Kentucky

A Kentucky Coffee Tree. Finally figured out what our front tree is, by searching for the pod, not the leaves or bark. Which then took almost no time at all. Sure, seems obvious now.





Knew it was going to be a big day at work, my day off, and as so often, I offered to come in to cover lunches. We are short staffed, and the most recent nurse hired did more than Exaggerate his experience*. Today would have been an NFL day. (No Fucking Lunch, but the acronym looks innocuous on the board.) Scrubbing all day without a lunch, even only 8 hours, is harsh. At 10 hours, it's downright cruel.

It's generally no biggie, I live close, a couple of hours and a lot of happy scrubs. Taking off Friday to switch makes 4 days in a row, at 10 hours per, that just hurts me too much. Takes a week or so for my back to recover. So, the compromise, and I get a lot of thanks for it. Which is not why I do it, it's just good karma, a mitzvah, professionalism, taking care of people I respect.


Hopefully, the Exaggerating Nurse will not be inflicted on us much longer. The OR is no place for new folks, unless they are being actually trained as they go. I should know, when I was that new, I was thrown in to a big trauma hospital that was just coming off a five year hiring freeze, no one was comfortable training. Some days, depending on cases, I was learning to scrub in the morning and circulate in the afternoon, never sure if I could only touch the sterile stuff, or should not touch it. Loads of irritation and bad temper and impatience on all sides. It's not easy to train people my job, under any circumstances. Dumping us in the deep end was not ideal, learning at full speed takes a lot more time. I learned, took me about six months to have a clue, a good solid year to feel at all competent, and two years to be able to take anything thrown at me. This is usual.

We all spotted the Exaggerator immediately, he'd never functioned in the OR, if indeed, he'd ever even been in an OR. That our manager wouldn't hear that he was useless to us, discounted our concerns for several weeks is downright insulting - but manager is not an OR nurse at all. Surgical nursing is a specialty, Orthopedics is a sub-specialty, Day-surgery (ambulatory) is a sub-sub speciality taking a lot of skill because it requires speed based on knowledge and planning. Today, heard that Manager is finally moving to do something about this.

And we are still short a nurse. But when circulating, it's more tolerable to just get out for 15 minutes to stuff food in face and come back. The new scrubs are doing very well, indeed, which will make all of the difference.

Now, I will leave you with a photo of my cousin's pond.






*More like, lied through his teeth. Or worse, figured watching a surgery qualified him to run one.