Happy birthday, dear dispatches.

I hope you don’t mind that I am calling you by that nickname.

Should I be more formal?

And say happy birthday, dear dispatches from the evening shift?

You are 4 years old today.

Yes, I know it took me a long time to settle into posting three times a week, at least.

And yes, I do cheat with Thursdays.

But, hey.

You have been my agony aunt and my stress relief all in one.

Regardless of what the topic is.

I would not have gone through this last 18 months without you.

No, serious, thank you.

The only presents I have for you are my goals for the next year.

I will continue to post at least three times a week, varying the posts as I do.

I will write a grant proposal and tell you all about it.

I will write another abstract proposal since AORN got moved virtual, again.

I will present one of my posters at a conference.

I will apply for a PhD program.

I will write my alma mater about a program bringing periop 101 to their senior students that was announced Sunday.

I will explore writing articles, either for AORN or others.

There is so much to do.

Let us get started!

Today’s note is simple: how do we, as the vaccinated, begin to forgive the unvaccinated.

I know, that in their heads, all their reasons for remaining unvaccinated are clear.

Those are the more sane of the unvaccinated.

And it all boils down to I am afraid.

And fear is not to be made fun of.

Fear needs a guiding hand and reassurance.

It is the others; the politically poisoned ones that are the worst.

I hear it over and over.

They are regurgitating what they have been told on their political network.

I am hearing some of the same talking points that I had only read about from coworkers.

The vaccine isn’t FDA approved.

But it is.

Emergency approval is still approved.

Full approval needs study and time after vaccination to ensure it is still safe.

Full approval has been sought and is pending with the Moderna and the Pfizer vaccines.

I trust my immune system.

That’s nice is the only thing I can think about that.

In reality, Covid-19 doesn’t care about your political bent, or your immune system.

To Covid-19 you are only a means to survival.

And if you happen to die.

There are millions more unvaccinated where you came from.

Forgiveness of those who are afraid, ignorant, or defiant in the face of a deadly threat is a high bar.

And right now, I am failing in reaching it.

The question remains: how do we, the vaccinated, forgive the unvaccinated?

Hell if I know.

I know I said the same thing about where the pixie dust to fly comes from.

I still don’t know.

Yesterday I got invited to a back to school event at the hospital.

In the middle of a surge.

Where other hospital events were cancelled.

Because of the pandemic.

With unmasked children and healthcare workers alike.

I am supposed to be out of town at the convention.

I know that some of the people knew I was still in town.

Only three people asked me if I was going to attend the event.

Back to school is one of my favorite events.

I buy school supplies all year long so that my husband and I can donate them.

I buy backpacks cheap and store them at the end of every back to school season.

We do not have children.

I want to support the children and the school nurses who need it.

But I will not attend a back to school event in the middle of a surge with the county fully vaccination rate is 51%!

Not only no, but hell no.

The department managed to fill 20 backpacks.

And three large totes of supplies when the backpacks ran out.

Those will have to serve in my stead.

Finished with my clinical ladder packet.

Of course, I had it mostly finished on July 5.

This was I get to turn it in.

And wait for it to be reviewed.

Wait 4-6 weeks.

And then get my bonus.

The clinical ladder is a big deal.

It is how bedside nurses can engage with the hospitals and their departments to earn a bonus.

The bonus is different at every rung on the ladder.

There are 3, 4, or 5.

Each ladder requires more points to attain.

I’ve never met a project I said no to so I have a lot of points.

To reach 3, there are 18 points required.

To reach 4, there are 27 points required.

To reach 5, there are 38 points required.

These points can be garnered for different things.

Certifications, degrees, hospital committees, shared governance.

There are three sections and points must be gathered from 2 of them.

I have points from all.

I have more than 38.

But, then, you all knew I was crazy, right?

No heat month continues with mazza.

What is mazza?

I do not have any idea where it came from.

I do not have any idea what nationality it is.

I do know it is delicious.

August is the time of the very ripe tomatoes that taste amazing.

Mazza is the best of summer.

It is very ripe tomatoes, preferably homegrown.

A little bit of olive oil.

A lot of garlic.

Salt to taste.

Process in the food processor.

Serve with bread cubes.

Divine.

It is even better the next day.

Providing there is any left.

And makes amazing soup.

I have noticed a trend.

Up go the covid cases, down goes my sleep hours.

It is not necessarily all due to work hours.

It is more the dread of what tomorrow will bring.

For instance, take this week.

Monday, I had no meetings or pressing needs for the day.

I was up at 0622.

I asked myself why.

Yesterday I had to be up at 0645 to get myself together enough to join a zoom call at 0700.

I woke up at 0620.

Lay in bed and then silenced my alarm at 0637.

This morning was going to be a sleep in morning.

Up at 0621.

I asked myself why.

According to my sleep chart that I keep so that I can monitor how much I sleep, I went through some of the same behaviors in April of last year.

When the state was in quarantine.

I’m pretty sure it is related.

Tomorrow I have to be up at 0700 again.

Wonder how long my brain will let me sleep.

0630 would be a treat.

Lambda is the newest, baddest, more likely to kill us all Covid variant.

With the delta variant some vaccinated people get sick.

That is out of 4% that the vaccine doesn’t cover.

But you don’t get AS sick.

And then lambda busts in the door.

And laughs at the vaccines.

And is resistant to the vaccines.

Or as my husband puts it, ‘Delta is the forward team to take out some of the unvaccinated population.

And lambda is the clean-up crew.’

What’s next?

The variant that will raze humanity and salt the ground?

Pfizer and Moderna can keep churning out boosters and will because it is a profit leader.

But if the unvaccinated people aren’t reached, all they are doing is slowing down the unending march to the end.

To quote H.G. Wells’ novel War of the World, “For so it had come about, as indeed I and many men might have foreseen had not terror and disaster blinded our minds. These germs of disease have taken toll of humanity since the beginning of things–taken toll of our prehuman ancestors since life began here.”

41,000,000+ people have had covid.

Sometimes twice.

In the US.

613,000+ are dead.

In the US.

We could have stopped this.

We should have stopped this.

How dare we not do everything in their power to protect others?

Some of us are.

Most of us aren’t.

We should be ashamed.

The note, jotted down on a gown card which I use to take notes sometimes instead of a post-it has two words on it.

Twice.

Once as a scribble that I wrote.

Second printed, that I also wrote.

Probably interpreting the words.

An entire 2 x4 card, perforated at the top.

Lots of unused space.

I don’t know.

The two words, written twice are ‘stretcher napper’.

These can be taken 2 ways.

It could mean a person who is taking a nap on a stretcher.

It does not.

No one has time to sleep.

I did spend a very uncomfortable very snowy evening on a stretcher because I wasn’t allowed to go home because of being on call.

But I digress.

It does not mean a person who is sleeping on a stretcher.

They are not that comfortable.

I remember in this instance that it means that the stretcher is missing from outside the room.

The stretcher has been kidnapped and nothing left in its place.

Hopefully it didn’t go to the nearby room.

As their patient’s butt had not been on it.

But my patient’s butt had.

Ew.

On a fun note, I was pleasantly surprised when I told the story to my husband.

He knew was a stretcher was.

Something my coworkers have no idea about.

The things we put patients on, with wheels?

That is a gurney.

A stretcher has no wheels.

It is meant to be a flat place that patients are carried on away from dangerous situations, such as a battlefield.

Or down a flight of stairs, such as evacuation because of a fire.

He was watching a war movie, don’t ask me which one, and he pointed to the screen where they were carrying wounded from the front line and said, “See, stretcher.”

Brought a tear to my eye.

Not too long ago I predicted handwringing and people saying they didn’t know covid was bad.

And they would have gotten the vaccine if they’d only known.

Um, where have you been for the last 18 months?

I am finding it difficult to even look these people in the eye.

And refraining from beating them about the head with a newspaper screaming, “See!”

And calling them unkind names.

At the top of my lungs.

But I don’t.

And now that the hospital has set a time limit for all employees to be vaccinated or file a religious exemption, there has been a stampede to the computers to fill out the exemption forms.

This unsettles me on two levels.

One that my coworkers are these kinds of people and have been merrily going about their way without masks because the CDC said they could.

No, the CDC said the vaccinated could, not the unvaccinated.

Secondly is the religious exemption.

What religion denies life saving vaccination?

In any where besides the faithful’s minds?

And these people profess to practice it.

Right.

Sure.

I had scheduled this to be published on Saturday and then walked away.

And I read an article about the Delta variant and the insanity that is going on now.

The deaths.

The hospitalizations.

The can I get the vaccine now and will it cure me questions.

Is a self-inflected wound.

And I had to come back and edit my post.

Because this is the entirety of what vaccinated people feel.

This is entirely self-inflicted.

And the unvaccinated pulled the trigger.