A day in my Life - May

May is here!  I'm so happy to welcome my favorite time of year.  The leaves are starting to pop, things are looking greener, flowers are blooming and it's getting warmer!

Here's what I did on May 1.
It was a work day so I was out of the house a little after 7am

 This was taken on our corner.  Such a beautiful morning!

I took the back roads in to work, and saw these cute baby geese!

 I arrived at work about 7:20am.  This is what's waiting by the time clock.  We all check our temperature, fill out a form that asks health questions, sign in what time we come and sanitize our hands.
We have to go back and recheck our temp every 4 hours and then again when we leave.

This was waiting for me in my office.  These are charts of people the Doctor saw via skype the day before.  After he sees them, he writes a note, signs any labs or orders and then faxes it all back to me.  I have to put a copy in the chart, and scan a copy to the electronic file.  He was having issues with his fax, so all that paperwork arrived during the night.  So, this was the first thing I worked on,
Another thing I do early in the morning, is check on our pharmacy site to make sure there are no issues with insurance covering meds.  They often will deny coverage, so I have to fill out forms explaining why something is ordered, what's been tried before...   On this day, there was only one non covered med.
At 9, I went to help feed breakfast.  With Covid 19, our residents that need to be fed can only sit one per table, so more help is needed.  The managers have all been helping pass trays and feed.
At 9:30 we have a managers meeting.   We review our census, any admissions or discharges, staff openings, resignations, any concerns.  We then go over all the charting that has been done in the last 24 hours so we are all away of what's happening with all of our residents.
On this day, one of our residents had really declined over the last 24 hours.  He had a guardian who had his advanced directives signed for him to go to the hospital.  Our team and the Doctor felt that sending him to the hospital again would not be in his best interest.  He had been there twice in the last 6 weeks, hated it and nothing was resolved, he just continued to decline.  So, following the regular meeting a few of us made a conference call to the guardian to review what was going on.  The decision was made to keep him at the facility and keep him comfortable.  Following that call, we made another conference call to the residents daughter to let her know what was going on.  These calls are always hard.  We become quite attached to our residents and their families, and it's not easy telling someone that their loved one probably doesn't have much time left.
With the Covid situation, it's even harder as they haven't been able to visit.  This family was thankful for the update and agreed that continued hospitalizations were not in their Dad's best interests.  They were also allowed to come and visit.
After charting on all of this and getting paperwork sent over to the guardian and doctor, it was time to help feed lunch, and then have lunch myself.

 After lunch, I worked on some continuing education information that we have to do every month.  I also worked on some infection control paperwork.  I have to pull all the information from the month before and put it together giving infection rates, whether they came with the infection or acquired it in house, what the bug was...  and then get things ready for the new month.
I also talked to the doctor a few times and got new orders and updated him on a new resident.
I got done and left a little before 5.  Bob was working until 5, so I drove to his work to pick him up.

I saw this along the way - don't you love seeing the trees turn green?

 Here I was in the parking lot across the street from Bob's work, waiting for him to get out.  We have always tried to go out for supper on Friday night, but haven't been able to do that lately.  We decided to take a little drive and pick something up.  We drove to Grand Haven, picked up hamburgers and drove to Lake Michigan to eat.

 It was good to see the Lighthouse again!

While we were eating, we saw a freighter come out.  If you look closely, you can see that it's going behind the lighthouse, which shows how huge the freighter is.

 Shortly after the freighter left, a little bulldozer came by, leveling out the beach.

It was cloudy, so we didn't get to see a pretty sunset, but it was so nice to go somewhere other than work and home.


We drove back to town and I dropped Bob back at work to pick up his car.
I stopped at the grocery store on the way home to pick up some groceries.
I had a message from my sister asking me to stop to pick something up, so I stopped there and then headed home.

 I got home and put the groceries away, then got into my comfy pj's!

 We relaxed for the rest of the evening, and enjoyed this delicious cake, which was what my sister had for us.
It was a wonderful evening!