Saturday in CinCity

-


Busy couple of weeks at Chez Distracted; nothing too full of importance, just a bunching up of annual ICU competency days and junior year meetings with HoneyHaired's high school college counselors. Monthly volunteer work. And ACLS--Advanced Cardiopulmonary Life Support which is required every two years. You'd think after this many years of critical care nursing performing in a cardiac arrest would be easy-peazy, but the trouble is they change the basics every two years. So, for old-timers it gets a bit like trying to remember the new name of that old store at 7th and Race, formerly known as Shillito's and now, who the hell knows.

Then there's the performance anxiety of trying to save ResusciAnnie through her several long and drawn out life-threatening calamities in front of folks watching you for mistakes. Not running in to help as in real life, but standing back and judging. The Simon Cowells of life savers, they are.

We have New Important Changes happening at Big Fat Teaching Hospital. A new dress code that, again, seems to happen every two years, because you can imagine how extremely, very important the color of our scrubs is to the ongoing welfare of healthcare. We are going to all black. I know. Such a cheerful color. Cannot imagine why we haven't done it before. Apparently the rationale is to align ourselves even more with the Big Fat University across the way. Being the selfless giver that I am, I have offered to additionally wear the mascot head. No response back yet from the Uppity-Ups. Perhaps they're saving that idea for Spirit Fridays.



OK. Enough snarkiness. Must study and put together some kind of dinner for my own significant otter tonight. Happy Weekend.

Comments

  1. OwenJanuary 30, 2010 at 2:44 PM

    Bon appetit then at Chez Distracted to you otters...

    Sounds like life at work is a case of never a dull moment... with live's hanging on by a thread, it must be rather intense at times... in both directions.

    Be well, as the cold continues...

    ReplyDelete
  2. RudeeJanuary 30, 2010 at 4:14 PM

    I was thinking of renewing my ACLS in case my application to Dilbert-Land is not accepted. Sheesh. I just can't picture me behind a desk.

    Black? Black is not a color...it's a shade. A shade that will show each and every body fluid splattered upon you in a code. Gah. I hope if they mandate the shades you wear that they provide the scrubs.

    On the bright side? Black is very slimming.

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownJanuary 30, 2010 at 7:12 PM

    Thanks for your well wishes, Owen. We had a lovely shrimp stew and lots of hot bread.

    Rudee, Big Fat Teaching Hospital is quite flexible with the scrubs...any combo of all black scrubs with red OR white as accents. You remember??--"Black and red, knock 'em dead." I suspect the black will be much less slimming with a red jacket wrapped around my waist and advertising my tush, but once again, I'm a giver. And, we buy and buy and buy. Even down to black shoes. Whatever...As long as we actually don't do anything about our imploding healthcare system and maintain the focus on what the RNs wear. Seriously. What the hell kind of leadership is this?

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownJanuary 31, 2010 at 5:24 AM

    If I'm hospitalized, I don't really care what the RN is wearing, as long as it's clean and not spotted with blood. ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  5. SharonJanuary 31, 2010 at 6:05 AM

    Is there anything, anything left in life that is not a marketing tool? Help, we've morphed into the theatre of the absurd! Thanks for the post, even though it is more than a little disheartening.

    ReplyDelete
  6. UnknownJanuary 31, 2010 at 7:01 AM

    Please don't be disheartened. It's simply administrators doing what they know how to do while the the world around them is changing too rapidly and is unpredictable. It's rearranging the deck chairs on the Titantic, but healthcare has been that way for many years now. Hospital administrators are not the change-makers here. They're trying to stay afloat. So, black is fine for how ever long that lasts and my Bearcat head will make you laugh:>)

    ReplyDelete
  7. ArgentJanuary 31, 2010 at 8:36 AM

    Back scrubs - eww! If you woke up in the ICU with back-clad people bending over you, you might think your were in the funeral home already :-). We can only shake our heads at what people who don't actually do the job come up with for the people that do. Happy weekend anyway.

    ReplyDelete
  8. ArgentJanuary 31, 2010 at 8:42 AM

    Ooops - BLACK scrubs, not back scrubs, that's a whole different thing, LOL.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Batteson.IndJanuary 31, 2010 at 1:53 PM

    hhhmmmmm... black scrubs... I suppose it doesn't show the blood stains and puke etc that un-doubtedly you're all always covered in :-)...
    The mascot head would be an excellent touch! maybe you could just have it embroidered on the back of your shirts with the initials of the hospital on the back and your own surnames.. that would be cooo'el! kid's would be queing up to become doctors and stuff!

    On a proper note... a beautiful selection of poems have been indulged in.. thank you :-)
    wishing you all the best things for the week!

    ReplyDelete
  10. UnknownJanuary 31, 2010 at 5:08 PM

    I am laughing....no really I am...BLACK SCRUBS! Holy Cow, if you came into my room, I would think that I was dying....and you were dressed for the funeral...well, I wear a lot of black, supposedly slimming? Best of luck! smiles...

    ReplyDelete
  11. KathleenFebruary 3, 2010 at 7:17 PM

    Bullllack?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Hey, thanks for your thoughts and your time:>)

Popular posts from this blog

A Year with EB White

-
Image
"You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that."----- from Charlotte's Web I am a soul always drawn and fascinated by the idea of " A Year of...". A Year of Rumi. A Year of Calvin and Hobbes. A year cooking with Julia Child. A project that provides guidance for the year and a ruler we can measure inward growth in the course of our circle around the sun. One year, after an early marriage and an unsurprising--except to me--early divorce, I came across a book by Sue Hubbell titled A Country Year. I didn't plan for it to take a year to read, but it did. I only read it at night before I went t
Read more

The Poet Goes to Indiana by Mary Oliver

-
Image
I'll tell you a half-dozen things that happened to me in Indiana when I went that far west to teach. You tell me if it was worth it. I lived in the country with my dog— part of the bargain of coming. And there was a pond with fish from, I think, China. I felt them sometimes against my feet. Also, they crept out of the pond, along its edges, to eat the grass. I'm not lying. And I saw coyotes, two of them, at dawn, running over the seemingly unenclosed fields. And once a deer, but a buck, thick-necked, leaped into the road just-oh, I mean just, in front of my car— and we both made it home safe. And once the blacksmith came to care for the four horses, or the three horses that belonged to the owner of the house, and I bargained with him, if I could catch the fourth, he, too, would have hooves trimmed for the Indiana winter, and apples did it, and a rope over the neck did it, so I won something wonderful; and there was, one morning, an owl flying, oh pale angel, into the hay loft o
Read more

Goldfinches by Mary Oliver

-
Image
Some goldfinches were having a melodious argument at the edge of a puddle. The birds wanted to bathe, or perhaps just to dip their heads and look at themselves, and they were having trouble with who should be first, and so on. So they discussed it while I stood in the distance, listening. Perhaps in Tibet, in the old holy places, they also have such fragile bells. Or are these birds really just that, bells come to us--come to this road in America--let us bow our heads and remember now how we used to do it, say a prayer. Meanwhile the birds bathe and splash and have a good time. Then they fly off, their dark wings opening from their bright, yellow bodies; their tiny feet, all washed, clasping the air.
Read more