How do I continue to do this career? I feel like I’ve tried every available, reasonable option. I’ve worked the floor, I worked the E.R, I’ve travel nursed, I did clinical coordinator, and now I do Home Health....suppose to be part time but never is. I’ve driven 1.5 hours to get to work and I’ve worked 30min away from my home. I have been a nurse for 11 years this month and I’m just tired of trying to make it work. Part of my pain is something that has nothing to do with work...and yet does a little bit. Because I was traveling around and trying to find a fit, and because I can count on one hand the amount of men I have worked with, I did not date much and thus did not get married until I was 33. My husband and I have been trying to have a child and it isn’t working out well. We have been told that IVF is our only realistic option but we can’t even get approved for a loan to do it due to my husband’s previous debt. And unfortunately I only make 50k a year and only have a house payment in my name, but they tell me for my husband and I to get approved for the loan we would need to make about 130k a year. My husband is a tradesman and we have never made more than 80k together in a year. However last year he did not have any work at all (Trumps great economy my ***.) Adoption is about as much as IVF and since my husband and I are older also a kind of long shot. (He is 57 and I am 38).
Yes I could probably go back to travel nursing or return to the ER and make more money than I do now, but I’m just tired. Travel nursing was not terrible, but it is always having to learn a new place, system, doctors, and hope you are following their policies correctly when everyone is to busy for you to ask questions. And it is lonely as my husband can’t get work if he is traveling with me. The ER was okay until my dad died 2 years ago and then all the sudden it got very hard to take care of codes for me. Now I do Home Health which is a cake walk compared to my hospital experience, except the charting. Like I can see all my 6-7 patients in 8.5 hours, and I do try to chart as I see them, but I usually have 2-3 hours of charting to do every evening once getting home. Not to mention that I always have to work a little the day before calling the patients with visit times and organizing my day (my agency requires we call the night before between 5-9pm). I usually drive 80-100 miles a day. And thus I feel like I never get a real day off because either I’m catching up on my charting or I have to be home to receive my schedule (we have EPIC and no longer get the schedule emailed to our phones, it is only on our work computer and I’m not carrying that around everywhere) by a certain time. And if the people doing the schedule are late putting it out then I can’t get to things I want to do like yoga which is from 6pm-7:30pm. As I don’t have a full team of patients that are mine, I always have 4-5 people on my schedule that I am unfamiliar with. So unlike full time people who kind of know who they are going to see day to day, I almost never do.
I just feel there is no winning with nursing. In all of my jobs I almost NEVER get out on time. I almost ALWAYS have more patients than agreed to be caring for in my interview. I mean hell, when my dad died at 11am it took until 6pm for the hospital to get things squared away so I could leave without fear of abandonment. I actively now screen my calls and I NEVER pick up, then get ***ed at for not being a team player. This last job in home health I made it very, very, very clear that my time comes first. It isn’t about money, although I definitely deserve the money they are paying me plus some. I gave back a 10K bonus and was like ‘All I want from you is a work load that allows me to have my life back.’ Needless to say there is always some excuse why I have 7 patients instead of 6, or why my 6 patients are 80-100miles of drive time. I’m just done. There is always some reason why we (me and my coworkers) need to do more and be better. There is minimal education with outrageous expectations. I am just done. I am a good, reliable, safe, and compassionate nurse. I have worked many, many jobs and have maybe met a handful that I could not describe in the same manner. It isn’t us not doing the work right or well or fast enough that’s the problem. It’s the institutions and their ***ing nut job expectations. It is patients that go to hospitals called ‘Hospitality’ (that is the real name of a hospital in the Houston, Texas area BTW) expecting a spa day instead of care and business minded idiots who set up that expectation from the get go by naming their ***ing institution Hospitality. I just want to go to work, do my job, and be allowed to leave on time 90% of the time. I want to be able to pee regularly and have a regular lunch break, and lastly I want to have enough energy when I get home (or the next day) to have sex with my husband so I can hopefully have a family....so I can have my life.
Sadly I just don’t see that as a possibility as a nurse without just being a real ***. Like I am just going to have to say no to being in any committee, to staying late EVER for anyone else, to working extra or working over. I find this really hard to do because I believe in team work. I know that team work is how we make it through, but if I stick to my own I can get done. If I do nothing extra I can be with my husband and not be quite as exhausted. I just don’t see how helping others means I have to sacrifice myself this much and I really don’t see humans as worthy of the sacrifice of myself as I once did when I was 22 and really idealistic. I believe everyone deserves good, data based, compassionate care, just not at the expense of my life and desires....ever.
As someone who went thru something similar, I would like to quickly point out how rewarding adoption is thru DHS can be. taking the time to foster or adopt a child out of a bad situation may sound daunting but ultimately is a beautiful thing.
Specializes in Surgical Specialty Clinic - Ambulatory Care.
On 6/18/2019 at 10:50 AM, Davey Do said:
Elbert Hubbard wrote in his 1903 book Contemplations (of which I own a first printing): "He remained childless in order to love all children".
Had Mr. Hubbard ascribed to this way of thinking, he may have written, "She had children in order to be a role model that didn't give a *** about other people's children".
Okay. I'm done.
I don’t give a crap about other people’s kids....I don’t mean this statement in a biological sense.
The idea that one can obtain the same satisfaction of contributing to other people’s children as they would being a parent is just absurd and a consolation prize at best. And mostly my opinion on this is based on doing day care, then helping with a children’s theater program, then teaching kids’ Kung Fu, and finally running a ‘Teddy Bear’ clinic at a hospital where I taught kids about how hospitals work, mostly church groups and girl/Boy Scouts.
In today’s world....and maybe has always been?....people are crazy freaks about their children. For better or worse they tend to have a need to control ALL interaction between their children and their children’s peers and their children and other adults. As I have said before, one can not truly have a relationship with a child if one is constantly having to monitor their own behavior to meet the child’s parent’s expectations or have fear of the contact be terminated. This happens frequently these days. I’m talking about instances like my grandmother telling me when I was like 10 that I needed to quit eating so much because I was getting fat. Now my mom disagreed with my grandmother and they squabbled about it. But the next day my mom dropped me off at my grandma’s house anyway. My grandmother was going to say what she was going to say and I had to learn to deal with her opinions. Almost 30 years later and my sister has kids ranging from 2-7. He middle boy is 5 and she lets him wear makeup and dresses. My mom happened to say to my nephew, who was going to be the only boy at tea party he was going to, “ Won’t you feel weird being the only boy at this girl party you are going to?” My sister threw a fit, kicked my mom out of her house, and hasn’t let either of us talk to her kids in a month. This is why I can’t give a damn about other people’s kids. If even as a family member you are cut off from interacting with children because you have an opinion or make a statement the parent may not like, then the only effective way to have a relationship with a child is to have one your own. It could apply to an adopted/foster child but again the state has to inspect who you are and how you are going to parent before you get to have one...so eh, nope doesn’t really work. Then you just have a bunch of superficial relationships so that you don’t suffer the consequences of having no relationships.
I haven’t read all the responses, but your post and some of your replies that I’ve read are very poignant and resonate with your truth. I have a couple things to say:
1. You've received some good career advice, such as outpatient surgery work. Consider moving away from home health which appears to be eating you alive.
2. Make some immediate decisions to bring love and joy into your live. I personally would get a puppy. What’s right for you might look a little different, I don’t know. Hot tub? Regular massage? You need some relief NOW that doesn’t depend on your husband or your job. Make it a priority to bring some joy and love into your life ASAP- because you are in an emotional emergency imo.
3. Consider helping a baby out. You may not be ready for this, but ultimately it might bring you some peace. Volunteer to hold drug addicted babies at a hospital. Or become a respite foster care provider, and care for a baby one weekend a month. Volunteer/work at a respite nursery once or twice a month in order to help a family in crisis. If you are open to it, it can be healing and centering to hold a baby. It begins with you helping them, but in the end there are two people being held in the rocking chair.
I am a veteran of the IVF wars - 7 tries, 7 failures. We adopted a 2 year old from Russia who is the light of my life, he is 27 now. We moved from CT to MA in 1989 because MA has health insurance mandate infertility treatment.
I did home care for several years while my husband was sick and dying, it gave me just enough flexibility in my life to care for him and our teenage son. I would end up documenting until midnight then be up at 4 am to prep for days visits.
The stress that this profession dumps on us is not conducive to trying to conceive. Home care nursing can be hell on earth. Maybe consider a paper pushing position and give getting pregnant the old fashioned way? Or move to a star that has IVF coverage? Or get your spouse to work a second job?
Staff note - very sensitive subject for everyone. Important that even if we have differing opinions, its very important to remain sensitive to others' feelings. Thank you
Pardon my saying this ,the problem is not nursing,...I do not know how long you have been married. Unfortunately your husband at age 57, is not a good provider,has not managed money well,has or had big debt.Have you figured out how to provide for a baby on one income yet?
Nursing is your salvation,there is always a way to make an income.I hear often on Dave Ramseys show how couples making less have paid off all debt. You are still young enough at 33 to have children but when your child is a teenager he will be around 76.
So sorry for your situation,if it is meant to be so be it,take care of yourself,keep the yoga class up, study the financial picture and plan to fix this.
You are grieving. You already know how this will end and you are fighting it. First thing first....get a counselor. You need a trusted ear to assist you through the grief and disappointment. Everything is souring for you, but it doesn’t need to stay that way. You can move through this, you just can’t see it yet. You need help. This board is okay, but you need a trusted partner making this trip WITH you right now and your husband isn’t it. I wish you all the best....it will be hard, but it will be worth it. You can do this!
First of all, you might want to move from Houston. Pay for nurses there just isn't that good. I work in the Atlanta area, where pay is a little better. But keep in mind some hospitals do provide help with IVF and adoption costs. Mine does. Also, there are many other kinds of nursing beyond home health and ER. Perhaps you could do care coordination? I am so sorry you're feeling so stressed. It certainly doesn't help when your spouse isn't supportive.
Specializes in icu,prime care,mri,ct, cardiology, pacu,.
You’ve had a lot of good advice but the best is getting a counselor for yourself. It’s a gift. Been there, had one child, 4 miscarriages, then another miracle child. Each miscarriage is a child and a death. You need to grieve and I’m sorry to say this, but men don’t really understand your connection with the baby.
Try to change jobs for your physical and mental health. Get that counselor and maybe a pet to help you focus.
The only identifiable issue is his sperm count and morphology. We were pregnant once last year but miscarried at 6 weeks. But his ego is getting in the way and he often says stupid *** like “I don’t believe that doctor. Of the two of us, which has kids?” And I want to just scream, so like what? It’s my fault that I practiced safe sex until I got married? Geez, I’m a ***ing idiot for practicing safe sex and for wanting the guy I married to be my friend and a lover....not just a guy who liked my paychecks?
Whoa,there is something big going on here,you need to pay attention to what each of you is saying......
Can you work block time only for your agency? I work for one that does allow for field nurses to work block time without doing short "visits". I work for Aveanna which is in many states....maybe one near you that you won't have to drive so far to patients. I wish you relief and comfort! Donna R.N.
dspaldrn/emt
9 Posts
As someone who went thru something similar, I would like to quickly point out how rewarding adoption is thru DHS can be. taking the time to foster or adopt a child out of a bad situation may sound daunting but ultimately is a beautiful thing.