Trinity-type Scorpion Kick). Yes, fast moving zombie-monsters. Yes, an ass-kicking female hero. Yes, an obligatory shirt-less muscular guy. Yes, inexplicable sword-play. Yes, a spiritual black guy playing the Yoda part. Yes, an inapropriately intimate psycho-analytical "oh yeah, by the way, I Love You" moment in the heat of a climactic battle. But it was still good. We're gonna go back and watch the series DVD.

Paychecks as entertainment and fodder for employee complaints

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. In recognition of this, our paychecks were printed on bright-pink paper. There was lots of joking about them being "pink slips," and one charge nurse in the hospital was telling folks he'd need to do a breast check before passing them out.

I thought the whole affair was entertaining. I mean, passing out the pink paychecks was sort of cute. Of course, people complained. I just don't understand some people. I mean, nurses have the raunchiest sense of humor (you need it when your patient sticks his ass off the side of the bed to take a shit on the floor, and other similarly hilarious moments). I just can't believe nurses, of all people, would be upset. And it DID get folks to think about breast awareness (even the guys -- a few of the non-nursing males had no idea it can happen to males, and that, after paying the rent, you really should check your rack along with your jewels), so the pink things did their job.

Some people. Sheesh.

Another handout gimmick with our recent paychecks were these bright orange gel bracelets. Various colors have  been popping up over the years, yellow for cancer awareness... I think blue for organ transplant awareness. So what's the bright orange one? 401k participation awareness. Oh God, we need a gel bracelet for that? Cancer kills people... got that. Being an organ donor saves people's lives... check. But contribute at least the employer match on your 401k? A bracelet for that? They ran out before I could get one...

Although... I kinda want one now...

Maybe dinner and a movie?

A few weeks ago, one of my co-workers found out how old I was (I am 44 now), and that I didn't have children. It was not a deeply emotional conversation. We weren't reviewing our lifetime accomplishments, comparing what we each had left to do in this world before passing into the realm of luminescent beings. No, we were sharing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

So she turns to me and says, "Eric, if you ever want to, I'd have your baby."

Of course, I was taken aback. It didn't really feel like a sexual come-on (I am immune). You don't go through 9 months of pregnancy, the whole vomiting every morning, weird cravings to eat chocolate covered meat, just for sex, I don't care where that sex were coming from. This was an honest proposal from someone who would consider it something of a tragedy if the peculiarities of my double-helix weren't passed on.

We had a brief discussion about how that would really mess up our professional relationship, how it might cause resentment and anger when parenting lacks the support of a monogamous relationship rooted in a larger family. Not to mention I already have my hands full with three cats.

It has been great fun asking me, while casually walking down the hallway, if I would let them have my baby. I hardly bat an eyelash anymore.

This same problem has haunted me for some years. Two of my classmates in nursing school wanted to have my babie. At first it was an interesting prospect, but they then clarified they wouldn't be using a turkey baster. They were talking the beast with two backs and all that. I declined. This all happened the week before we were to split up into groups and provide breast checks on one another in pairs as part of our required nursing practicum. In the midst of figuring out how the class would be able to learn testicular exams with only one male in the class (especially when the question was asked, "exactly how many people can we fit in one of those practice labs", I ran out the door right to the office of our Director of Nursing, who said that no one woud be touching my genitals or my breast tissue this semester.

Anyway, back to these offers. no idea how long it will be before we all land in one of those required classes for sexual harrassment.

warning: this latest blog entry written while under the influence of ambien.

Now time to pay the rent... and take an uncommonly warm shower...