My Little Corner of the World

Monday, December 6, 2021

Last Day

Thursday was my last day at work in my current position. Thursdays are the day that our Doctor comes in and sees people. I spent the morning trying to get all the lab orders in for the next month, finishing up infection control reports and writing out instructions for the nurse who will be taking my place.
At noon the Doctor arrived. He did some paperwork, then worked on admitted a new resident. After seeing a few other people, we were paged to go to our training room, where there was a going away party for me!

There was this cake, and punch.

Some people had brought flowers.

And there were sweet cards and notes.
I've been blessed to work with so many wonderful people; I've met and become friends with residents and their families, so it was sad to leave, and I will admit to some tears as I left the building.
I plan to go back and help at times, so it's not good bye.
And I will also tell you that it's been wonderful to have a whole weekend off, with no phone calls or messages to come to work!
My new job starts Wednesday and I'm excited to see how that goes!

Sunday, December 5, 2021

A Day in my Life

Can you believe - it's December! Here's how my first day of the month went.

It was a bit of an unusual day. Tues night, I got a call that the night nurse had called in. Our Director of Nursing was already working the evening shift and had been there during the day, so I said I would come in to work at 10:30 pm. I took a little nap and came to work... so I started my December 1 at work.

Here is one hall, looking very quiet. However, it really wasn't. One man was near death. His son and wife were at his bedside and we were frequently in the room checking him. He passed away about 3:30 am. Another man was up at the nurses station with me. He wasn't tired and just wanted to talk. Another lady was up and very confused. She was sure she should be getting ready to go somewhere and was upset that I wasn't calling her daughter to come pick her up. She agreed to wait until morning, and settled down with some cookies and milk. :)

At about 2:30 in the morning, I had a call from the pharmacy delivery person saying he was coming with our med delivery, but would also have our new IV tote. When these delivery's come, there is a lot of checking and signing that has to be done to make sure what was supposed to come, really did come, and then signing that you have accepted it.

There is a med pass that needs to be done between 5 and 6 am; with meds that should be taken on an empty stomach. That takes about 45 minutes, and then there is the never ending charting that needs to be done.

Because I had a death on my shift, there was extra paperwork and phone calls to be made, but I was ready at 6:30 when my replacement came. I gave report and we also have to count all the narcotics to make sure nothing is missing.

Then I went to my office to get some things done. My office is getting emptier every day. At this time I had only a few more days in this position so I'd been sorting things out, cleaning off the bulletin board and trying to organize so the next person would find it easy to find things and work here.

The nurse who replaced me, knew that I had worked the night without much sleep, so she brought in a Frappuccino to keep me going! :)
I got a bunch of paper work done, and also prepared charts for the doctor visits the next day.
I left about 9:30 am.

Look what I saw on the way home! The long horn cattle were out.

I think they are majestic animals.

I came home, emptied out the bag of things I had taken from the office; a sign, photo, fan, pens, cup...

I crawled into bed a little after 10.

I got up at 2:30. (I couldn't sleep for too long or I would have trouble sleeping that night)

I sat and did some work on our Christmas cards.

Bob came home around 3:30. He had picked up our groceries. I order our groceries online and we just have to pull in and pick them up. That worked out very well on this day!