Cookie Thursday 1/26/23-Boundaries

No Cookie Thursday is a Thing this week.

I worked until 0700 and the White Whiskery Wonder known as Dot woke me up at 1020.

I mean, cool, I made my 1045 meeting.

But I had already informed the OR that there would be no cookies today.

Because in the past couple of weeks, I’ve been writing about kindness in Dispatches from the Evening Shift. The first post was about being kind to the patient who is scared. The second post was about being kind to yourself. Another post was about being kind to the patient who is going to be in the hospital long term (meaning more than a couple of days, this can be because of IV antibiotics, or chemo, or not quite recovered enough to go home) and who just wanted to stretch their legs a bit.

Today’s post will be a further exploration of practicing kindness to yourself by the creation of boundaries. Before, I would absolutely have slept only a few hours, gotten up, made cookies, brought the cookies to the hospital, and returned home to nap. Or slept a few hours and gotten up to buy cookies and bring them in.

No matter how close you live to the hospital this is a bit unhealthy.

Especially for a thing you created and do 99% of the baking.

As I was leaving this morning, I told everyone that Cookie Thursday is a Thing needed to sleep. And there would no cookies.

Could I have made cookies when I got up? And brought them to the hospital? Yes, thanks to Dot.

But that would have been a terrible lesson for me. Instead of setting the boundary I had already created and sticking to it.

No Cookie is a Thing today.

Setting and keeping boundaries can be healthy too.

And a very hard lesson for a nurse to learn. You see, we are used to doing all the tasks, and caring for everyone else.

I will make the Leftovers recipe next week. Because I kind of already spilled the beans on what I was planning.

Anticipation whets the appetite sometimes.

Did I whiff and forget I had a meeting at 1400?/ Thereby missing it? Yep.

Also did I rudely wake up Dot this afternoon during her nap by wedging my freezing feet under her warmth when she was napping on top of the covers when I got under the covers to take a nap?

Absolutely.