It's a skill if you can repeat it, right? photo: jparadisi 2012
Hey, I finished a second pair of socks, knitting two at a time on a pair of circular needles! This is probably a yawn for experienced knitters, however, I never knitted socks at all until this year, so for me it’s an accomplishment. Cross that one off of the New Year’s Resolutions list!
A Blank List photo: jparadisi 2012
My horoscope says today is a good day for diversion, but I disagree. This is one of those mornings I wake up with a to do list forming in my head, which means I am already behind. One of the things on the list is writing this post. Be charitable as you read it; I haven’t finished my coffee yet.
This feeling of being behind before the day begins is familiar in our home. David, a hospital pharmacist, and I work the same weekends, and this weekend we both worked the Saturday, Sunday, Monday stretch. For some reason, all hospitals I’m familiar with staff units lighter on weekends: no unit secretary, linens are not delivered, IT support is unavailable. Pharmacy has less support, meaning nursing waits for medications to arrive; everything slows down.
This mindset is puzzlement. Why would weekends be more or less busy in a hospital than any other day of the week as if they are restaurants? I’ve worked in food service. For restaurants, happy hours and dinners are consistently busier on Fridays and Saturdays than weekdays. Restaurants catering to the business lunch crowd are understandably busier Monday through Fridays.
People do not schedule how sick they are going to be according to the day of the week.
Granted, most doctors’ offices are closed, and surgeries are usually not scheduled on weekends. I get that. However, this leads to the proviso that people who are admitted for hospitalization are too critical to wait until Monday for surgery or treatment. Trauma and sepsis do not wait until the doctor is in. They keep the weekend health care team pretty damn busy.
I’m not complaining, just pointing out a reality of life in health care, by way of explaining today, our first day off, both David and I are feeling a little frazzled. The evidence of this is on our dining room table. Rather than a place for a leisurely, home cooked meal, over the weekend it has become a catchall for the implements of our trades: his messenger bag, my tote. Both of our notebooks charge quietly, their green LED lights reflected in the luster of the table’s finish. Valentine’s Day cards, still without a permanent home, remain on the table. Although our home is a disorganized mess, there is love.
We’re out of food though. Add a grocery store run to the to do list.
Finding Creative Permission, my new post exploring creativity and nursing, is up at TheONC.
And Happy Valentine’s Day!
Knitting Two Socks at a Time on a Pair of Circular Needles. photo: jparadisi 2012
I’m learning to knit socks. If you read this blog regularly, you’ll recall learning to knit socks is one of my New Year’s Resolutions for 2012. Since I don’t know what I’m doing anyway, I decided to learn the new method of knitting two socks at one time on a pair of circular needles, instead of one sock at a time on a single circular needle. Never mind only a few years ago I defined knitting as: making a tangled mess with yarn and sticks. Hey, I’m a girl who loves a challenge. My audacity stems from years of the “see one, do one, teach one” on- the- job- training mentality most nurses rely on.
Fortunately, learning to knit socks two at a time is accompanied by patterns with clear diagrams and photographic illustrations. I found mine in Knitting Circles Around Socks by Antje Gillingham (Martingale & Company, publishers).
I’m happy to report I have successfully turned both heels. The most vexing problem has been confusing which of the four needle tips to use, then having to rip out and knit again previous rows after doing it wrong. I found one dropped stitch too, which is so far back at the beginning there is no way in hell I will rip out my work to redo it. I’ll simply learn to live with it.
If only nursing mistakes were as inconsequential. Who wouldn’t go back in time and fix the med error, rephrase the statement that made you sound dumb in front of coworkers, or treat differently the symptom, which turned out more significant than you realized at the time? Wouldn’t it be great if we could rip out our mistakes and knit them again like stitches dropped from a pair of needles?
We can’t.
Instead, I am aware of the importance my words carry when patients come to me with concerns or fears. I answer the same questions multiple times over the years of my career, but for the patient, their fears are new. For everyone, I hope to get it right the first time: the right amount of compassion, the right understanding of the meaning of their words, the right kind of wisdom needed for a particular moment. If I get it wrong, coming across as abrupt, disinterested or intensifying fear rather than calming it, there is no going back to rip out stitches from the fabric created by my words and actions. They hang in our memories like dropped stitches; leaving an unsightly hole.
Nursing is more complex than knitting two socks with four needles. Often, there’s no way to go back and fix our mistakes. Sometimes the best we can do is learning from errors, acquire the necessary grace, and live with the resulting holes in our socks.
*Update: I finished knitting my first pair of socks last night. See photo.
My First Pair of Knitted Socks! photo: jparadisi 2012
When in charge, ponder.
When in trouble, delegate.
When in doubt, mumble.
__Good Life Almanac, by Ruth Smalley.
Found taped to the desk at a nurses’ station
Last week CancerNetwork launched TheONC; an online community for oncology nurses and staff. TheONC is a gated site for professionals so login is required to participate. The video link below explains more fully:
video.asp?section_id=1687&doc_id=238579
TheONC features bloggers with a wide spectrum of expertise writing on various aspects of cancer care. As a contributing blogger, I write from the perspective of an artist working in oncology. Through weekly posts, readers and I will discuss creativity, and its pursuit, in nursing. Images of my artwork accompany the posts. My first went live yesterday.
photo: jparadisi 2012
Why does that very first IV start on the first shift back from a vacation always cause just a little apprehension?
My patient waits silently while I collect the supplies I need: a sterile IV pack, the angiocath, a normal saline flush. I tear a few small strips of tape and stick them to the edge of the bedside table, easily within reach, ready to secure the IV once it’s in the vein.
How many IV’s have I started over the past twenty-five years? Why does the first one after a vacation always feel like the first one ever?
My gloved fingers palpate the chosen vein one more time before I swab it clean, leaving a glistening sheen and contrasting shadow along its hill, a cairn on his forearm.
Collecting my thoughts, I focus on the vein until they are as sharp as the needle I use to puncture his skin and thread the catheter into the vein. A flash of blood tells me I’m in. Using one of the strips of tape, I secure the IV, then cover the site with a transparent dressing. It flushes easily.
I release my breath, which I realize I was holding.
I’m back.
Keep your chin up,
No one expected you to save the world,
Otherwise, you would have been born wearing a cape and tights.
Just do the best you can.
This morning I’m drinking my first cup of coffee, thumbing through the January 2012 issue of the American Journal of Nursing. A familiar sentence catches my eyes in On the Web, page 22. It’s a line from a post published (and I wrote) on their blog Off the Charts. Thanks AJN!
It’s gonna be a good day.
TEN POINTS TO PONDER!
Number 10
Life is sexually transmitted.
Number 9
Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
Number 8
Men have two emotions : Hungry and Horny. If you see him without an erection, make him a sandwich .
Number 7
Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day. Teach a person to use the Internet and they won’t bother you for weeks, months, maybe years.
Number 6
Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in the hospitals, dying of nothing.
Number 5
All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.
Number 4
Why does a slight tax increase cost you $800.00, and a substantial tax cut saves you $30.00?
Number 3
In the 60′s, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.
Number 2
Life is like a jar of Jalapeno peppers–what you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
And The Number 1 Thought
- – - as someone recently said to me:
“Don’t worry about old age – it doesn’t last that long.”
