Nurse out of water

Ordinarily I don’t mind floating, but today I was SO not in the mood for it.  Fish out of water x 12 hours…blah.

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes it’s nice to spend a day with a different patient population – like sampling yogurt, you get a small taste without having to commit.  But I also love routine (who doesn’t?) and after working yesterday, I was looking forward to having the familiarity that comes with a second shift in a row.  Even when patients are busy I’m still able to get a sense of rhythm by day two.  There’s a comfort level.  An ease.  More than knowing what meds are on deck or how their blood pressure changes over the course of the day, I know what schedules the patients like with dressing changes, respiratory treatments, meals, physical therapy, sleeping, seeing family, etc.  (those sidebar details that make the day run more smoothly).  So yeah, even if my patients are on the heavier side, I still prefer returning to the same ones because I know them.

The worst part about floating is how isolating it can feel.

I didn’t know anyone, I didn’t know where anything was, I didn’t know how the unit did things…I was constantly asking questions for the simplest things.  Sometimes I felt like more of a nuisance than anything else.  At least the people there were nice.

The wild card was the fact that DHS was visiting.  I knew they were checking out the hospital because they were on my unit yesterday.  Even though the audit was a surprise it wasn’t that big of a deal.  We cross our t’s and dot our i’s already.  At my previous hospital, the prep for JCAHO and other accrediting agencies was a huge process effing ordeal.  But that’s probably because we were cutting corners for the other 10 months of the year.  Such a pain.  Where I work now is world class.  Top notch.  We don’t have to do anything differently when certain higher-ups pop in because we are already 100% complaint with the policies.  It feels awesome.  Can you tell how proud I am of where I work?

That said, it’s an entirely different feeling when you’re on a foreign floor, working with foreign people, with a foreign patient population.

How about I just ask a million questions and page the doctor with abnormal signs/symptoms.  No?  That’s not the protocol?

Ok, ok, I’m being semi-dramatic.  They didn’t even visit the unit I was floating to.  Thank God.

Mostly I just medicated for pain again and again and again.  I have never missed computerized charting so much!  Since I’m a newer spoiled nurse, I was still sucking my thumb back in the dark ages of paper charting.  It seems so ancient!  It took me half the shift just figuring it all out.  And the OR pharmacy isn’t exactly keen on delivering IVs either.  🙁

And yet, all these issues were nothing compared to my growling tiger hidden dragon appetite.  I am so glad I ate my breakfast in the car before work because I didn’t even get a sip of water, let alone coffee or breakfast, until 11 o’clock.  I cannot run on oxygen alone.  This girl needs her carbs!

I was up at 4:45 am for meditation exercises.  I’ve been doing them in the morning before work instead of exercise nowadays.  It’s good for me – helps me relax and focus my energy on the positive (because my mega type A persona needs all the zen it can get).  On the way to work I listened to massage room music (this cd for anyone interested) and then enjoyed my bowl of oats in the hospital parking lot.

Oats, coconut flour, chai tea, stevia.

Points worth noting:

• chai tea and coconut are a really great pairing
• I steep the tea for the oats with a used tea bag (that way the flavor isn’t crazy strong, but still very present)
• coconut flour makes oats super thick and cake batter like (as you can see above)

Tazo

Thank goodness I ate early (I usually just have a little snack before work and eat my packed breakfast between 9-10), but you can’t do that when you don’t know where the break room is and the DHS is watching you like a hawk.

So that’s all I had until 11, at which point I finished my coffee (finally) and had maple glazed pecans. 

Originally I was supposed to go for my lunch at 1200, but I think they felt bad for me and gave me a 1:30 lunch instead.  Because really, who wants to eat breakfast at 11 and lunch at 12?  That’s just silly.  Pity scheduling is fine with me.

Lunch was a tofu scramble with firm ‘fu, spinach, cherry tomatoes, turmeric, ground mustard, tamari, lemon juice, cumin, and paprika.

Mmmm.

I crushed the Mixt Bag (vegan, gluten free) tortilla chips over it and scooped them onto the bread for an open-faced sandwich style meal.

   

And if you’re wondering about the cooking process, I just drained the tofu (without pressing it), added it to a sprayed pan with tomatoes, and crushed it as it cooked.  I added the spices and spinach later, which took no time to wilt.

Turmeric is my new fave spice.

And these are my new fave chips.

Salty enough to make my sodium seeking taste buds happy, but not too salty to make me need ACE inhibitors.

Extras: carrots, candied ginger, calcium (dark chocolate).

I found the break room after lunch but it didn’t do me much good at that point.  It was far far away from the unit and locked with a code I never learned.  Not exactly conducive to snacking on the job.

My drive home was so so sweet.

And I have no clue how, but dinner was abnormally inspired.

*Wow.  This post has some grade A professional whining going on.  Sorry for subjecting you all to my complaints.