Booze month continues on Cookie Thursday is a Thing.

I was tempted to do a rose cookie but then I found a recipe for a red wine double chocolate cookie.

Of course I added to the recipe.

How could I not?

I was afraid that the flavor the red wine would not come through when I added the 1/2 cup the recipe called for.

Definitely not enough.

I decided to make a red wine syrup instead.

I added a bit of sugar to two cups of red wine and reduced it on the stove until it was reduced by 50%.

The cookie dough continued.

And then, in the middle of a meeting for the hospital, I mistakenly set the oven to 275 degrees, not 375.

And I wondered why the cookies were taking longer to bake.

And when they were done they were the consistency of fudge.

Am I a clumsy genius?

We’ll see if anyone notices the difference between the 2 cookies.

As always, Cookie Thursday is a Thing is about experimentation.

I am very much a believer in healthcare.

I should be.

I’ve worked in healthcare in some capacity since I graduated high school, many moons ago.

I’ve been a registered nurse for nearly 21 years.

I believe in exercising and eating right.

I understand fully that this may be difficult for some people.

Or impossible.

I also believe in health maintenance through regular checkups and mammograms if you are old enough.

But there seems to be a disconnect with my health care provider around my yearly mammogram.

I missed the employee day in October of 2021.

Because of pandemic and case volume reasons.

And because I was in CA during employee day.

Since then, I’ve called and utilized their call me back function on the scheduling phone.

Three times.

I’ve gone on the website to schedule it myself through the health app that the corporation supports.

No dice, I am told to call and schedule.

I’ve gone through the corporation website.

Same result.

This is the same system that “lost” me for six months trying to get me to come re-do my scans.

I work for the company.

Trust me, they know where to find me.

But they had the wrong number.

They reached out to my primary care doctor who reached out to me via email.

This is the first I’d heard of it because of the wrong number they had.

All of these entities know that I work for the corporation, and they know my number and my email.

Personal, or corporate email, it does not matter.

Wall, meet head.

Repeatedly.

Now I am on hold with the scheduler system.

I listen to the same 10 bars of classical music and then a voice breaks in to remind me that I can get this scheduled.

On-line.

Or in person.

Or wait for a call back.

No to all of the above, thank you.

I will stay on the phone until I speak to a real live person.

The same 10 bars starts again.

Remind me not to go postal on the poor person who answer the phone.

They don’t know about the frustrations I have been going through.

If I, a medical professional, have issues getting through to the scheduler I can’ imagine what others have to go through.

Egad.

My mom called me on the way home from her travel job today.

And during our conversation, I could hear the traffic on the freeway on the drive.

During one conversational lull, I could hear a car with a big engine rack up the tachs.

That means the car, probably driven by a man, impatiently revved his engine and passed my mom on the right.

This is legal in our state.

And probably because mom was driving with the speed of traffic, no more, no less.

I’ve seen her drive my entire life.

I remarked upon the sudden, aggressive sound, and she laughed.

And said that there was no real place to go for him, but the car could go on with its bad self.

And then she said something that struck me as the core of what a circulator does.

The circulator is the RN in the room who is outside of the sterile field but watches to make sure that all is happening according to plan, and to plan for when it is not.

Mom said, “You know I watch what everyone else is doing…”

And I finished, “Because they certainly don’t.”

She was talking about other drivers.

Which is one of the reasons that I don’t worry about her driving in ice and snow.

However, truer words were never spoken about the circulator role.

We watch what everyone else in the room is doing: keeping an eye on time, on the suction amount, on the anesthesia team and how they are reacting or not reacting to the vitals, on the field to make sure there are no needs.

The circulator does many things.

But mostly, they watch so that the others in the room don’t have to.

This is why the circulator is the boss of the room.

But the driver is still an asshole.

Have you ever played canasta?

It is a card game, best with more than two people.

2 will do in a pinch.

Especially if it is the long summer between 8th and 9th grades and no one has a driver’s license and all the adults are at work.

And your best friend has come over for a visit.

This is a time when it was long distance to call the town over, where he lived.

Yeah, a long time ago.

That summer, in Glen Ellen, CA, I played a lot of canasta.

And I was ruthless.

Ruthless I say.

In canasta if you can hold all the cards in your hand and silently build your entire meld.

And put them all down at once.

And win.

Because you get more points for doing so.

I did this at least 3 times a day while we played canasta.

On the hot summer between 8th and 9th grades.

Oh, he would get so mad.

And fall for it the very next hand.

Good times.

I am not sure why that memory popped up today.

The characters in the book I was reading were playing canasta.

But that is not the important part of the story.

The important part is the holding of all the cards so that I could play them all at once.

I am sure I had opportunities to play cards before that, to engage more fully in game play.

It was more important that I get one over on my friend.

Thankfully I grew out of that one sided upmanship.

However, not everyone has.

And they hold information about doctor preference cards and wants and desires close to their chest.

They can reveal what they know in the exact moment that the case seems lost and the doctor is getting mad.

And they can be seen as the savior of the case.

This does no one any favors.

Least of all the patient.

I share freely what I know.

I no longer hoard cards.

And I definitely do not hoard knowledge.

And I think that makes me a better nurse.

The post-it reads, “When you go ‘above and beyond’, don’t forget that when you take that away, it will be missed and resented.”

Some days it doesn’t pay to do above and beyond.

Above and beyond means achieving past your job responsibilities.

How the higher ups respond is interesting.

Sometimes they just fold the above and beyond into your normal job responsibilities.

Sometimes they rewrite the job responsibilities to reflect the new job nuances you really weren’t away you were signing yourself up for.

For you only.

Naturally.

Without extra pay or acknowledgement.

And sometimes that is okay.

Some people want to work extra and take extra job roles.

It is in our nature.

But what about the others who don’t have that particular quirk.

There can be resentment on both sides.

Manager’s pet jibe anyone?

Slacker jibe, anyone?

And if the above and beyond isn’t really sustainable and you quit.

It is resented.

That someone, namely you, are not lightening the load of others by going above and beyond.

It is frustrating.

It is a quagmire.

And it makes the ones who go above and beyond tired.

I finished setting up my calendar for the year.

It is a very involved process.

But less involved this year as I do not need to keep up with call shifts.

I love a good calendar.

Yes, yes, I’m three weeks tardy setting it up.

No, I do not have any excuses.

As I like to be organized.

And the spaces in a calendar are not big enough for everything I do.

I jerry rig my own calendar.

And it fits all the various portions of my life.

Work meetings.

Call shifts.

Blogging.

School.

Education.

Work.

Exercise.

I want a calendar that has sections for each.

I make my own using monthly sheets.

5 each, one for each section.

And an ARC notebook from Staples.

They are my favorite notebook set of all time.

Now I just have to fill in all the different squares that I’ve got.

And plan the rest of it.

Nothing like 3 weeks into a new year to be behind.

But I’m doing it now and that is what matters.

2 vaccines.

plus booster

plus the Omicron variant

equals mild infection

I have heard from many of my family members.

And my coworkers.

That being fully vaccinated and boostered made Omicron covid infection that much easier to bear.

But please stop comparing it to a flu.

This gives other people false hope that their unvaccinated asses will be fine.

2 vaccines

no booster

plus the Omicron variant

equals more serious infection

I have some friends in this group as well.

Their symptoms are more severe.

The length of illness is longer.

There may be more sequelae.

That means they may be short of breath or tire more easily.

Even after they are feeling better.

no vaccnines

no booster

plus the Omicron variant

or plus the Delta variant, which is still hanging about causing deaths

equals serious infection

These are the people who are flooding the hospitals.

And the ICUs.

And the morgues.

The best way outcome using this covid math is

2 vaccines

plus booster

minus any variant

equals no illness

But those of us who are in the very last section are still masking and handwashing and social distancing.

Don’t get caught up in the math problem.

Booze month continues.

This week I wanted to do a Bailey’s Irish Cream cookie because I’ve always heard of Bailey’s and Coffee.

I don’t drink coffee.

And I don’t drink alcohol.

I decided to try both in a cookie.

Unsurprisingly there is instant coffee in the recipe.

I happen to have instant coffee in my pantry.

And Bailey’s Irish Cream in the bar.

I wanted to maximize the number of cookies in this batch.

Because I wanted to stretch the cookies out to be enough for 2 departments.

A single batch of dough netted me 5 cookie sheets of 16-20 cookies each.

You want to know the secret?

The smallest cookie scoop I have.

The lion’s share of the cookies will go the OR.

And the remaining 12 will go to administration.

Why administration as the second department recipient of Cookie Thursday is a Thing?

Because it never hurts to butter up the bosses.

And I believe that they’ve had their challenges during the pandemic.

I can imagine keeping a hospital afloat during the worst health crisis in our lives is hard.

Kind of like steering a ship through turbulent waters during a hurricane.

I know that many people have beef with any hospital leadership.

Even ours.

Are they perfect?

No.

Do they deserve a treat?

Yes.

Don’t forget they have administrative staff that works just as hard as they do.

Last night was the first all-nighter of my new shift.

My scrub tech and I got called to come in at 2300 and in we came.

There was a case to finish and another one to follow.

Of course I gave the first surgeon a hell of a time as it took him nearly an hour to close.

The follow case had been waiting for 3 hours on surgeon availability at which time the surgeon lost her place in the add-on queue and that case got bumped to the end.

This happens when the surgeon is more than an hour late.

And there are cases to go.

Policy states that that surgeon can lose their turn in the line up of add ons.

A bit harsh that the patient had to wait for 8 hours.

She was offered to go home and come back for surgery the next day.

She said no.

She would wait.

And then my favorite surgeon called and wanted to add on an urgent case for 0530.

Remember I am the second PACU nurse as well per the rules of the new call shift.

Unless there is another case.

Then the real PACU nurse gets called in.

By the time we got the second patient through surgery and recovery and placed in a patient room it was 0245.

Not enough time to brave the icy roads home sit for an hour and go back to the hospital at 0430.

No thank you.

I did what any other self-respecting nurse at loose ends would do.

I set up the operating rooms for the coming day.

And had a snack out of the doctor’s lounge.

Cheese and crackers and a mini can of coke, if you are wondering.

I checked my work email.

Just kidding, I do that during the day.

And, of course, we finished the case just at 0700.

The new quitting time.

By this time, all the day shift workers were clocked in and getting ready to start their first cases of the day.

I had to run the gamut of my former day shift coworkers.

It was bittersweet.

Here in the America Southeast there has been a huge disruption in the last 2 days.

This frozen white stuff fell from the sky.

A lot of it.

Must be three, three and a half, four inches.

Enough that the kids next door built a 4 foot tall snowman.

And of course there was sleet involved.

Snow, sleet, snow.

Makes for hazardous driving conditions.

And it is not just a meme that people in the South can’t drive on snow.

They can’t.

Luckily I learned to drive on snow and ice in Nebraska while at Creighton.

Mother Nature doesn’t mess around there.

But the hill out of our neighbor never gets any sun and it takes forever for the ice to melt.

I park in the Park n Ride at the top of the hill and hike down to our house.

But patients.

Patients never let a little white stuff on the roads stop them.

Patients always make it in.

This is a known fact in the hospital system.

We do what we can to ensure there is enough staffing to cover the surgeries.

or I did.

Before my new shift.

Another change I have to account for.