another week at home

it seems to have been a week since i have last written here. i don't want this to be a general blog, so i have been avoiding to come here to write. i guess i shouldn't do that, as i may not blog here at all sometimes.
today was to be the day for me to leave to california. i was to begin my "new job" next monday, but the plans have been changed. when you work for the government, you have to be what they tagged as "VetPro". it is a certification that you are who you are and your license is really yours. it is to certify that you are not a terrorist.
when i had worked at the Miami Veterans hospital, i did this. or so i thought i did. each and every paper they requested, all the questions asked and answered, i did that. every form filled out, every picture supplied. diplomas, birth certificates, etc, etc, etc. they gave me access to the hospital, so i do believe i was vetproed. what it turned out to be, is that the person who was responsible for all this paper work and turning it all in to the right department, never filed my papers. therefore, i was never vetproed. for nine months, i worked at the Miami VA medical center, ILLEGALLY!
now, because there was some man in Miami, who is no longer there, who did not complete his job, it is preventing me from starting my job.
now, because some man in Miami, didn't complete his job, the new man in California has to complete it so that i can start my new job.
now, because of some man in Miami, i am sitting at my home in illinois, instead of in the seat of my van, on my way to omaha, nebraska, to spend the night with my friend before i continue on the road to utah or idaho to stay a night, before i go onto california to stay for two months.
well, that gives me a week now to complete things i had not gotten done before i left. they were menial little things, that would have done fine not being completed, but now my only excuse to not complete them would be procrastination, lol

can i travel again?

i guess i have not been writing in my dreams lately, as i have not been writing here. not even to finish my sister story. of course, i never mentioned earlier how much of a procrastinator that i am. such a procrastinator, it is a wonder i was on time for my birth!
today i got a phone call from a travel nurse agency. maybe it is the one i have been waiting for? they say that there is several positions in california at this time for the flu clinics at the veterans administration.
how cool is that?
i am not as excited as i normally would have been.
it seems i have been away from the travel nursing long enough, that i don't care if i travel again or not. but i do feel that "i really want to go" sneaking up in there. it will only be two months away from home. i will receive 2 dollars an hour more than i am currently making. i will get to drive across the states and maybe see something. i will get to see the ocean on that side of the world again. i will get away from this job i am wanting to get away from. i will miss the boys. i will worry if they are ok without me. i will have no family to visit me.
eight weeks
plus 2 weeks travel.
ten weeks, or close to that.
but, it is california. maybe i will get to see my friend micki, or get to meet dan the man?
it will be a day or so, probably the so, before i find out if i was accepted for one of the positions or not. if i am accepted, i will have to worry about getting out there. just a general look, 32 hours of driving. by myself. which i am ok with most times, but since i did have a slight problem with it just recently, i wonder if it is in good enough condition now to go that far? it is driving much smoother right now, so i think so.
it may seem as if i am trying to talk myself out of it, but that is not it. what it is, is that i do want to go so bad, i am afraid it can't happen. are the tires ok? will the belts need changed? will have to pack my "traveling home". where will i get the money to leave? (i will get reimbursement after i get there and file for it).
when i did the travel nurse thing awhile back, i was doing ok financially and did not have to worry about where the money was going to come from. being home, the wages were lower and the bills higher. on this trip, i will make just a bit more than at home, but i will not get the extras which i had gotten on my last trip. which was really great as i was able to stash $500 a month into my savings account.
that will not happen this "tour".
especially since it is only an 8 week tour.
most others are 12 weeks with the option later to re-up for another 12 weeks. then, you can make friends, rent a room from them, and take the housing stipend to put into your savings account. that is how i managed it before. won't happen with only an 8 week stint.
then, i will have to come back home. unless i am offered something else somewhere else. which, i will not hold my breath waiting for an assignment. there is NOTHING out there. well, a bit of an exaggeration. (wow, i did spell check because i thought i spelled exaggeration wrong, but i was wrong, i spelled it right!!) if there are any positions out there that i am eligible for, there are also 500 more lpns eligible for them.
the economy has even hit nurses.
i look at low census days each week. i lose vacation time every time they call me to take a census day. oh, i could take the day off unpaid, but then, which bill collector would allow me to pass on this months' payment?
that is another reason i am ready to do the traveling thing again. at least it is guarenteed work, because a contract is signed.
not a story, but at least i wrote.
good night all.

i am a nurse, part two

i really wish i felt like looking for that photo of me at the first nursing job i held, but you will have to do without it. by the time i was writing the other night, i was tired and i forgot to tell you some of the things i wanted to tell you. first off, that "smock" that i was wearing as a student, was one of the UGLIEST things i have ever worn in my life. it was neon pink and heavy polyester. there was not one student that liked it. though i did keep it for years afterward, i finally burned it with the trash. do you know that polyester does not burn very well?
when i was going to nursing school, my husband at the time was not working. he was on unemployment. the first half of my training, he was really good to me and took care of the kids so i could study when i got home. the second half of the training, when i had to do clinicals, he was not so supportive. i had to take a weekend job so that i would have money for gas and lunches. after classes, i would come home to make meals and do household chores, then at night when i tried to study, he would not help with the kids any. therefore i had to help them with their studies and put them to bed. regardless of his efforts to pull me down and set me up for failure, my grades remained above the C average. his mother made him go to my graduation.
in january of 1985, i officially became a Licensed Practical Nurse.
my first position was over an hour from home. i worked there for three months making $5.25 an hour. it was in a nursing home. the reason i accepted the position so far from home is that this was the only facility i could find that would allow me to work before i had taken my boards. (that is the testing you take to earn your license). i worked under the supervision of a RN. my first night of passing medications on my own, i gave a patient the wrong medication. i was ready to throw in the towel and never return to nursing. the nurse i was working with laughed so hard she could barely speak to the doctor to tell him of the medication error. i could not call him as i was crying. she even had the doctor laughing. as you can tell, the medication was nothing that would harm the patient, so at least i had not begun my profession by killing off patients.
my favorite patient at this nursing home was a schizophrenic little lady. probably all of 5 foot tall and maybe weighed 100 pounds. she did not take kindly to other people. paranoid about what every one was doing around her, and would not even speak to the nurses when they spoke to her.
she always wore a dress that hung straight on her, and a sweater. on her feet, she wore white socks and tennis shoes. her short gray hair in a pixie cut. her eyes dark and troubled. she had taken to me. she would follow me around as i passed my medicines, or stand at the desk watching over it as i charted on other patients. i never had a problem out of her, though the other nurses warned me that i would.
i worked the evening shift. one day i arrived at work, and she rushed up to me. you could see that she was frightened. she grasped my arm tightly, telling me "there's something wrong with my feet". i looked down at her feet, and nothing seemed apparent. i asked her if they hurt, and she said no, they didn't. she repeatedly told me there was something wrong with her feet. when i sat her in a chair so that i could examine her feet, i asked her what was wrong with her feet. i am leaning down to remove her shoes and socks, which surprises all other staff members, as this woman lets no one touch her. they could get nothing out of her all day. she waited the whole day for me to arrive at work.
i am removing one of her shoes when she said to me, "they're black". i was not sure what she said, so i asked her "what?" my little lady said again, "they're black, my feet are black. they are dead and they will fall off. i have gangrene in my feet. they are black and they are dead".
as i was beginning to remove a sock, i had to stifle a laugh. her feet were perfectly pink. they were warm and pulses were strong. as i replaced her sock to her foot, i looked up to her and explained to her, "your feet are ok." i am still stifling my laugh as she again tells me, "no they are not ok, they are black." it took some time for me to get her to understand that it was not her feet that was black, that it was her socks.
it was one of the coldest years in illinois that winter. i drove a car that had no heater, and scraped the inside of the window with a piece of hard plastic so that i could see to drive to work. when i had a car with a heater in it, i blew a tire on the way home in nineteen below zero weather, with no spare tire. after i had my license in hand, i went to work closer to home. it was in a smaller nursing home, about 20 miles from home.
i worked the midnight shift, and had my first experience with a patient having a seizure. learned i loved taking care of the patients wounds. encountered my first case of shingles. when my husband at the time told me i still worked too far from home, i quit this position and got my third one within 5 miles of home.
this is the job i held, where i learned to be a nurse. and i want to thank my good friend, patty rowley for this. yes, patty is one of the women who carpooled with me to classes. and patty is the nurse i teamed up with to work midnight shift at a nursing home that was a place to learn in itself.
we had both been nurses for less than a year, but patty had worked as a nursing assistant for several years. therefore being more familiar with the type of work we were doing . patty taught me team work. we had about 100 patients to care for. on a good night, we had 4 nursing assistants to work with us. on a not so good night, well, patty and i became nursing assistants and helped turn and clean patients on rounds, as well as our nursing duties.
this nursing facility took in any type of patient that would come here. we had patients who had feeding tubes inserted through their nose into their stomachs. when they pulled them out, we had to replace them. this was before the time of all the formulas in cans, and we were putting pureed food into these tubes with syringes.
we had patients with ventilators. here we had to insert tracheostomy tubes because the patient would pull it out and toss it across the room. we had to learn to suction the patient through this trach so that he would not drown on his own secretions. we had to learn how to set up the ventilator and keep it going in a power outage. most of all, we had to learn how to reassure this patient that he was not going to die on our shift because he could not breathe properly. on midnight shift, we were the RN. no, we did not have that license, but we had only us. two new nurses learning together.
thank God one nurse was patty.
she was hungry for knowledge. she taught me to find answers. she taught me to fight for my patients to get the care they needed from the doctors. we were half of each other. what one did not know, the other probably did. we completed each other sentences. if we did a procedure together, we were each others hands, not having to tell the other what step to do next.
i was working with patty the night i had my first death. i had just checked on my patient. a woman in a room by herself. respiratory problems. now at the opposite end of the hall, patty called out to me, and i came back to her outside the womans room. patty asked me if i had checked on this woman, and i told her yes i did, and she said to me, "are you sure? she is dead you know".
"what! no she is not dead! i was just in there and she was breathing!"
"well, she must have been taking her last breath, because she is dead".
turning on the light, i went to her bedside. she took one last breath at this time, and then she was gone. that night, i learned to call a family, and tell them that their mom just took a turn for the worse and might not make it, then wait for them to arrive and tell them she passed just before they got there. i learned how to be there for the daughter because she just could not bear to say goodbye to mom by herself. you learn how to make the dead look like they are still alive, only sleeping. you learn that there is life after death, because even though your patient has died, you still have work to do.
we worked together in this nursing home for a couple of years. it seemed much longer than that. we learned so much together. we worked midnights, then evenings. i learned so much because of her. she was there when i got divorced, and she was there when i got married for a second time.
we had many nights of laughter, such as the night she set my one gray hair on fire. i had laid my head to rest on the table. she saw my gray hair, and thought she would do me a favor by burning it off my head, not thinking that the other hairs would catch fire also. luckily, she figured that out quite quickly, and it only sizzled the ends of my hair, but i got even. i have to laugh inside as i remember it. there are these large bandages, that look like old fashioned kotex pads, only wider. they are called a b d pads. they are soaker pads for large wounds. i took the abd pad and placed it on my head, tying it in place with a long piece of gauze, with a bow under my chin like an easter bonnet. i walked around like this the biggest part of the night, with patty laughing and crying at the same time because she felt so bad that she almost burned me up, but found my response so funny.
patty left me to go to california. she worked in a hospital there, and found her own husband. we lost touch over the years, but i will never forget her. i am the nurse that i am because of her.
that is about the first seven years of my nursing career. after that, i went to work at a hospital for 5 or 6 years. bed baths and pill passing. the staff i worked with was cold and non caring. the drive was too much for me, and after falling asleep coming home for the third time, i left there for another nursing home. so many stories, so many tears of joy and sadness. for seven years, i lost grandma too many times.
because i am a nurse, and because i deal with death quite frequently, it made it easier to let my mother go when her time came. i understood that wishing her to stay with us would only cause her more suffering and pain. i understood that as she neared death, she was ready for it. being a nurse, i was able to let her go.
all nurses should work in nursing homes. i don't mean for their entire career. it is too hard for some of us to do that. what i mean is, that all nurses should be required to spend a year or two in a nursing home so that they can learn how to work with love in your heart. how to help a patient die with dignity, and how to let one go. only in a nursing home do you get to feel the love of your patient because they become your family. you learn how to whisper them away when death comes for them. you hold their hand because they have no other family members left to hold their hand.
when you work in a nursing home, when you are having a bad day, "grandma" will hug it away. when you are having a good day, "grandpa" will remind you how quickly it can go bad. you know there is a God. you see miracles happen.
you ask me, if i enjoyed working in the nursing homes so much, why did i leave, why do i now work in a hospital?
unfortunately, because "grandma" died one too many times. my last one i was so attached too, when she passed on, the pain was so great, i found it hard to continue working at the home. only waiting to lose the next one.
in a hospital, we lose patients. yes we do, but we send more of them home.

it has been 25 years since i became a nurse. because of what we call "burn out", i almost quit nursing. instead i took up travel nursing. i remained on staff at my "home" hospital, on a per diem basis. i did not want to burn my bridges behind me, which is a good thing i didn't. right now i am unable to acquire any travel positions, so i work full time at my "home" position.

when you travel nurse, they do things differently in "other parts" of our country. lafayette, louisiana is where i landed my first travel position. i had much difficulty learning to understand the french cajun's speaking, but after i did we did well. i got to meet an alligator almost face to face.

they are a little more laid back in loueeseeana. a very enjoyable place to be. i got to meet alot of nurses from other parts of the country, and after 5 months there i got to move on to miami.

there i worked on the spinal cord unit of the veterans hospital. never think you know it all. my patients were paralyzed from just a tad bit, to partial, to complete. care for them is not what i was taught. it was a total different story. i will not go into detail of what i learned in caring for these people, but what i will tell you is that before miami, my paralyzed patients were not getting proper care. so far from it.

travel nursing has given me the ability to bring further learning/teaching back to my current position. it gave me the ability to show my co-workers how to better care for some of our patients today. how to make it easier to get someone in and out of bed with a lift. how to apply the sling to ensure better comfort for the patient.

i am ready to return to travel nursing. they are just not ready for me. so i stay home.

twenty five years ago, i had no idea i would still be doing this today. twenty five years ago, i could not even look at the needle as i prepared to give my first "shot in the butt".

this is the beginning of nine months in miami. gwen, rolanda, me, donna, kris, i forget, in back in blue is marsha then cathy. i don't remember the names of the others.

i am a nurse.

Reading, Writing and Pictures

who reads my work? i sometimes wonder that, but i do know that my friend jean reads it. i just wonder does anyone else? my family or other friends who i have supplied the link to, or if strangers even read it, and if they do, what do they get from it?

what i think i wonder about it for, is i want those who read it to actually enjoy what i write. i hid this blog at first. well, not hidden really, i just did not tell anyone about it. i was not going to share. what i was going to do was just write, to satisfy my need to write, and let it set here for "strangers" to find and enjoy. then i wrote the story about the blanket, on the blog connected with this one. i really wanted to share that with my son. originally, it was going to be a whiny blog, about how my son does not seem to be one of the family anymore, but it turned out to be a pretty good story about the blanket he grew up with, and now is inside his son's blanket. so, i had to share. now i cannot whine about my son who moved away and married and never comes home.

I Should Write a Book

people are always telling me i should write a book. those people are usually my patients. my "trapped" audience. they are in the hospital, in the room, with this crazy nurse taking care of them. they make the mistake of asking me a little about myself, and they usually get a whole story of some sort about me. i make them laugh, and i make them cry. and in the end, they always tell me, "you should write i book, i would read it!"

i only wish i had the ability to actually write a book. it is not the same though as telling a one or two person audience a story.

Oh I Want to be in Pictures

as i look about other blogs, they have lots of pictures. it looks so easy to have them in the blog. but when i try to do it, it is a whole other dimension in life! i go to the top of this box that i am typing in, and click on the little icon to add the picture. so far so good. then when the picture comes up, it is at the very top of this box. no where near where i want it placed. then i have to work and finangle it down to the position i want it to be, but i do not think that any of the pictures i have placed in the blog are actually where i wanted them to be.

ok, here is a photo of me from three years ago. this was taken in a restaurant in nebraska after i visited a friend. it was easy enough to place, because i really don't have a spot that i want it to be. but it still was at the top of the page in the first place.

ok now, it was not exactly where i wanted it, and now i am making the attempt to place it correctly, it is not working, so i am leaving it just where it landed. maybe another time.

i have used this picture for other purposes, and people asked me why i looked mad. i thought i looked deep in though myself.

and jean makes videos. one day i will make one of those too, but i am not gonna ride a bike to do it.

well, that is enough for now. take care all

huggsssss

to be an RN or not to be an RN

i have been up since 7:30 this morning. would not be bad except for the fact that i never went to sleep until after 3. there was a phone call from a former co-worker in the travel field. she has a new position in Louisiana, and thought i might be interested in signing with another company.
well, first, as the number was not familiar to me, i thought it might be one of the companies i had already signed with, but it wasn't
second, who the heck is yolanda? not yolanda she says, its ROlanda, from miami (ohhhhhhh) she said, the pregnant one.
third, not every one is awake at 7:30 in the morning on their days off from work.
it is now about 10 am, and i have been at this computer since she woke me up, checking on travel companies and finding out i have already filled out applications for the company she mentioned. so i shot off a couple of emails to previous persons who had emailed me, to keep them aware that i exist and am still looking for a travel position.
this next saturday, i have an appointment with some gentleman about a school. RN to be exact. i am thinking about extending my education, so that more travel positions will be open to me, or, to just make more money for the work i am ALREADY doing.
i have thought about this before, but i cannot take time off to return to school, and i cannot go to class AND work. i am too old. (yes, i heard that. i am too TOO old, just ask my body).
this school had contacted me before about taking classes with them. it is an almost correspondence class, but it is online courses associated with Indiana State Uninversity. i passed it by before because they wanted me to take a MSN (masters) course, which i would be working on until the day i die. they now offer a BSN (bachelors) course, which i might be able to make it through before my 90th birthday. really tempting, as i will most likely be working until then, the way the government is handling things.
the pre-requisites might hold me back on it. i mean, if i have to work 2 years on those, i do not think i will do the nursing course. that will also take 2 years, so there is 4 years of training. well, it is better than 6 years.
of course, the money will also matter. next year, i will have a little more available, and might be able to swing the finances to make payments for classes, but i do not know if i can swing it right now. can only wait and see what this fella is going to offer me.
off to do chores now. huggggssssss

My Beginning Blog

I never write the title of my blog until I have written it. It is much easier to choose one when I know what the blog is about. I chose the name, In My Dreams I Can Write, well, because I can. Whether it be the dreams I dream when I am actually asleep, or my daydreams. I am one of the most fantastic writers that there is. My words tumble from my fingertips onto the blank page of word, or onto some blog, like this one.
It is odd that I find myself starting a whole new blog, away from facebook and myspace. Maybe it is due to that I closed one of my other blog sites. Feeling the loss of one less place to take my little mouse and pointer to, I find myself here, in eblog land.
Take note, I am using capitals in this blog, but in future blogs, you will most likely find no capitals, as I am horrid about using them when I type. I find that it slows me down. Call me lazy, ok?
Off I go now to explore the possibilities of what I can do in this blog site. Oh. I named it My Beginning Blog, for lack of any other name I could think of.
huggss