Streamlined

How could a prayer of any kind possibly be construed as offensive when you take into account the idea that all the belief systems in the world are for the comfort and mitigation of fear for the LIVING, not the dead. You're alive, you're scared, you're sad: of course it's ok to say a prayer.

Now THIS is some interesting content. My mom got killed by a drunk driver 21 days after my first child was born. Mind you, I'm an agnostic now, but I am a believer in how important it is to so many people to be a believer. Anyway, a few weeks after my mom was taken, I had a dream wherein I received a phone call from her. We talked real casual-like "so how's everything there?" " It's just fine, real nice, don't worry about me" "ok,bye" that sort of thing. As if she was calling from Hawaii to tell me the hotel room was just fine. But it comforted me. Her death certificate states that she died at 2:22 on 2/22/88. I often wake up in the middle of the night to see that the clock says 2:22. This happens to my younger sister also. We just say Hi Mom and it's comforting.

THe unit I work in now has very little flexibility for when a staff nurse calls in sick. Our manager is a freak about making you feel even worse when you do call in. Never says anything like "hope you feel better" or any such normal behavior. SHE comes to work sick, is even proud of it. Once she bragged that she had pulled over onto the side of the road to puke on her way in to work. Isn't that nice?

We have enough stupid new words. This would be one more reason for the ignorant public to feel less than respectful of nurses. Who came up with this anyway?

I work in a tidy little Ambulatory Care now, but one of my favorite med/surg memories involves the day I approached a patient's bedside with the intention of removing his femoral vas-cath, and accidently knocked over a urinal (full) and a vase of flowers. I knew damn well that I could clean everything up much faster than it would take to call "housecreeping"---I love love love that!, so I went and found the mop cart(tucked into an alcove while the person assigned to it was taking her break, of course--see what I mean?) and got the job done. All the while I'm chatting with the patient, moving his bed, the bedside table cause of course water went everywhere, we're having us a gay old time, laughing. so I take the cart back to its alcove, fellow nurses kidding me, warning me not to let any housekeeping union reps catch me in the act, teasing me about being too anal,etc. Back to the patient"s room now, wash my hands, get out my sterile gloves, my suture removal kit, my 4X4's, and proceed with my original plan. And chatting with the patient, keeping him draped, applying pressure to his groin, all the while he's not even noticing that the woman who is in intimate contact with his bloodstream was one minute ago mopping piss off the floor.

When I worked med/surg, part of my assessment process included checking for the menu/TV sign. If the patient asked about how to work the TV and/or asked for a menu within the first five minutes of his arrival to the unit, that constituted the "positive menu/TV" sign and he prompty assumed a lower number on my priority list.

I couldn't take the bruises anymore and finally quit the med/surg unit in the high-ranking hospital I once worked at mainly for the semi-private room issue. I'd say 50% of my time was spent moving patients--their beds, their stuff, their bedside commodes, their families--over incompatible roomates. The kicker was that each semi-private room was originally designed to be a single and the architect had somehow forgotten to factor in the need for closets. So here you had two beds and two scabbed on storage lockers that protruded into the room, you had two miserable little patients trapped in their beds because the nurse could literally not get at them, what with the surrounding chairs that the visitors sat in, the IV poles , the bedside potty (that visitors usually sat in not knowing there was probably a pool of pee right under them), the wadded-up SCD's---I think you can all picture this,right? No CNA that I have ever worked with has ever figured out how to clear a path to the patient. And forget about an RN knowing how to do this. We all just change our behavior and alter our common sense to squeeze ourselves into this space long enough to give pills, listen to complaints about roomates, answer a few questions. While you're therre, you bump your trochanteric process on the siderail of the bed behind the curtain. Two days laterr, you wonder how the hell you got that bruise. I stuck it out for 20 years. I kept waiting for the architect of that hospital to show up as a patient so I could give him a piece of my mind, show him by bruises, and apologize for not being able to start a new IV because I couldn't exactly reach him, but he (and you know it was a he) never showed up.

Mine is a reference to my favorite pastime--swimming. And swimming is the most fitting metaphor for life in general: you need to be smooth, be efficient, make every stroke count, make no waves or energy-wasting splashing, be mindful of the other swimmers yet blissfully absorbed in your own work-out. Just like in your nursing job you want to accomplish alot with the most efficent and conservative output of energy. Streamlined in when you are long, smooth, solitary, strong. I can dream, can't I?

Dear Nurse Cathy, Please remember that this is a human being that you're talking about. If you're uncomfortable, why don't you take a moment to sit down with her and get to know her. Ask her what pronoun to use, for example. She has all the answers for you if only you would ask the questions. She knows you're uncomfortable and she wishes you weren't. She wants to succeed in life just as any person would. She wants to take care of others, just as any nurse does. There is no right or wrong other than it is wrong not to treat another as you would wish to be treated. Make her a friend and both of you will prosper. Now, should it be that she's an incompetent numbskull, kick her ass out of the program, just as you would any sub-standard student.

I'm all for putting an end to harrassment, don't think I condone it in any way, but bear in mind that most doctors are society's social imbeciles. Here I risk making a blanket stereotype and I should know better, but think about it. They spend their youth maintaining their grade point average, study like crazy in college and med school, get married too young, probably to another doctor, and because the world is in collusion and we treat them like they're God's gift, they never learn simple manners and codes of behavior. There is a thin line between these guys just being doofuses-sp-and being harrassers. They're probably just like us, they want recognition of some kind only they don't know how to get it respectfully. How about the old fart docs who come up behind you and give you a neck rub? Is that harrassment or is that just some old guy who wants to connect? How about the ones who call you "the girls" or "honey"? To this ortho doc who wants a sponge bath so bad, I'd tell him I'm sorry he doesn't get enough attention at home, but you don't even have time to give your patients sponge baths so his chances are very slim.

Dear Fartella, If you have dietary habits that you suspect could be the cause of your nether decibels, why don't you try eliminating them systematically? I'd start with the diet Coke. There is nothing good about soda, your body will never miss it. As they say, don't try to eliminate a bad habit, simply start a new good habit to replace it. You might really benefit from drinking plain old water. We all have our crosses to bear. Yours are probably manageable. You have the answers already, you know.

And don't you love all those people who take pregnisone? I'm also especially fond of those lucky people who had great results with that Lasix surgery on their eyes.

Your profile says you live near the ocean. Which ocean? Is there any chance that you are enough of a fish-eater that you might have toxic levels of mercury in your system? This is a little-appreciated concern on the West Coast and very few doctors are clued in. I don't want to focus too much on the zebra, but if all your basics are normal (CBC, liver finction,thyroid ,ANA), why not ask to have your mercury level checked? If you are anywhere near San Francisco, check out the findings of Jane Hightower MD.

I work in a hospital in the SF Bay Area where the pain assessment scale that is posted over every bed is in 6 languages (not including the smiley/crying faces). I feel no friction with any staff person, but I get very edgy about a certain "type" of black patient. Sometimes it is the family member who demonstrates this "type" of racist behavior, ie the I'm-looking-for-this-white-nurse-to=be-a-racist-and by golly, I'm going to find it. Lunch tray doesn't get picked up quick enough, it's because I'm black. Not enough chairs in the room for the visitors, it's because I'm black. This behavior is recognized by staff of all backgrounds; we call it" the race card". It makes me uncomfortable and I don't like the way I cope with my discomfort. Sometimes I avoid, sometimes I ass-kiss, sometimes I bend over backwards, sometimes I "delegate". Whatever I end up doing to prevent entanglement with this chip-on-the-shoulder sub-group, I feel like a phony. I never feel this with Asians or Hispanics or non-English-speaking white people. But the Black Bigots are alive and well playing the race card.