Sleep Walking

To follow Joe's example, I'll do a little update of my own. Like Joe said, the move went amazingly well. Although, we have seemed to have left Lizz and Scott with a little bit more of the clean-up than I had hoped. Sorry again, guys. Perhaps a bit o' compensation cheese can help make up for it? Mmmmmm...colby. Mmmmmm...aged cheddar. :) Too easy, right? We wish them good luck as they get everything straightened out and perhaps get moved soon to NYC? You can keep informed of the going ons of Lizz and Scott at their blogs.

The weekend that we moved, we also went to Andrew and Erica Douglas' wedding. Lot of fun, great band ;). Our wedding last September ended up being the Mark Phillips Band's successful audition for their wedding. It was great spending time with everyone.

We're now settled enough in the house that we can invite people over and have a place for them to sit (and sleep). Although, it is still among a lot of boxes and piles of clothes. Unpacking will come slowly, as will re-touching and re-painting some of these rooms. Amazingly, Joe is indifferent about the purple bedroom and I can't stand it. Go figure. Oscar seems to have settled in well...aside from occasionally trying to attack the dogs next door through the fence. His new buddy, Luna, comes over once in awhile to enjoy the air conditioning and chase tennis balls in the backyard.

My night work schedule has been a tough adjustment. Only this week have I started to get a decent amount of sleep during the day and not feel completely goofy at work. When I have a day or two off and then go back to work, I really have a hard time adjusting back. Since I sleep during the day (I'm not awake during business hours), poor Joe has to deal with making all of the phone calls to the bank, insurance, etc.

I've worked my way up from feeling apprehensive about being responsible for just one patient at a time and I am now starting to feel confident about having five patients at night...tonight I'll have five patients to care for and one new admission. I've had to deal with some pretty unusual occurences that most orientees, much less some of the more experienced nurses, usually don't get experience in for quite some time. So, it's good that I have these things happen while in orientation and not once I'm on my own. Although, at least at nights the nurses are extremely supportive of each other. Unless they have something unusual happening themselves, they are always willing to drop what they are doing to help work on the issue. When something goofy does happen, the other nurses (without a second thought) will make sure that your other four or five patients are being cared for still too. My preceptor (a nurse that's training me) says that I must have some special "Alert and Oriented" dust too. I've had several patients where the nurses' report from previous shifts have stated that the patient is demented, forgetful or "pleasantly confused". For some reason, when I work with them, they're 100% lucid, coherent, with short term and long term memory intact. I'm the cure for dementia! Or perhaps it means that I'm just that demented myself and just think that I'm communicating with them at a normal level. Who knows! At least I feel like I'm having a normal, lucid conversation with them. My preceptor has witnessed it too, though. So I'm not completely nuts.

Nevertheless, it's going fairly well at Meriter. There are days that I feel like a complete idiot and I've forgotten to do little things that have been easily resolved. So, time management and paperwork are two of the big barriers. Five and six patients is a lot to coordinate the care of (nights have the most, days the least number of patients)...and the patients don't all just sleep at night. Therefore, my paperwork gets put on the back burner sometimes when a patient is suddenly alone with their thoughts at night and needs some extra TLC. This is a part of my job that I love, and it includes making sure that I then coordinate their needs (consults, communicating with the MD either verbally or by notes and with other nurses, etc.). However, there's always paperwork (and more paperwork) and I feel like I'm always rushing at the end of my shift to get it all done. I think I'll pick up my own routine soon and be able to deal with distraction better, while still providing the best care for the patients. It's an awful feeling driving home and thinking that you forgot to do something.

I'm off to vegetate a bit before heading off to work again. Joe and I have found some time to do things together. Yesterday evening we rode our bikes five minutes to Olbrich Park on Lake Monona where we had a view of swimmers playing, sailboats, and speedboats in the lake, the Capitol and downtown skyline across the lake, and ultimate frisbee games in the park. We read Harry Potter books for a couple of hours until the sun set. Not a bad life, can't complain too much.