Thursday, February 26, 2009

Betcha didn't know...

Stewardess is the longest word typed with only one hand.
And 'lollipop' is the longest word typed with your right hand.
(Bet you tried this out mentally, didn't you?)

No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple.

'Dreamt' is the only English word that ends in the letters 'mt'. (Are you doubting this?)

Our eyes are always the same size from birth,
but our nose and ears never stop growing.


The sentence: 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog'
uses every letter of the alphabet.

(Now, you KNOW you're going to try this out for accuracy, right?)

The words 'racecar,' 'kayak' and 'level' are the same whether they are read left to right
or right to left (palindromes). (Yep, I knew you were going to 'do' this one.)

There are only four words in the English language which end in 'dous': tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
(You're not possibly doubting this, are you ?)

There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: 'abstemious' and 'facetious.'
(Yes, admit it, you are going to say, a e i o u)

TYPEWRITER
is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard. (All you typists are going to test this out)

A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.


A goldfish
has a memory span of three seconds .
(Some days that's about what my memory span is.)

A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.


A shark
is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.

A snail can sleep for three years.

(I know some people that could do this too.!)


Almonds
are a member of the peach family.

An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
(I know some people like that also . Actually I know A LOT of people like this!

Babies are born without kneecaps.
They don't appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age.

February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.

In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.

If the population of China
walked past you, 8 abreast,
the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.

Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.


Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite!

Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.

The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.

The cruise liner, QE 2,
moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns. The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket. (Good thing he did that.)

The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls froze completely solid .

There are more chickens than people in the world.

Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.

Women blink nearly twice as much as men.


Now you know more than you did before!!


BIG UNIVERSE

THIS is really fascinating - it's rather dazzling to see it presented this way.



I CERTAINLY THOUGHT THIS WAS ENLIGHTENING.
BEYOND OUR
SUN, IT'S A BIG UNIVERSE.



ANTARES IS THE 15TH BRIGHTEST STAR IN THE SKY .
IT IS MORE THAN 1000 LIGHT YEARS AWAY. NOW HOW BIG ARE YOU?
---------------------------------
NOW TRY TO WRAP YOUR MIND AROUND THIS.........
THIS IS A HUBBLE TELESCOPE ULTRA DEEP FIELD INFRARED VIEW OF COUNTLESS 'ENTIRE' GALAXIES BILLIONS OF LIGHT-YEARS AWAY.

BELOW IS A CLOSE UP OF ONE OF THE DARKEST REGIONS OF THE PHOTO ABOVE.

HUMBLING, ISN'T IT? NOW, HOW BIG ARE YOU?
AND HOW BIG ARE THE THINGS THAT UPSET YOU TODAY?

KEEP LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE AND DON'T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF!

I could hit that one EASY


Hehehe... Well now, I've caught myself doing that with family members!
My husband has really good veins!

Dead in the eye

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Chaotica UPDATE!

Well, I can honestly say that I've had the first peaceful day since Chaotica was brought to my unit. Everyone was calm, collected and cooperative, providing the best and most organized patient care I could ever have hoped for. Yep, it happened. Chaotica was fired. Chaotica made a very big mistake. She cussed out the administrator. I've never seen this man do anything but smile and treat people with the utmost respect but he actually felt compelled to yell at her. We had a great crew today and everyone got along fabulously!! Thank you God, for hearing my call for help, and answering it so quickly.

Monday, February 23, 2009

I just need to VENT and get some INPUT...




Have any of you ever worked with someone who seems to NEED chaos? Have you ever worked with someone who absolutely MUST have some sort of crisis on a daily basis? If so, how do you keep it from driving you insane? Let me give you a little history on the situation...

I hope you have a few minutes...


I accepted a new position with a sub-acute facility as a charge nurse on a rehabilitation unit back in December. On this unit, we have anything from spinal and brain injuries to foot reconstruction and everything in between. It was the perfect opportunity for me! I love being on my toes! I love helping people and I LOVE new experiences, as they bring new skills! As a new hire, I was trained on each individual hallway for a week and then set free on MY UNIT. As I mentioned before. I love being on my toes. I love busy work and this offered me BUSY WORK in a critical care environment. I am also a relatively new nurse and I LOVE IT! I began working on my unit alongside a decent, easy going nurse who just didn't have the assessment skills to make it on a rehab unit, so he got transferred out to longterm care and another nurse was brought in to take his place because she is a "seasoned nurse".




Here comes the fun... Are you ready for it? The nurse that was brought it was actually working on the longterm care unit. She was hired about 2 months before I was and had been a nurse for a number of years, working in a doctors office. We shall call her Chaotica so as not to breech any privacy rules and regs. Chaotica has the same number of patients as I and their level of care ranges along the same gamut as mine. We were informed by our unit manager that no one would be coming to work on the middle cart until 7pm, so we have to take over that cart as well as ours and pass those pills too. We both take over at 3pm and I grab my med cart and head off down the hall. I pass my share on the middle cart and then tackle my own carts pill load. She sits at the desk complaining about how unfair it is to have to work half of the middle cart. She complains to the unit manager SO much that the unit manager gets pissed and tells her to go complain to the Director Of Nursing, which she proceeds to do.


The DON (who has been in the building since 6:45am) comes to the unit and makes a beeline to the middle cart and starts pulling pills for two residents. I asked her why she was doing it and she states that the way things were going, the residents wouldn't get their pills until midnight because Chaotica was just too damn slow. Around 4pm, I am mostly done with my med pass and Chaotica decides to start hers. On a normal day, we have phone calls, aides requesting our help, new orders, urgent situations, pharmacy calls, labs to be drawn, and patient requests to anticipate so we try to work around it without falling behind. Chaotica passes a few pills and then comes to the nurses station to ask me to help her with a catheter. I stop what I am doing and go help. Chaotica passes a few more pills and comes to ask me to draw up a blood sample for her so it can be sent out for a BMP and a CBC. I do it because, Hey! I'm actually ahead!


Chaotica starts to panic because it is about 6pm and her 3pm, 4pm, and 5pm medications are still not passed on EITHER CART so Chaotica starts complaining that her aides aren't doing what they should be doing and she is having to take up their slack and THAT is the "real" reason she is falling behind. (Did I mention Chaotica claims that each of the aides working with her are belligerent, lazy, and practice insubordination on a regular basis?) A call light goes off and a resident requests that Chaotica perform a quick in/out catheterizing on him because he is having trouble going to the bathroom due to prostate swelling. Chaotica informs resident that he will have to wait until after dinner (another hour). Now, the catheter that Chaotica requested me to help her with was actually to be used to perform a Urinalysis and a Culture and Sensitivity to determine if the resident has a bladder infection so I write up her lab sheets and call the courier FOR HER. Chaotica gets a call from one of her aides stating that the resident who was requesting to be catheterized has now fallen and hit his head because he was trying to go to the bathroom without assistance. Rather than rush to the residents room, Chaotica stands in the hallway arguing with the aide, accusing the aide of negligence. The aide yells back stating that she doesn't appreciate the way Chaotica IS and HAS BEEN speaking to her and that she only has two hands and two eyes. (To be perfectly honest, it is Chaoticas fault because her resident requested to be catheterized and she put it off too long) OK, that was just an excerpt of today...


Friday, I was a the nurses station and one of the aides came running up the hall stating that one of the residents had stopped breathing (which we knew was going to happen soon because she just wasn't doing well). The resident in one of Chaoticas assigned patients so I grab a vitals machine and a stethoscope and start running. I yell at Chaotica that there is a code blue on one of her patients. She says OK, I'm coming. I get to the patients room and start running vitals while sending an aide to call family because there is a change in the patients status and they need to be here. The vitals are dropping and the patient is trying to drag some air in but she is just too weak. I get an aide to run get an O2 tank to put on the patient to try to get her sats up but it isn't enough and her O2 sats are dropping while her heart is slowing and her BP is dropping. I step into the hallway to see if her nurse is coming but I don't see her. I send and aide for her, who found her in the dining room, requesting some Ensure for her residents to drink... WHAT???? ARE YOU FOR REAL???? OK, did she not hear me say CODE BLUE!!!??? Finally, she arrives and I hand over care of her patient whose heart eventually stops when her daughter walks through the door. She was holding on for her daughter, how terribly sad!


Tuesday, its me, Chaotica, and a former classmate of mine on the three carts. Chaotica is down the hall, ordering her dinner from the dining room or something. An aide calls out for a nurse and states that she thinks a resident is having a stroke. Again, we grab the vitals machine and run but Chaotica is not in sight so my former classmate/Mr. Nurse starts paging her "Nurse Chaotica, you are needed in room ### STAT!!!". Stat is code for STOP WHATEVER IT IS THAT YOU ARE DOING AND GET YOUR ASS IN HERE RIGHT NOW!!! While running vitals on our poor resident, we notice that his left side is starting to droop and he begins to slouch in that direction and stops responding to our questions. A call is made to the ON-CALL Doctor because it is after hours and he must give the OK for any hospital admits. We wait... Chaotica shows up just before the call comes back and takes the call. She knows nothing of her patients condition and needs to ask me and Mr. Nurse what happened. We fill her in and she passes the phone to me to give the details to the doctor. The doctor gives the green light to send the patient out to the ER. Chaotica has the nerve to sit there and complain because the man who is stroking is now causing her to fall behind in her work. (Gee lady, I'm sorry I'm having a stroke right now!! Should I have waited until you finished ordering your dinner? Or maybe until you finish with everything else?)


OK... So, obviously I think Chaotica is incompetent and I inform the Unit Manager as well as the DON that I think she is a hazard to her patients. Now, I wonder what will happen next... I never want someone to lose their job! I do, however, think that these patients deserve the best nurses and the best care in order to regain their strength. I expect fellow nurses to do what they have been license to do. NURSE! I am here, doing what I do, because it is what my heart says I was put here for.


Is it all just a paycheck for Chaotica? If so, she needs to let it go and go back to the calm, stress-free doctors office job she came from because in rehab, they need nurses who are on their toes and ready to jump in and get the job done!!!


Saturday, February 21, 2009

Thursday, February 19, 2009

God's Wings -

A little something to put things in perspective...

After a forest fire in Yellowstone National Park , forest rangers
began their trek up a mountain to assess the inferno's damage.

One ranger found a bird literally pet rified in ashes, perched
statuesquely on the ground at the base of a tree. Somewhat
sickened by the eerie sight, he knocked over the bird with a stick...
When he gently struck it, three tiny chicks scurried from under
their dead mother's wings. The loving mother, keenly aware of
impending disaster, had carried her offspring to the base of the
tree and had gathered them under her wings, instinctively knowing that the toxic smoke would rise.

She could have flown to safety but had refused to abandon her
babies. Then the blaze had arrived and the heat had scorched her
small body, the mother had remained steadfast ...because she had
been willing to die, so those under the cover of her wings would live.

'He will cover you with His feathers,
And under His wings you will find refuge.'
(Psalm 91:4)

Being loved this much should make a difference in your life.
Remember the One who loves you, and then be different because of it.

My instructions were to send this to people that I wanted God to
bless and I picked you. Please pass this on to people you want to
be blessed.

Time waits for no one. Treasure every moment you have. You will
treasure it even more when you can share it with someone special.
To realize the value of a friend...lose one.

Painted Feathers





















WHAT TEDIOUS WORK!!!



That's It ..... The End! WOW!!!!!!

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

BESTEST FRIEND EVER!!!

I was browsing through my pictures and taking a trip down memory lane when I came across this picture. In this picture, I was about 11 years old, in 6th grade, and with my best friend. I started thinking about all the friends I've had throughout my 30 years of life. Know what I realized? That, of all the friends that I've had in my 30 years on this planet, I've kept one from my childhood.

I am blessed with one of those once-in-a-lifetime friends! She is one of those friends with whom you can share anything! She and I have been friends for about 20 years now and I can still say that she is my BESTEST FRIEND IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD. No, she probably will not see this, due to the fact that she doesn't have internet. So you see, I have nothing to gain by sharing this. I was just feeling blessed and felt like sharing it.



Thursday, February 12, 2009

Top Ten Reasons You Should Date/Marry a Nurse

Lifes been hectic with some serious overtime at my new job but HEY, why look a gift horse in the mouth? You'll just be tempted to tell him to floss a little more often! I'm BACK!

Every nurse, of course, could tick off a bit more than just ten perks to dating/marrying a nurse because, lets face it, everyone knows that nurses are superheroes and who WOULDN'T love to have a superhero to cuddle up to? I thought this was cute and it gave me a laugh, so read up.

Top Ten Reasons You Should Date/Marry a Nurse: Courtesy of a group on Facebook:
1. They can help you get over a hangover or sickness.

2. Bedbaths!

3. The uniform.

4. They are exposed to so many xrays, it's like a form of birth control.

5. You will never need to buy condoms, paracetamol, toothbrushes or any hospital supplies.

6. They know how to handle bodily fluids!

7. Nothing shocks a nurse, they have always seen smaller or indeed bigger!

8. They won't be disgusted by your toilet habits.

9. They are experienced in manual evacuation when you are full of you know what.

10. They know how to handle the human body.