All nurses and techs are storytellers.

It is how we relate to others who do the same work. Because normal people do not relate to our humor and our capacity to talk about gross things. Or do gross things. But not all gross things, every healthcare worker has a Kryptonite that makes them gag. It is different for everyone.

Get a group of OR nurses or techs together and the stories come out.

They can range from do you know what Dr. So and So did this week? Story.

Have you heard about Nurse C? Yeah, this is what happened.

What is the grossest thing ever? Pull up a chair, I have pictures (sometimes true).

The OR team as a whole love to talk about something in the past.

We do it to spread knowledge about certain cases and certain doctors who may not be the best. But sometimes they are, and this story tells you why.

We are also competitive and love to tell a grosser story, or a time a surgeon or a leader made you so mad you couldn’t think straight.

Or the past coworker, who moved on years ago, and how they were the worst, and this is some of the shit they pulled.

Or the story about the patient that lives in our hearts and in our minds.

A bit like Barry Manilow, but instead of writing the songs, we tell the stories.

OR is kind of like Vegas, what happens here stays here. In the stories of the workers who may or may not have been in the room. We are bound by HIPAA, our stories do not have identifying names, or addresses, or churches. But we know the facts, we just don’t share them.

And then there is me, who knows stories, and facts, and definitely does not share details. At all. When telling stories of the OR, I have to be careful to not reference anything that makes the patient or the doc or even the hospital recognizable. Broad strokes is what gets the story told, and details can be changed. Who cares if it was a right arm or a left? The person whose arm it was.

Keep on telling the stories but be careful of what details are shared and who is listening.

This month’s theme is If You Want Women to be in the 18th Century so Badly…

Yes, this is a direct response to the Supreme Court deciding that since women’s rights to bodily autonomy are not spelled out in the constitution, women are not entitled to any.

Am I still pissed about it?

Hell yes!

To that end I have decided this month’s Cookie Thursday is a Theme is going to be well, if you want women to be in the 18th century so badly… This is going to be an exploration of what cookies and things were created in the 18th century. I am inveterate researcher (this means I particularly enjoy research), and I am not afraid to use the skills.

This leads to the cookie of the week. Of course, I use the term cookie loosely. Cookie Thursday is a Thing is about experimentation after all.

French toast bread was ostensibly created in 1724 in Albany, New York by an innkeeper. Or so the legend goes. It was created by an innkeeper named French who forgot his possessive. You see the conflict. A recipe of the same type was discovered in a 1430 cookbook, named pain perdu, or forgotten bread.

1724, 1430, women were still considered second class citizens. To be chattel of someone else, meaning possession. I taught some of my coworkers this word last week when I used it in a sentence, “I am no man’s chattel!” And I am not, not even the property of the government. I am my own woman, despite what the Supreme Court has to say about it.

This recipe is the best use of stale bread, except for croutons, that I know.

I started by taking 10 pieces of brioche bread out of their bag and letting them sit in room temperature for a couple of hours. I then sliced them into small, bite size pieces and let them sit again.

I took 6 eggs out of the refrigerator and let them come to room temperature, combining the beaten eggs with 1/4 cup of milk and 2 tbs of sugar. I made the bites in two batches, adding cinnamon to the egg/milk/sugar mix.

I baked these in a 350-degree oven until crispy and took them tout suite (quickly) to the hospital where I dropped them off.

At the moment that healthcare is in, the tide is pushing travelers back to the hospital and to the units. I say tide because this has happened before, and the situation is cyclical. Just never on this scale. The hospitals are never going to recoup everyone that left during the covid craziness. Some people won’t come back because they have lost faith in the mission. And, after seeing that some sections of the public have branded the health and societal disaster that we all lived through as fake news, it is no wonder. Some healthcare workers found different jobs that they aspired to, and they are content. Some healthcare workers are still at home with their children because the childcare industry is going through its own seismic reverberations.

But hospitals need nurses and other healthcare workers. And so does the OR.

Welcome to this particular OR. Yeah, you’ve been through orientation, both from the hospital and the organization (because most hospitals belong to one). And you have gotten a tour of this OR and where things are.

Let me tell you where things really are.

Because the two, although related as this is the same space, are definitely worlds apart in actuality.

Get yourself a tour guide to the OR as it really is. This person can tell you where all the things really live, what to expect from different personalities that work there, what to expect from different personalities of the surgeons and physician assistants. Help you optimize the charting, help you set up the electronic health record so that it makes sense to you. Where to find all the hiding places that people use for themselves, and the clamps that are used in bed assembly.

Also, very important, tell you about the cliques that exist. Because this is still high school, despite all involved having been out of school and college graduated for years. And who is lazy and only wants to do their room’s work, never mind about the mountain of work that exists outside of the rooms.

And, as suggested by one of my coworkers, tell you where to poop during the shift. Because the bathroom is just stalls. Apparently, this is a thing that exists, and the knowledge may prove valuable.

And of utmost importance, who is a good sounding board to bounce ideas off of and who is a megaphone who will broadcast what is said in confidence to the entire department. And who is a vault, a black hole with empathy who won’t reveal what you told them but will offer support and guidance when needed.

And, in this particular OR, there is a chocolate locker where people bring chocolate in for everyone to share. Of course, it has a lock, some people weren’t donating to the locker but still helping themselves. This is the person with the combinations, they will give it to you with the understanding that sometimes you will kick in a bag of chocolates. The chocolates don’t have to be fancy; the OR will eat anything because the OR marches on its stomach. Also in the chocolate locker are over the counter medications; tylenol, ibuprofen, midol, naprosyn, migraine medications, aspirin, tums, lomitil, feminine products such as pads and tampons. And a Dammit Doll that you can use to vent frustration and anger on the walls and not use your fists.

Back to the clamps. You might think what if they put the clamps all in one place so that everyone can find them? Yeah, tried. People just like to have secret stashes.

Yeah, that is a riff on Blue Oyster Cult’s Don’t Fear the Reapers. While researching the song I realized that it was released in 1975. I also learned that it is a song about not fearing death. And if that is not the perfect hospital song, I don’t know what is.

July 1st is the start of the intern year for all of the medical students that graduate in May. They may be nervous on their first foray into, you know, actual medicine. To what they have gone from at least 8 years of college for. June 30th is when the previous year’s crop of interns graduates in residency.

It is also feared among the staff of the hospital.

And there are memes aplenty.

In the United States it is known as the July Effect. And in the UK they call it the Killing Season. The idea that a patient will have sub-standard care because there is a new intern is not borne out by the literature. It is just that medical type people are alarmed by what could potentially happen, not what actually happens. (Hughes, 2017)

But why?

The July 1st start for the interns is not to be feared. If they are left alone on their first month, without supervising doctors who are supposed to be teaching them, that is the flaw of the system, not the intern.

This is how the medical system grows doctors in the United States. It is a stair step approach. They begin on the lowest run. Internship is the first rung, followed by residency, however many years is required and it changes by specialty, and then fellowship, and then further fellowship in a more pinpoint direction, and then full fledged doctor. It is the rung above that is responsible to teaching and guiding the interns, along with a supervising doctor that all the residents and interns report tp.

Hey, doc, act your internship, not your residency doesn’t have quite the same ring. Some interns are cocky, finally freed from the shackles of their medical school bounds. This does happen because interns are people too. And people think they are smarter and better trained than they actually are. It doesn’t last long, though. A new intern figures out pretty quickly that there is still more to be learned, and other former interns, known as residents, are there to help them along the path.

But the impact on patients, on human life? Is minimal.

And intern season, is here and then gone.

Only for the next intern crop to rise.

Hughes E. (2017) July Effect? Maybe not. CMAJ. 2017 Aug 14;189(32):E1050-E1051. doi: 10.1503/cmaj.1095466. PMID: 28808121; PMCID: PMC5555760.

The gown card reads ‘being addressed as nurse’.

Just nurse.

And a lower case ‘n’ at that.

As if that is your name.

Hey, if you are going to address me as nurse, I am at least an upper case ‘N’. I have my dignity. And more college degrees than you.

Probably.

I have 3. And I am working on #4. Because I’m that person that thinks that school is fun.

Before, it was understood that nurses would stand and give the doctor our seat in the nursing station. Thankfully, this kind of thinking has drifted away. Nurses today are not the handmaiden of the doctor. Our input regarding the patient’s condition is what drives many of the orders that the doctor writes.

For example, the Nurse calls the doctor with this report, “Your patient XYZ has a temperature of 104, Dr. Q. I have decreased the temperature of the room, had them take off the four sweaters they were wearing, and given them an tepid bath, but perhaps pharmacological intervention is necessary.”

Note the respectful address for the doctor. That’s another post.

I am more than my job class. Under the nurse umbrella. There are many types of registered nurses in the hospital.

Should we start addressing people as ‘Patient?’. As in Patient presents with… No, that would be ludicrous. There are many patients in an area such as the ER, they can’t all be addressed as Patient. How are you going to tell them apart?

Maybe by using their full name, AND an identifying feature that is mostly unique to them. Like their birthday? But that is what we do.

We would never say the patient in room 313 is presenting with… I am going to stop you right there. Nope, don’t care what they are presenting with, I need more information in order to identify and treat the patient.

Until people come standard with QR codes, we just fumble along. Using our names and birthdays as identifiers when we are in the healthcare system.

Patients are treated as whole individuals, perhaps we should do the same for the healthcare workers caring for them?

So we can tell Patient from Patient.

And Nurse from Nurse.

It is a fact of life that sometimes kids need surgery. Just like adults.

It is a fact of life that some of these kids will be scared out of their minds. Just like adults.

It is a fact of life that sometimes these kids will be wise asses. Just like adults.

For every kid that cries when you open the door, there will be the kid that asks all the questions.

For every kid that screams when an IV is started, there will be the kid that watches in fascination. Even when the parent that is with them pales and sits down.

For every kid that fights the monkey cologne (we breathe them down with anesthesia gases, especially when they don’t have an IV and it stinks), there will be the kid that just looks trustingly at you while they are breathing and while you are holding their hand before they go to sleep.

My favorite are the kids who ask impossible questions. You can tell they are just trying to get one up on the adults by the glimmer in their eye and the cheeky smile. This is also a substrate of the ones that all the questions.

When I was the service line leader in charge of pediatric trauma at an orthopedic hospital I got to know about kids and the different reactions to anesthesia, to being in an unfamiliar environment, and away from their parents.

Some of the impossible questions that they ask, trying to trip up the adults.

Why is the sky blue? This was a frequent question. I remember why the sky is blue from my high school physics class. And I tell them it has to do with the refraction of the sunlight through the atmosphere and particles in the atmosphere and which wavelengths of colors get scattered the most. You can see them thinking about the answer hard.

The follow up question will always be why the sky is different colors at sunrise or sunset. I tell them it has to do with the curvature of the earth and how the different wavelengths of colors are more prevalent due to that curve.

Do you think there are aliens? I see you, little science fiction geek, kudos to your parents.

It shocks the kids when the adult in the room has a ready answer.

Some kids were chill, just like adults.

Some kids were not, just like adults.

Pediatric surgery is not working on small adults. But there are some similarities.

The second month of Inflation Baking concludes with crust cookies.

What are crust cookies?

I have been asking all sorts of people if they know what crust cookies are.

And the answer is a resounding deer in the headlights look.

Must be a midwestern thing.

What do you do with the extra dough that is left over from a pie crust?

You add butter and a cinnamon sugar topping. And bake until golden brown. Voila! Crust cookies.

In all honesty, I thought everyone did this.

Apparently not.

Of course, Cookie Thursday is a Thing was started because a coworker had never had a home made cookie. I mean, the idea is not entirely foreign.

And it being Inflation Baking I was sifting through recipes from the Great Depression and War World II, and I ran across this recipe that called for a oil pastry crust.

I had rarely head of such a thing. According to Alton Brown of Good Eats, the best pastry is a combination of Crisco or something similar and butter. And an oil pastry would fit in nicely with the Inflation Baking theme.

Inflation. The big bad this is currently plaguing the world. Along with all the other things plaguing us. Including an actual, you know, plague called covid.

This is due to a bunch of factors, most related to covid. There was an increase in buying because people were bored at home during lockdown that continued as the world started to get its feet again. There were manufacturing problems in Asia, due to covid. There was a shipping crisis because there were limited people to off load the ships, due to covid. There is a trucking crisis due to covid and desire for increased wages from the truckers. There is a gas price jump that is decades in the making and, in my opinion, fueled by corporate greed. The corporations seeking to increase profits do not come off well in this nightmare of a tale.

Inflation bites into people’s wallets that had barely had time to recover from the pandemic. Yes, a section of society is making more due to the Great Resignation, but cost of living has gone up dramatically.

And Cookie Thursday is a Thing is a one woman show, and she foots the bill. This is what started me on the path of Inflation Baking. It’s been 2 months since I used butter in Cookie Thursday is a Thing.

I would continue the Inflation Baking theme, but I have already chosen a new theme for July. And you’ll just have to wait until next week to find out what it is.

Next time you make a pie crust, reserve a little to make crust cookies. Or, heck, make a pie crust specifically for crust cookies. And I made a batch, using the vintage oil pastry recipe. Tastes good but structural integrity is lacking. I wonder if adding cheese to the pie dough would make that better. But that is an experiment for another month. The memory of these is an integral part of my childhood.

You won’t regret it.

I know, such a news flash.

The world is tired, lady.

There is war.

There are fires.

There are ever increasing in strength hurricanes.

There are ever increasing temperatures that are rendering some places all but uninhabitable.

There is a supreme court in the US that has decided that a woman has no control over her own body. For an idea of a child. It isn’t a child; it is a clump of cells with potential.

Next up is the war on birth control. Because why not?

There is climate change that is quite handily the fault of humans. Same humans who don’t believe in it look to the sky when there is a disaster and shriek why? Um, because we are poisoning the planet and you can’t get your head around the whole sacrifice just a little bit of comfort for the greater good idea.

Inflation I’ll cover tomorrow.

It is a scary time to be a human.

It definitely is a scary time to be a woman.

There is so much that needs to be top of mind and top of wallet it is exhausting.

Yeah, but healthcare workers have borne the brunt of the world’s health for two and a half years now. And it is getting heavy.

And since covid can’t go away until everyone takes it seriously and I guess we are in a holding pattern there too.

And now monkeypox (to be renamed by the WHO) has gotten a foothold and infections are increasing. Oh, boy.

Breathe.

Just breathe.

And then pull up your big girl or boy panties and get to work.

The environment needs us.

Humans need us.

Women who are in danger every day need us.

The world needs us.

Let’s get to work.

Yes, this is in reference to the Supreme Court overturning Roe vs Wade. And this is notes that I’ve been collecting all weekend and may be disjointed.

As a person with XX chromosomes they’ve stripped me away of rights. The right of bodily autonomy, to decide what happens to their body.

This decision tells me that as a woman my only value is my uterus and what it may or may not contain. My thoughts, fears, concerns no longer have any bearing on my life and my personhood once I become pregnant. This is bullshit.

In the leaked opinion, Alito referenced the number of women nearly “1 million women were seeking to adopt children in 2002, whereas the domestic supply of infants relinquished at birth or within the first month of life and available to be adopted had become virtually nonexistent”. I mean, what the actual fuck? I presume these women are unable to have pregnancies and babies of their own and the answer that he stumbled upon is to have other women who don’t want their children carry the child, pay for pregnancy and birth and then give up the baby for adoption? Double what the actual fuck. There is a lot to unpack even there.

The Court seems to be grabbing for a tarnished ring that gives them a win for the 20% of Americans who want abortion overturned. Because it has never happened to them. Or because they have money and access to care for themselves and their children. Or because they can support themselves and the child they already have. Or because they’ve never been told that the wanted baby they are carrying is desperate ill and will not survive continued pregnancy or birth. Or because they have access to childcare while they work to earn money to support the child. Or because they haven’t been told another pregnancy will kill them.

So, you say that all laws have to be grounded in the constitution and that abortion is not mentioned. I’m sorry, what about how during the 18th century and the founding of this country abortion was legal until the quickening (roughly 15-20 weeks). I mean women are barely mentioned in the constitution, why would this have been mentioned? Like, at all. We know the men of the Court are not going to think about that and the woman who voted to overturn only sees the fractured truth that she thinks her god demands.

There will be more death. America already has the highest mortality during pregnancy and the post-partum. 23.8 dead in 100,000 births. This will only serve to heighten it. And the racial disparity is stunning and not in a good way.

There will be far flung reverberations to the economy, to healthcare, to having even OB-GYNs available, as abortion goes underground again. And don’t point that there are TWENTY-TWO states that do not have laws on the books that make abortion illegal. Out of fifty or less than 50%. That is 56,000,000 women of childbearing age. How are women supposed to get to these states? How are these states going to handle the influx of patients? And the word I think you are searching for is that is not illegal YET.

And this decision opens up other rights that are held dear by the majority of the population that are grounded in the 14th Amendment. This includes gay marriage, biracial marriage, and birth control. Some people who have the megaphone right now don’t believe in those things. They will be next on the chopping block. The ability to prescribe and take birth control will be on the docket soon.

I fear for the young women of this country. I truly do. Doesn’t impact me, but will impact my nieces and nephews. Because this absolutely impacts boys.

I am sorry that the world has moved beyond what you think is familiar and comfortable. I am sorry that the world has left you behind and grasping at ideals from a time past that are no longer relevant. I am sorry that you perceive this as a weakening of your power and control over women.

Speaking to women, this shows that we are viewed as a vessel only, as chattel, and stripped of our own self-determination, which is antithetical to the Constitution. Our value has been sunk to that of a broodmare, and our only value is in the children that we can bear.

This is forced birth. Where are the people who have been chanting my body, my rights about masks and vaccinations? Or, are they the same people behind this abomination?

As a gender we are less free today then we were a week ago. Aren’t you tired of men telling you you can do with your body? I am.

The overall message being broadcast to me, my sisters, my nieces, all persons with XX genes is that as woman, there is no greater contribution to society than the ability to reproduce.

Are there such things as “convenience abortions”? I am sure there are. But all the D&Cs and D&Es that I’ve circulated have been for wanted pregnancies. I know that this is a talking point of the anti-choice.

Let’s discuss why some women seek abortion for wanted children. It is because they have been told that their child will not survive continued pregnancy and will have limited survivable outside of the womb. We are to carry these doomed children, birth them, and watch them die, or live in agony for less than a year. Makes complete sense to no one.

This is not an argument about the child, or potential child. This is vicious misogyny.

Ar-15s are not in the constitution but they have more rights than us and are allowed to exist. Why?

You bet I’m pissed.

And afraid for those who do not access to get to a state with legalized abortion.

And afraid for those who enjoy the marriage rights, even in they are gay.

And afraid for those who enjoy the marriage rights, even if one is a black and the other white.

And afraid for those who want to access and take birth control to have what little say they have left over their bodies.

I’m sick of having a man tell me what I can and cannot do with my body. Who makes him right? Because he has a penis?

Hell, yes, I’m mad and willing to work for others.

The gown card reads ‘stickerectomy.’

That’s it.

One word.

-ecomy is the removal of.

Stickerectomy is the removal of stickers.

In this instance, it refers to the removal of the excessive amount of EKG stickers on a chest. These stickers are usually placed in the ER for monitoring.

And sometimes the ER uses the EKG monitor in the room in place of a 12-lead EKG machine. This gives the treating physician information about the electrical activity of the heart. And this information tells the physician, and the nurse who has gained knowledge about EKG, about how the heart is doing.

I’m not sure if you know this but the heart is integral to the human condition.

Of course, in my quest to know all the things I have done classes and extensive reading on the EKG squiggles. And this was useful when I was an EKG tech while I was in nursing school.

But once the test is done, or the results have been interpreted by the doc, the stickers are left on.

Sometimes this is useful. Especially if there needs to be another read later after an intervention such as medication has been given. But that’s it.

And sometimes the EKG stickers are ones that the ambulance uses. You can always tell those at my hospital as they are different color and shape than the ones that are routinely used in the hospital. Even if the patient has outside of ER stickers they are not usually in the correct place and so extra stickers are placed on.

And the stickers remain on. They pull a bit when being removed and patients may object to it, especially if they have been placed over chest hair.

Once a patient is under anesthesia in the OR I make a point of removing all the extra stickers. Of doing a stickerectomy. The most I have removed prior to a surgery was 26. It was a combination of ambulance and hospital stickers.

Remove the extra stickers. They are probably going to be in the way, especially for a belly case. And the patient definitely doesn’t need to go home with them.