Friday, March 18, 2016

First 2016 Post

This is the first post of 2016....in March. Huh. I thought that when I had finished school I would have oodles of time to spend catching up on things I've neglected over the past year. I was wrong....apparently.

I graduated with my 4.0 and felt like Atlas shrugging the world off of my shoulders. I felt light and free. I was absolutely giddy with excitement about what I wanted to do first. Then the decision was made that we were going to sell our house (due to various reasons) and move about an hour away. Well, that put a damper on my giddiness. After meeting with the realtor, we had the month of February to get our house completely ready for showing in order to meet our goal of moving right after the kids get out of school for the summer. Oy vey.

I sit here, on March 18th, (im)patiently waiting for the carpet installers to arrive. They're about 2 hours late, all the bedroom furniture is in the bathrooms, the dining room, and the living room. We've missed our deadline due to the wait on the carpets. The house is literally turned inside out. I still have hope that a summer move will be possible.

On the nursing front, my foo foo free-standing ER was bought out by another organization. The nursing staff was cut in half and I luckily was not laid off. The changes have been disappointing to say the least. Patients have been turned into 'widgets' on a conveyor belt. Everything must be done in the allotted time frame regardless of the patient's situation. It's placed a stress on the doctors and the nurses because sometimes a health problem that has been festering for days, weeks, months cannot be resolved in a 30 minute time period. People are not widgets.

Since the matrix of the free-standing was changed to only one nurse, I'm not getting as many shifts, so I've had to return to working more shifts at my failing hospital ER. During my last shift which was absolutely nuts - every room full with critical patients and holding patients, 15+ people waiting in the lobby and endless ambulances - I was eating a cold pizza slice over the garbage can in the break room because I didn't have time to sit down and I thought, "this is not what I want to do anymore." I'm a seasoned ER nurse, but maybe it's time to move on. Is it selfish to want a 30 minute break to not scarf food over a garbage can during a 12+ hour shift?