A Nurse's Diary 1992

I located and transferred the results and plan concerning the above situation:

1 hour ago, Daisy4RN said:

I wasnt keeping a diary in 1992 

Most likely, it doesn't matter that you didn't keep a journal, Daisy, because the majority of us lead relatively boring lives and are unable to express ourselves well enough in the written word to be interesting to others.

It's like someone said: "Just because it happened to you doesn't make it interesting".

I've kept journals since back in the '70's, and let me tell you- the majority of my entries are a real snooze fest.

My journals only became interesting when my cartoons and other drawings took precedence. Oh, I have journals with drawings from over 40 years ago, but drawings did not dominate until the mid '90's, when I got into the public art thing. I figured that if I was going to be a freelance artist, I needed to practice at it every day.

Where once I struggled to come up with one piece of self-perpetuated artwork a day, I now will sometimes do as many as twenty. Or, I'll complete an involved work in a day's time.

Speaking of art, before I even thought about this thread and sharing my almost 30 year old entries from my journals, I found an entry where I mentioned my art room in my newly built house. I also noted that I was putting in applications at other places, in hopes of leaving Anomaly State Hospital:

None of my applications proved fruitful. I don't recall anything from Cowville, and the position at WRTH fell through because the CD unit never came into being. I was offered a position at ACH the following year, 1993, as a school nurse, but turned It down when offered a position as an HH agency NS.

Thanks for sharing in this walk down Memory Lane, Daisy!

1 hour ago, morelostthanfound said:

my salary as a graduate nurse in 1992; $12.75/hr 

I left Anomaly State Hospital in September 1992 to work at Buoy Memorial in ER and med surge. I don't remember my pay at the state hospital, but at Buoy I made $12.50/hour.

It was kind of a strange pay rate- the nurses worked 36 hours per week but were paid for forty.

Buoy is a small rural 19 bed hospital with two rooms for ER and an attached 40 bed LTC facility. The typical census while I worked there was 3-6 patients. On MNs, there was one RN assigned for ER and one for med surge.

I once said that my entire year's experience in ER would make one boring episode of the soon-to-be TV show "ER". There was A LOT of down time, as I noted in my journal:

For example, one time I did a three 12 hour ER stint and only had one patient who came in because he was having a headache.

There were a few times, as one Doc noted, "We saved that patient's life".

But the majority of the time, there was little or nothing to do. About this time, my Mom had given me a small drawing journal and I began taking it to work. I drew this on the night of December 11, 1992:

As far as your wish that you had kept a journal, MLTF, it's never too late to jot down memories. If you choose to do so, make it an enjoyable experience by not being concerned about grammar, spelling or penmanship- just let the words flow. I term it "spewing", and it's also a great catharsis for dealing with feelings.