DECEMBER EXTRAVAGANZA

Its December!
There's snow!
I survived the drive through the mountains without injury (which is a big feat considering the snow and ice and mountain sheep on the highway and darkness...oh the darkness....i shall make no mention of the shadow of the Valley of Death...)!
I survived my first week of work!
Its the moment you have all been PATIENTLY (Z! RJ!) waiting for.... THE DECEMBER UPDATE!

MY FIRST SET (WEEK) AT WORK
Day 1 (monday)

My first day of work. I arrive to discover that my boss is off all week. So no ID tag for me. No form signing. No pay cheque?!? Dang!
It's an usual day on the ward in that it is inondated with students and the patient-to-staff ratio is quite low. My mentor and i are assigned to the medical unit which includes pediatrics, ICU, CCU, palliative, and maternity (unless the mat nurse or midwife is in) in addition to the 7 medicine beds. And they are all going to be mine. That's a lot of people. PANIC!!!!!!!!!!!
And breathe. My mentor assigns me to one patient only. Phew. And peds, ICU, CCU, and palliative are all empty today. And the midwife is in with the mat patients. And there are 5 LPN students running around doing all our work for us. I eat popcorn and watch the staff play scrabble and cards.

Day 2 (tuesday)

My side of the ward is still relatively peaceful. More popcorn. We get a late cardiac admission and i learn how to hook up a cardiac monitor. And then i run across the street to the curling rink for my first game! Which we lose.We lost to a group of high school girls! How embarassing! But they play competitively! And wear matching jackets! I think the matching jackets is a ploy to psych us out. It worked for the first few ends. If they hadnt stopped at 6 ends under the excuse of having to go to bed, we would have beat them. I think my team should wear matching jackets. It'll intimidate our opponents for enough ends to give us the lead. And i shall try Taryn's suggested strategy of yelling things obnoxiously to fake hardcoreness.

Day 3 (wednesday)

My first night shift at the new hospital. Or rather, FEAST NIGHT. My mentor, the LPN and myself decided to bring food for a midnight feast. We ate and we ate and we ate. One of the nurses says nighshifs turn you into a compulsive eater. While i can definitely see her point, i think i eat just as compulsively right now when not at work.There was also quilting and magazine perusing and card playing and eating. Yes, there was some work. We received two new admissions including a possible TIA (its like a stroke) who was hooked up to telemetry which beeped all night because his heartrate didnt like to go above 45. Pump heart pump! And there was the patient who couldnt breathe. Its amazing how some people can look so sickly and have such atypical results but be relatively healthy. His healthy looks like most people's death.

Day 4 (thursday)

My second night shift. The last shift in the set before 5 days off. The shift where you get giddy. It was a busy night. I had 6 patients, two of whom were confused which can be entertaining at 3am. My mentor had a mat patient and her newborn boy. But the ER got busy and the ER nurse had to go on an ambulance transfer to Cranbrook so my nurse was shifted to cover the ER and i was left alone on the unit! Ok, not quite alone. There was the nice LPN and the surgical nurse but she had 9 patients and they were psychotic and demanding. Luckily my patients were the quitely sick kind that sleep or at least stay in bed all night. And the cement. The cement added an extra element of "fun" to the evening. On monday and tuesday during my shifts there were these guys driving what looked like a mini zamboni (or that rock-car from the Never-Ending Story) around the ward. It was a floor ripper-upper. It chewed up the linoleum and spat it out in front of the the machine in a big roll (jelly roll?). None of us could figure out why we needed new flooring. The other one was perfectly adequate. It wasnt a hideous colour and it didnt even have sketchy stains on it! Tonight, the floor guys were back to pour cement. Yes they poured cement on the floors of all the hallways preventing us from going from the nurses' station to patient rooms or the bathroom. It really was quite brilliant. It sounds like fantasy, but it's reality. I pulled out my knitting and worked on my mittens. My mentor painted christmas ornaments. The LPN and the paramedic student played cards. The ER nurse returned from Cranbrook with TIMBITS! They were a big hit because we dont have a Tim Horton's in Creston (which is fine by me because i dont like nicotine or coffee. I like doughnuts though. But i try to tell myself that i dont because the ones in the bakery here look disappointing). The ER nurse (who is crazy and wants to set me up with the new guy at the brewery except she thinks he's too short for it to work out. I say it'll never work because i dont like beer. Oh, and because i'm a Career Woman) has to stain slabs of wood for the craft party for the 80 children of the brewery employees. Around 430am, things took a serious turn. We were moved to random acts of... VANDALISM! Yes, my fourth day of work and i am defacing hospital property. Someone thought it would be funny to paint a hopscotch on the newly poured cement. We had the paint. We had the cement. We used our critical thinking skills and put the two together. End product: a big hopscotch board shaped like a snowman that started at the stairwell and led to the nurses' station. We thought it was really funny. And we didnt think we would get into TOO much trouble since they were just going to put new flooring on it anyways. About an hour later we realized that we didnt know WHEN the new flooring was being laid...

THINGS MY MOM LIKES ABOUT MY NEW PLACE

• the natural light in my apartment
• my motherly landlord
• the fact that i live on the top floor (height = protection)

THINGS I LIKE ABOUT MY NEW PLACE

• it has two bedroms and they are ALL MINE
• it is a 3 minute walk to work
• there is free cable at the moment
• i have the whole top floor which = windows facing all the cardinal directions
• all windows have a view of delicious snow-covered mountains
• i live around the corner from the postoffice
• Town Hall is my nextdoor neighbour
• my building used to be the courthouse

THINGS TO WORK ON LIKING

• no grocery stores open past 7 on weekdays (which is the same time i finish work)
• pink carpet
• pink television set (i kid you not! I didnt know that when i bought it!)
• stairs (there are 10 down and then 26 up to get into my house. Yes down and up!)
• no cafés open past sundown
• no sunday shopping
• no good fastfood frenchyfries
• the low temperature of my apartment whose heat, as i learned after i moved in, i can not control (Yesterday i bought flannel sheets in an effort to combat the cold. As some of you may recall, i do not like flannel.)
• flannel
• being a single person hanging out with primarily married couples (for those of you who have not experienced this, it may seem trivial. Trust me, it is not)

Bountiful

There are many persons from Bountiful who come through the hospital as employees, patients, or visitors. I think that this is a good community to observe for possible ideas for my new project of colonizing the moon.