The Best Is Yet To Be

Job Hunting: Let The Games Begin!

By VivaLasViejas - As much fun as job-hunting is (said no one ever), I knew I was doomed the very first time I visited the Employment Division's job search website and found only a handful of nursing jobs that I can actually do. Sixteen years of experience under my belt, and it appears that the only things I'm good for anymore are per diem jobs giving flu shots (at $20 per hour and no benefits), and management positions like the one that nearly cost me every last marble I had left to play with. Um.....no... Read More →

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Fired After Fifty: Redux

By VivaLasViejas - Several years ago when I was laid off from my LTC job due to low census, I remember despairing of ever finding another job. I was in my early fifties then. At the time I had a bad knee that had ended my floor career despite surgery, and to add insult to injury I'd gained thirty pounds due to inactivity. I couldn't imagine who would want to hire me. But I had barely drawn the first few unemployment checks when I got two calls: one for another LTC, and one for an assisted living facility that I... Read More →

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Welcome to the Jungle

By VivaLasViejas - I've been out of acute care for many years now, but I'll never forget the experience of being a float nurse. It was the best of all possible worlds: I was cross-trained to all the different nursing departments instead of remaing stuck in Med/Surg, which even then was a thankless, backbreaking job. I got to learn how to 'catch' babies and take care of sick neonates; saw some grisly traumas in the emergency room; worked with respiratory therapy and served as the IV nurse. But it was critical... Read More →

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Anxiety Disorders: More Than Just Butterflies

By VivaLasViejas - Almost everyone has experienced it: the sensation of butterflies in your stomach as you prepare for a presentation or an appearance in traffic court. The dry mouth that makes you feel like you're spitting cotton. The rapid heart rate and slight shortness of breath that characterize a normal response to stressful stimuli. In other words, you're feeling anxious. Now imagine those sensations writ large. Instead of butterflies, you feel nausea and may even vomit or experience diarrhea. Your... Read More →

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I Hate Being Bipolar. It's AWESOME!

By VivaLasViejas - We've been talking a lot about mental illness during this early part of May, which has been designated as Mental Health Awareness Month. Nurses and students with all sorts of psychiatric conditions have been coming "out of the closet" and sharing their stories with candor (and not a small amount of courage). We've welcomed several new members who joined in order to comment and, in some cases, tell a little about their own experiences. And so far, readers have been very gracious and even curious... Read More →

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For Whom The Bell Tolls

By VivaLasViejas - As my favorite author, Erma Bombeck, once said: "There is no way that your foot will ever get well as long as there is a horse standing on it." In my case, that means I won't get well until there is less stress in my life, and the only way to have less stress in my life is to get away from its source. Today, I finally came to understand that my once-loved job is that metaphorical beast, and it's not only standing on my foot but grinding it into the dirt, crushing the delicate bones to powder... Read More →

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Mental Health Awareness Month

By VivaLasViejas - Raise your hands: How many Allnurses.com readers know that in addition to mothers and deceased war veterans, the month of May is dedicated to mental health awareness? Give yourself a gold star for the day if you were able to lift a palm in the affirmative. Most Americans---including healthcare professionals!---don't have a clue. And if you, like me, are someone who cares about mental health, it should alarm you that statistics show as many as one in four Americans is affected, either... Read More →

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(Remember) Walking In the Sand

By VivaLasViejas - "I Had A Life---But My Job Ate It" proclaims the bumper sticker I just put on our 13-year-old Ford. I don't usually adorn my vehicles with stickers---I've always thought they were sort of tacky---but considering all that's gone on in the past few weeks, it's quite appropriate. I bought the sticker in a funky little gift shop, the kind that can only be found in beach towns like the one my husband and I visited yesterday. We'd gone there on strict physician's orders---my psychiatrist and I... Read More →

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Quo Vadis?

By VivaLasViejas - Life, as my grandmother used to say is a very odd little duck......you live through five or six decades, fashioning an existence that (hopefully) reflects your values, and learning to be at peace with who you are and where you're going. Then suddenly "stuff" gets real, and you find yourself standing at a crossroads where you're given a list of choices as to where you want to go next; the only option you don't have is staying where you are. I just arrived at that intersection yesterday. And I... Read More →

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Ol' Roy

By VivaLasViejas - A gaunt, elderly gentleman in bib overalls appeared in front of the ancient farmhouse, smoking an unfiltered cigarette and watching me closely as I pulled off the road into the dusty driveway. Next to him stood a dark-haired woman who seemed at first glance to be young enough to be his granddaughter, but whose face, upon closer inspection, was almost as weathered as his. The two greeted me warmly, if a bit cautiously, as I stepped onto the porch. As I've done many times in my career, I had... Read More →

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Everything I Know About Life.......

By VivaLasViejas - Am I the only person around here who's sappy enough to have owned a copy of that adorable poster with all the things someone learned about life in kindergarten? As cliche'd as it all sounds now, I've never forgotten such pithy sayings as "Hold hands when you're crossing the street" and "Wash your hands BEFORE you go to the bathroom". Oh, wait.....that was nursing school, not kindergarten. Oops. I was trying to focus on my weekly nutrition-at-risk report this afternoon when the memory of that... Read More →

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You Can't Go Home Again

By VivaLasViejas - It was just an ancient nursing home, with Vander lifts parked in the too-narrow hallways and the hustle and bustle of staff members on their way to answer the constant shrieks of tab alarms. Located on top of what must be the biggest ant hill this side of the Rockies, it was utilitarian and built for efficiency, not looks, although the powers that be kept trying to improve it by installing hardwood floors and elegant lighting systems in the hallways. I tried telling them once that it was pretty... Read More →

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You See, It's Like This........

By VivaLasViejas - "Hey, you should've been there when I finally let Arwen have it," Sarah (not her real name) tells me as we sit down in the nondescript break room of our assisted living facility to sip go-go juice and discuss our weekends. She's telling me this because I think her live-in dipwad---excuse me, significant other---is a horse's patootie who sponges off her and treats her like last week's garbage. "You'd have been proud of me...I threw all his junk out the window, then I told him where to go and how... Read More →

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The Stranger Within: One Year Later

By VivaLasViejas - It's always been a source of wonder and amusement to me that during my frequent searches for an item I've misplaced, I always seem to find something else that brings back a memory or two. And, like many of the elderly Moms and Pops at the assisted living community where I work, I often get so lost in the new distraction that I completely forget what I was doing before. It happened again earlier this evening as I was going through some of my old blog entries here on AN and ran across a piece... Read More →

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After Nursing: Is There Life Out There?

By VivaLasViejas - I knew it was too good to last forever. Today, in a meeting with my company's regional director of operations and the corporate nurse consultant, my Executive Director and I learned that we will both probably be let go if our building doesn't pass our re-survey next month. We got our butts handed to us during the exit interview last time, and we've had some challenges that have put us behind schedule in getting the new programs up and running in response to the problems found during the... Read More →

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