During our 10 hour drive back from AORN in New Orleans, I started thinking about what the pandemic has stolen from all of us. Now that it is waning, and deaths are going down, although it is to be determined regarding hospitalizations.

The biggest thing that the pandemic has stolen from us is time. This is multi-layered because time itself has different meanings. I read an article this week about how the pandemic has skewed our sense of time. I feel this acutely. Two summers have come and gone and we are looking at our third summer under covid. I would have thought you lying if you said we would be here now. Two Christmases, two birthdays; the list is unending.

The following is a list of what the pandemic stole from me, personally. Everyone else’s list is different, but we should still be able to grieve over it.

1. MSN graduation in 2020. I was looking forward to this, it is why I chose a hyperlocal school. And I did not get to do any of it. The only graduation I went to was for my ADN, way back in 2001.
2. In-person work with my preceptor. In person education experiences had been cancelled. I was not allowed to teach for the end of MSN project. I had to finish the rest of 150 hours as a student online doing education. Not teaching, learning. And my preceptor left the organization during the last two years and I don’t know why or where she went.
3. Many, many hours of sleep. Again, this is not solely about me. I know that many people lost sleep during the very beginning of the pandemic due to fear.
4. There was a Sherlock Holmes traveling museum in South Carolina. I had tickets and plans to go. In March of 2020. No idea if this is still a thing, or even where it has landed.
5. There was a Sherlock Holmes convention in London. This was the original planned trip to London. It was going to be great to meet other fans. This was going to be in September 2020.
6. There was a Sherlock Holmes convention in Pennsylvania. This was a consolation prize because I could not get to the other two. Surely, the acute case of the pandemic would be over. No. This was going to be in November of 2020.
7. Poster presentation in March of 2020 and again in August of 2021 for AORN. These were different posters and although there was a poster portion of the online conference it is not the same.
8. I was going to take a year off and continue to pursue my PhD. This was going to be in September of 2021. As my husband says, the pandemic year did not count.
9. To finish my PhD by age 50, I had to start when I was 46. All of a sudden I will be 47 at the beginning of this program. I will probably be 51. I will be 51 regardless, but it is still a goal I had set in my brain.
10. In 2020, I was the chair of the professional nurse council for my organization. I was chair during 2020 but over Zoom, does this count? I didn’t have to travel to a far away hospital to be chair, that’s a win right?
11. Peace of mind regarding the leadership changes they rammed through. All of a sudden any autonomy I had was gone until 1700. And how is that working out for you?
12. My goal has always been to write. I was going to take the year off from school to polish up my fiction writing. And start sending query letters out. Instead, I worked insane hours at the hospital and training to do med-surg nursing so I could offer up hours to people who did not have a lot of hours because the elective cases had gone. Unsurprisingly no one took me up on the offer. Why would they want to work evening shift, if I was working all the hours? And taking all the call because they didn’t want to.
13. My over reaching goal for school has always been to write professionally. Articles, textbooks, I’ll do it all. Again, not a lot of movement there because I had been so overwhelmed being a working nurse during the pandemic.
14. I lost money on the London trip. This absolutely deserves its own line. It was completely planned and paid for. I had no hope of recouping everything. With the airline credit, I rebought us tickets for August. And they were $2000 less. I theoretically had a credit that carried over but had to be used by March 2022.
15. My sister was going to go with us to London for her 40th birthday present. I am sad that I don’t get to share London with her, as we are both anglophiles. I put that money toward a trip to San Francisco, including hotel. We will go to Twinings in her honor. And bring her back some tea to try.

This last one is a biggie and I felt deserved to come out of the queue. I have lost good faith in my fellow man. Whoever made the response to a pandemic political should be sentenced to serve hard time in the ICU watching people die. Instead of sensibly all striving to end the pandemic and get back to our new normal, some people decided to be assholes and whine about their freedoms and embrace other people’s deaths as just a cost of doing business for living their lives as they wanted. I still struggle with this, with rage and disbelief, and I also struggle to forgive.

The United States is over the acute phase of the pandemic for the most part. This is a list of what I personally lost. I think the biggest thing is the warping of time. but I know the biggest thing is knowing that some people don’t care about the dying that is still happening. That vulnerable people are at risk. That is hard to fathom and believe.

D. E. A. D.

This has been hanging on my mind for awhile. And our inability as a society to say it. To acknowledge it even.

According to the Merriam Webster dictionary it is someone who is no longer alive. That they have ceased to exist as the person you knew. It is a noun. It is an adjective, a description at times.

As a society we dress up the word in euphemisms. Passed is one. That person has passed. To some it may be a polite way of saying dead. To me it is stark reminder that as a society we do not deal well with death.

Oh, the patient in that room had a code blue. The patient coded. Also a euphemism for health care workers. That means the patient had a cessation of heartbeat and breathing. And we snatched them back from the maws of death. Or we didn’t, but we tried.

Even the famed M&M, or morbidity and mortality, conference that hospitals do to discuss less than ideal outcomes dresses up the word. Hell, at least they address it and how to make the system better.

Are we so afraid of death that we are unable to face the realities of it head on?

Death is not polite. It rarely comes knocking and you never know when it is your turn.

In hiding the word, society makes ourselves feel better. If we don’t say it, it is not happening. But it is. No need to dress up the word that happens to everybody. To quote Benjamin Franklin “nothing is certain except death and taxes.” None of us are getting out of this alive.

It is time to have more open conversations around the word dead. Because sometimes the used euphemism is misconstrued and misunderstanding takes place. And I cannot think of anything worse.

The post-it says ‘2 super I charge nurse memories this week. 1) telling an irate CRNA to calm down 2) chasing everyone away from the desk because I can’t hear on the phone with 5 conversations going on at once.’

Yeah, this was evening shift in a nut shell.

I had an irate CRNA, who is named in the post-it note, no I will not name them. They were going on and on and on and on. About an imagined slight from the surgeon. There was no time for hand-holding and there there-ing the CRNA. There was a case to begin. I took 5 minutes and sequestered the surgeon and the CRNA as the tech and I counted and told them to hash it out. There was a patient that needed our help and I was not interested in a blow by blow conversation discussing the issue. They would have to be adults and handle it like adults. There was no other choice.

Sometimes you have to be the kindergarten monitor. I stopped short of sending them to their rooms without supper. Because patient was waiting.

Within four minutes they had the conversation they needed to have. And we could get on with the business of helping the patient.

No time was lost on this interaction and the patient was able to have their surgery.

I swear the OR desk has magnets in it. Kind of like a kitchen in a home, everyone congregates at the OR desk. Some are goofing off, some are awaiting the elevator, some are trying to work. hi, yeah, that’s me.

The phone rings and it is someone that I need to talk too.

But I can’t hear them. Because of the 5 different cross conversations going on.

In this instance I have no compunction with excusing myself a moment, muting the phone, and getting everyone at the desk away. I quick assign evening tasks that they know already need to be done and go back to the conversation on hold. With a silent desk area.

Sometimes you have to assign tasks that need to be done and, again, all adults here.

Yeah, shift work is often about being the adult in the room and facilitating talking. Or not talking as the case may be.

Or, everything I learned about how to treat people at work came from kindergarten.

I was aghast, appalled, angry at what was revealed to us at the latest shared governance meeting. People are misleading travel nurses, or any nurse or tech they feel is infringing on THEIR department. This can even be a nurse or tech from the float pool.

They are withholding vital patient information, such as report, from people who are just there to help.

It was a tale of two hospitals as explained by one of the participants in our group.

At hospital A, the flagship hospital, report was withheld from the oncoming nurse. No one was there to greet the nurse when they arrived to, again, help by taking an assignment and patient load. It was as petty as not giving needed information such as parking, or cafeteria hours, or even how to get into the department. How do you think that nurse felt?

By contrast, at hospital B the same nurse had a vastly different experience. They were helped to find parking, that their badge worked to gain access to the department, where they were greeted by the charge nurse, who facilitated them getting report and generally helped them get their feet. Same nurse, different greeting. I can tell you the nurse felt way better about hospital B.

I said that what was described to us made me want to shake hospital A.

And shake the hand of hospital B.

Are we 5? Or toddlers? When has it become acceptable to gaslight, and mislead people who are just there to help us?

sigh

Don’t make me take it back to the golden rule. Treat others like you want to be treated.

No, scratch that. The platinum rule. This is a rule that states that people are to be treated the way they would treat others. This involves having a little empathy.

These techs and nurses are just there to help. And we should let them. Healthcare has been taking it in the shorts since before the start of the pandemic.

We should all be ashamed of treating helpers this way.

Mr. Rogers would be ashamed at some of you.

This is a brief side-step in coconut month. This week is Passover, and I found a recipe that sparked my interest.

The recipe is for matzo crack. I have made it before several times using different crackers. I have used Ritz crackers, saltines, but this is the first time that I used matzo crackers. I am not sure I had never had matzo crackers.

Being welcoming to other faiths is important. This is a skill and a mindset that needs to be ingrained.

And the other recipes I found were above my skill set.

Therefore, chocolate topped matzo toffee.

Because the world is better with butter.

And chocolate.

Covid is not gone.

Despite what politicians will tell you.

Despite what the man on the street will tell you.

Despite what your cousin’s mother’s auntie’s next door neighbor will tell you.

People are still dying. No one is writing it down. No one is keeping track of current infections. No one cares!

I get it.

A giant, broadway in lights covid is over… in neon.

Yeah, keep telling yourself that.

I get it.

It has been a long, hard two years. Because it has been over 2 years of this nonsense. Healthcare is tired. Nurses are tired. I am tired.

But wishful thinking doesn’t make it so.

And don’t wear a mask on an airplane if you don’t want to.

The air is only circulated with every exhalation for however many hours you are on the plane. But what if?

I will be continuing mask wearing when I see fit. No matter what people may say.

You think I care about what people say?

Or think?

Or talk about the crazy behind my back?

Don’t know me very well do you?

I don’t wear a mask for myself.

I wear it to protect others. And those people who cannot be vaccinated. Or the people whose vaccinations didn’t work. Or are too young for vaccination. This is who I chose to protect.

You do you.

I’ll be over here wearing a mask to protect others.

No matter who is against it. Because it is the right thing to do.

Can’t argue with the right thing to do. And if I get to fly to London in August. I will be wearing a mask during the flight.

Let us be honest. Sometimes a surgical case is not our cup of tea. Heck, the entire service is not our cup of tea. Every nurse I know has a case or body function they HATE.

Despise.

Abhor.

Nails on chalkboard would be more soothing.

Please don’t make me go in there; I’ll do anything.

For the most part this can be accommodated. Kind of. If you have the staff.

And the case aversion can be as varied as the human body. This nurse hates teeth. This tech hates feet. My own mother hates vomit, explains a lot about my childhood.

Me? I can’t stand phlegm. Lung butter. Ew. This has roots in training. My patient had a full beard, a raging upper respiratory infection, and green noxious phlegm everywhere. And the patient, not sound of mind, reveled in it. Makes my skin crawl just writing about it. Nightmares tonight.

Do you want to know WHY I did not pursue a CRNA, which means certified RN of anesthesia? For this alone.

Case aversions exist.

However, the body part/function in question is attached to a patient. Someone who needs our help. And we soldier on. This is what we are best at.

Through something we hate, despise, abhor, makes us want to run and hide.

Because someone needs us.

I have and I will continue to care for patients who exhibit my case aversion.

But I will wear gloves.

The post-it reads ‘don’t be married to the plans.’

This is something that the OR does particularly well. Plans change. Diagnoses change. Patient anatomy is not clear cut and pretty like it is in text books.

There can be a tentative plan. A structure in place, a general idea of how something will go. An over all plan.

Beware that overall plans can change. And do.

A does not lead to B cleanly. Sometimes there is a needed jaunt to Z. Don’t be surprised by it. Be flexible in plan changes.

You might surprise yourself.

This is hard lesson in nursing. Despite all of our preparations, plans can change.

And have contingency ideas in the back of your head for how this is going to go. For example, the anatomy is plain weird and there is no safe way to finish the planned procedure. E.g. a lap appy.

Okay. You will need larger sponges, even maybe some appy tapes (long, thin sponges that are x-ray detectable), different suture, and a few instruments.

I guess the lesson for today is not to be married to the plans, but have an alternate in mind for when the plan changes.

The what has become the yearly screed against Home Owners Associations and the associations that tell me how to live my house.

Last year they sent an email to everyone reminding us to make our houses pretty for the inspectors.

Yawn.

There would be inspectors to look at the houses, like they don’t weekly.

And send out nasty letters reminding you to put away the trash can that had been left out for 4 seconds while you opened the garage door. Or mow the lawn that was 1 inch longer than agreed.

Who agreed and who has a ruler?

Everyone I have spoken to gets these letters. And we pay them. Living in the South, where they are prevalent, is so much fun. They love to judge the other down here.

We did the yearly mop up of the front beds. And, as I do every other year, I ran into something. Not poison ivy, not poison oak, poison sumac I think. And instead of suffering the itch in silence, like I usually do, this year I reported to my doctor. With pictures.

And got put on a Prednisone dose pack.

I don’t recall having a taper pack before. It stinks. It chalky, and tastes bad and is generally not much fun. It makes my legs ache. Fun. The cream that they gave me for the rash does much better. I think I will ask for lesser guns next time.

Now that I have three days left of the taper I have thoughts. Is this more symptom management? I’ve gotten through before. Is this something better left in the doctor’s quiver? And could this post be more 1st world problem if I tried?

Time to think of the positives.

I have shelter. I have a house. One that even has new siding, that I paid for with the money we had saved up for two years by not going out or vacationing. To the dismay of my in-laws.

I have my health. I have a short term rash and itches. So many people have it worse.

I have food. Although there is inflation I am careful with our money so it is not impactful on us. I have water. I am thinking of starting a summer vegetable garden. You know, now that I have time.

Covid is doing what covid does. It waxes and wanes and people die. Or have long term side effects. But I, for the grace of vaccination and booster, masks and social distancing, have not gotten it (knock on wood).

On measure I am doing pretty good. I think I will give myself a break and go read.

And spread out the 10 cubic feet of mulch for the front beds. I don’t want a letter. Although I did pick up glow in the dark spray paint for some of my cement animals in the front that need a touch up. I’m still me after all.

Coconut month continues.

Why coconut month?

Because I have a ton of coconut in my baking pantry.

And lots of recipes.

And coconut flour that I don’t care for that I will gladly feed to other people.

For this week, I used the basic fudgy cocoa no bake recipe of 1 stick of butter, 2 c sugar, 1/3 c of cocoa, 1/2 c milk, 3/4 crunchy peanut butter, 3 c of oatmeal. I had plans of using 1 1/2 c coconut and 1 1/2 c oatmeal.

But horrors! No crunchy peanut butter. There are 2 of us in this house and I’m the only one who eats it. Curious.

I did have a multiple nut butter in the pantry. One of those hmm, I wonder how this tastes. And it languished. Not crunchy though. It is a blend of Brazilian nuts, hazelnuts, almonds. All the nuts.

I used that instead of crunchy peanut butter. And 2 cups coconut, 1 cup quick cook oatmeal.

The cookies were softer than usual but still tasted amazing.

I was expecting a stronger coconut flavor.

To the baking pantry!

On nursing side this week, yet another nurse was charged for stopping a med error before it reached the patient. In their mind this is elder abuse. In my mind this is getting scary.

Because we don’t always get the effect that we want from treatment. People get sicker. People die.

It is not the nurse’s fault.