Unwanted visitors.

Why do people think just because you have a driveway are allowed to drive up it. And then they think they can come up on your porch, knock on your door, and tell you that you are going to hell if you don't listen to them?

I met those people with a broom in my hand and told them to go away and don't come back.

You would think the days are gone when people would feel safe walking up to a stranger's door.

Next time it might not be a broom I hold.

How would they like it if I knocked on their door and told them they were wrong in everything they thought and believed. Church people have been doing this forever. It is time they stopped. It really isn't safe.

Hospice Angels

I don't believe in heaven or angels. I believe in the earthly angels. I've met them many times. The best ones work for hospice.

On this mother's day our hearts are heavy. Tonya's mother died April 23. She was in a hospital bed in the middle of our living room. Facing a wall of windows looking out on a yard full of daisies and beautiful green things.

What a lady she was. Always had polished fingernails, always dressed in fine clothes.

She decided it was time to die. She said so. She said she was ready. She talked to the hospice nurse like she was planning a business deal.

We watched her slowly letting go, giving directions to her children, look there for this, look there for that, be sure you check on this.

I saw a slight hesitation as she opened her mouth for her first dose of Ativan and Morphine to ease her pain and difficulty breathing. We kept her comfortable and clean. She left us like a lady.

Wow! If we could all choose to go like that wouldn't we? Shouldn't we?

A family sent a loved one to the ER with respiratory distress. I watched as he struggled to breathe. I watched as he was intubated and put on a respirator. Not good. Traumatic, intrusive, so sad.

Hospice is the way to do this. The angels come to usher us out of this life when we are ready. May we all know when that time is and may we let our families know what we want.

Happy mother's day Arlene. Here's to a strong and brave lady.

The Teddy Award

No, this isn't about those skimpy nighties. This is about the true Teddy Awards. I will write the original here:

It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again...who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly.

I believe we nurses deserve a Teddy Award. I believe we should be made to feel like what we do for our patients matters. Sometimes it just isn't enough to pat ourselves on the back and feel good inside about what we did that shift, about what happened and how well we handled it all.

Something is just wrong when the CEO brings food down to our break room and then says "Now bring those satisfaction scores up."

We truly spend ourselves in a worthy cause. We go limping home and try to rest and heal our sore spots and get ready to do it all again.

We wash off the blood and the gore and try to get the charcoal out of our clothes, and the thoughts of that homeless person we shuffled from one part of the hospital to another.

There are days it really feels like a strategizing game. Move this one here and that one there and get the admitted patients up to make room for more coming in.

Yesterday I passed the exam and am now a Board Certified Emergency Nurse. I feel great about it. It will get me no raise or promotions. But I did it.

I love what I do. I want to do it better every day. And I want some God damn kudos instead of having things I didn't do pointed out every day.

So everybody on my team gets a TEDDY AWARD, whatever that might look like. I love all of you.