25- Call the Midwife- in the Shadows of the Workhouse by Jennifer Worth

I am not sure if you are aware of a wonderful BBC show about midwives in the late 1950s. It is called Call the Midwife and is about women and Anglican nuns and the midwives who attended them. Through the post WWII population boom in East London and the attendant struggles of women and midwives with overcrowding and money struggles that they had. It is in its 14th season and has been renewed for a 15th season.

The episodes also aired on PBS, on delay.

I loved this show when I was still watching television.

Melodramatic? Yes.

Melancholic? Yes, mothers and children die from what is now preventable diseases.

There isn’t a so called woman’s issue they won’t touch. Often with great delicacy, sometimes with a mallet to the head.

I am not alone in adoring this series.

But first it was a series of books. I have them in various forms.

The one I want to write about today is the third in the series about the workhouses that the indigent were sent to. Each were ruled by a man who didn’t take any pushback and certainly didn’t spare the child. If you know that I mean.

I chose this book out of my stack of medical fiction or non-fiction books at random and re-read it.

I had forgotten that the first part of the book is about three people who were brought up by the workhouses and their different troubles.

What struck me most at this re-reading was the chapter where one of the three is dying. He doesn’t want his sister to be told of how sick he is.

But the home nurse knows and goes on to expand on how in hospitals, where she trained, no one died alone. No one died in the dark.

I had to stop reading for a moment. Because that is how I feel.

When I was a med surg nurse, I would have patients who were expected to die. Of course I did. I would get such push back on keeping a dim light on, even the one over the sink. Those who pushed back on me about having the light on when the person dying in the bed wasn’t even conscious enough to be aware of it never understood my feeling that people should not die in the dark.

Jennifer Worth, the author gets it. She write that unconsciousness might not be a state of unknowing. How are we to know what they are experiencing? The light might be comforting to the dying. A reminder that they are not unnoticed and unwatched and unloved.

I recommend the series wholeheartedly.

I can recommend reading the books at least once. There are nuances that come across on the page that are sensationalized and or missed on the screen.

However, re-reading the books after 24 years in the trenches, I would rather watch the show.

School Me Saturday 4/19/26- Fight Fiercely Harvard!

Yeah, I know that Fight Fiercely Harvard isn’t Harvard’s real fight song. But I don’t think 10,000 Men of Harvard sets exactly the right tone.

It’s sexist for one thing and since Harvard is fighting for independence for all of its students, not just the men, I thought Fight Fiercely Harvard was a better fit.

Fight Fiercely Harvard is a satirical song written by an alum, Tom Lehrer. Another song of his that you may be familiar with is The Elements. It is a lilting song with the elements from the periodic table. It is only clocked at 1 minute 26 seconds.

This week Harvard said no, thank you to pressure from the president of the United States. He would not bend the knee and bow to extreme pressure.

Of course, the president whined and threatened (typical). He even went so far as to threaten Harvard’s tax exempt status. This is a “punishment” meant to be punitive for violating tax law. There is no evidence that Harvard has violated tax law.

Side question, if it can be done so quickly, why can’t we do the same to churches and political organizations? I digress.

Apparently there are now pacts between schools where there were rivalries both in the classroom and on the playing field.

According to the Guardian newspaper at least 18 universities have united to defend academic freedom in the fact of these attacks and threats. The universities include 8 universities that comprise part of the Big 10 academic alliance include the University of Illinois, Indiana University, University of Iowa, University of Maryland, University of Michigan, Michigan State University, University of Minnesota, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, University of Oregon, Pennsylvania State University, Purdue University, Rutgers University-New Brunswick, University of California Los Angeles, University of Southern California, University of Washington and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Some of these schools are in red states and some are in blue. To me this is indicative that academic freedoms are cherished, no matter the political leaning.

It also indicates that academic freedoms are to be protected.

Good for them. I hope other universities join and I hope they keep their courage.

I hope that this message is heard loud and clear.

Now I have to learn all of their fight songs too.

But, but, Kate, what about their billion dollar endowments? Why do they need support?

Those endowments are the emergency fund and the funding for programs that allow the universities to continue to admit students from the lower-economic echelons. And to create scholarships to fund these students. And to create labs that make the discoveries that are why these universities have earned the world class reputation that they have.

Maybe, just maybe, they don’t like being told what to do, or who to listen to, or what to teach, or what to read.

It all goes back to book banning, doesn’t it?

Fight Fiercely Harvard! You are not alone.

FFS Friday 4/18/25- Four years

I know that people have been consoling themselves by chanting the number. It will be 4 years of the monster under the bed. Only 4 years.

4 years.

Well, less now that it has been 8 weeks.

8 weeks of nonsense and him smashing and cash grabbing all that he can get his grubby hands on. Like a child who has been let loose in a candy shop while the adults are distracted on their phone. Like the menace who doesn’t like the word no and ignores the adult when they finally notice the havoc that has been going on.

I, for one of many, am so tired of it.

How do you measure a year?

If five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes make up a year this can lead to math.

You could multiply each minute by 60 to determine the number of seconds in a year (thirty one million, five hundred thirty six thousand seconds).

You could multiple 525,600 by four to determine the number of minutes we have left in this abomination of a presidential term (two million, one hundred two thousand, and four hundred minutes).

I could talk disheartening numbers all day long.

It all starts with the supposed fact that they will not gerrymander rig elections to keep themselves in power. Why would they hand the reins back at the end of 4 years? Just because that it is what expected of us?

Spoiler alert, it is already happening. I point out and have written about the Republican Jefferson Griffin and his grinding, unceasing, probably very expensive (where is the money coming from) tilting at windmills attempt to pry Alison Griggs out of the spot she rightfully won. In November. People aren’t paying enough attention to his scammy scammerton efforts to throw out the ballots that he doesn’t agree with that cause him to lose.

I have written at how this is a test case of how elections can be stolen with money. And sleight of hand. And bluster.

This definitely sounds familiar doesn’t it?

Back to the four years thing. If so much can be dismantled in 2 months, including destruction of any words that the administration doesn’t like, imagine how much the next three years and 10 months are going to cost us.

They can only hurt me for 4 years sounds comforting. Until you realize you are speaking like an abused wife. Cowering in the corner while the abuser takes off their belt.

Next thing will be the “gifts” and the promises never to do it again. Also included are the promises to be around after the 4 years, no matter how that is accomplished.

But it will happen again and the four years thing is not a guarantee.

It is a scary time to be an American who is paying attention.

Cookie Thursday 4/17/25-Psyllium husk and banana

I’ve got a wild hair this week. By that I mean I will be doing 2 different fake eggs in the batch this week.

I will be using a psyllium husk egg and a banana.

The reason I am using both is that I am afeared that the banana taste will be too strong.

I figured, hey, best of both worlds here.

It is now truly Thursday and I have baked and delivered the cookies.

And I have only one word- Wow!

No wonder that psyllium husk is used to create gluten like structure in gluten free goods.

Even 6 hours after I finished baking them, the cookies were soft and pliable. It even changed the structure of the chocolate chips and they too were soft. As if they had just come out of the oven.

I have rarely been so impressed by a recipe substitution.

Was it the banana?

Or was it the psyllium husk?

I think I know which one.

And now I want to make these again and add jalapenos. That is how cooking, er, baking science is made, right?

Throw a bunch of ideas in a bowl and see what sticks.

I think my instincts of combining the two types of egg substitute was the correct one.

Because wowza.

Just don’t eat the entire batch by yourself. Because psyllium husk is also known as metamucil.

Of course I warned my coworkers. After I explained the science to them.

Lessons were realized, the chief among these to crush the banana before adding it to the butter and sugar. It took forever to get all the lumps out.

Best Kept Secrets of the OR #26- Sometimes you kill the CPR dummy

At the hospital system I work for it has been decided to have us go through the motions of a CPR class every quarter. No, I am not sure why. Someone probably observed someone with rusty skills.

CPR certification lasts for 2 years.

In this regime, there is an online portion. This is where you do the book learning of the old system. Different scenarios are given and you have to pass each scenario with 100%.

Don’t worry, the test helps you along.

The most common type is the adult scenario. Differing patients with differing problems allow the learner (that’s you) to learn and show that the material has been understood.

Ideally, this is knowledge that can be used in real world scenarios.

After all, in each code, there isn’t necessarily a code team steps away from the operating room. Your mission is to get the patient to survive the code until the cavalry arrives. By calvary I mean the ER nurses, the ER doctor, a pharmacist, the nursing supervisor, the chaplain on duty, and ICU nurses. Who shows up depends on what time of day it is and if there is anything horrible going on in their unit.

Concurrent codes do occur. Depending on your hospital size this would be rare but it can happen.

To facilitate quarterly skills testing, a wired up CPR adult dummy and a wired up CPR infant await you with laptops to test your skills. There are 2 stations.

The dummies are the first thing you see as you enter the employee entrance.

They are ready to take all comers.

But don’t be too rough. I’ve seen the baby dummy with no legs and they are never dressed afterward.

Give the dummies their dignity and redress them.

At the very very very least, don’t try to take off their head and break their neck with your aggressive C-clamp.

After all, you get another swing at the apple starting next quarter. Be gentle, would you?

These dummies have a lot of customers in the staff of the 150+ bed hospital. Think of everyone else who has to test. Don’t decapitate the dummy.

You might kill the dummy in the computerized scenario but we never said it was gonna be for reaslies.

If you kill the dummy in the computerized scenario you can try again. These dummies are a lot like computer games that way.

Unless you break their necks.

Tuesday Top of Mind 4/15/25- This is not a drill…we in danger

There is a scene from the movie Ghost when Oda Mae Brown (played to great comedic effect by Whoopie Goldberg) says to the grieving Molly Jensen (played by Demi Moore) where she says “Molly… you in danger, girl.” This is meant to be a communication from the titular character Sam Wheat (played by Patrick Swayze).

It is meant as a warning to Molly as she is being stalked by Carl Bruner (played by Tony Goldwyn). Sam is desperate to give Molly a warning before something terrible can happen to her at Carl’s hands and whims.

The scene has been meme’d many, many times. Just saying “you in danger, girl” is meant to evoke the danger that whoever it is being said to finds themself.

America…you in danger, girl.

I don’t say this lightly.

But the constitution is in danger.

Therefore our country is in danger.

The current WTF is about a man who is legally living in the country, is married to an American citizen, and is the father of an American citizen. I am writing, of course, of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

If you don’t know his name you have not been paying attention. Kilmar Abrego Garcia was disappeared off the streets (which is terrifying enough), not given due process (which is the most terrifying of all), and spirited off to El Salvador to a concentration camp. There is no other name for it. The Supreme Court says that the White House has to “facilitate” bringing him back.

And the White House has not done so.

In fact the White House feted and presented and paraded the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, who then said that there was no way to “smuggle a terrorist into the US”. Kilmar Abrego Garcia is not a terrorist. His entire story is of a boy threatened by thugs and gangs in El Salvador and he fled to the only place that he thought might take care of him.

Little did he know.

In fact, on a hot mic, the current president told Bukele to prepare for incarcerating “home growns”. These are American born citizens that might be spirited away without due process because we have displeased the current administration.

How much louder can we be?

How much danger is America in?

This is a test and we are failing.

This is a test of how far the current administration can go before there is mass protest.

This is a test of how the current administration can go in ignoring the courts, including the Supreme Court.

This is a test and we are failing.

America… we in danger.

School Me Saturday 4/12/25- College is for exploration

Maybe what you thought you wanted to be as a grownup no longer appeals. You might’ve thought about being a rocket scientist but were stymied by the sheer amount of math and papers you would have to write.

That might not have been your first choice. It certainly would not have been mind. All that math, the papers I am okay with. But math…urg.

University and college and junior college or even online classes are a chance to explore the you that could be. I am not forgetting trade schools but I feel there is less self-explanatory space there.

Of course, when I first started my college journey it was the early 1990s (shut up, I’m old and the age my mom was when she dropped me off at the plane for my trip to Nebraska) and there were no such things. Your choices were college, university, trade school or junior college. That’s it.

We did all of our paper research in the LIBRARY and copied articles that we wanted to cite. I mean, Google as a search engine wasn’t established until 1998. Yes, I started my school journey pre-internet. Good times.

Instead, you explored due to class selection. If you wanted to learn how to macrame, there was a class for that. If you wanted to learn how to bake masterpieces, there was class for that. If you wanted to write the great American novel, there was a class for that. As in high school, if you needed an easy A, there were classes for that. Students were expected to take at least one-5 electives for their degree.

It was during these elective classes that you got to explore. I took Fencing. Not the yard creation, the exercise. We learned the strict footwork and the styles of fencing and spent some time in the sweaty masks that were used for years. We used the same fencing jackets that had been in use for years, unless we bought our own. We used the electrified lamé, which would indicate that the the electrical circuit had been created when it was touched by metal, such as an epeé. Which was the usual fencing sword.

It was awesome. It remains one of my favorite classes. Ever.

But it wasn’t something to build a career out of as I wasn’t the best in the class. Just one of the more annoying at beating the boys. Nursing was going to be that.

But chemistry for nurses followed by organic chemistry. I was the group tutor for both. That was where I almost chucked it all in and changed my major the chemistry and became a pharmacist. Because the chemical equations and the work in the chemistry lab with the smells and the acids and the Bunsen burner made sense.

But for the fact that my scholarship from the Air Force was for nursing, I might’ve had a very different career.

And the math.

The point is that I got to explore these things. Fun things, different things.

Could I still pick up an epeé and salute an opponent? Yep.

Does it come up often in daily life? Not often enough; the nearest salle is at least an hour away.

Sigh.

Cookie Thursday 4/10/25- Chia seed egg replacement chocolate chip cookies

The “That’s a good egg…substitute” month continues. Reminder, all four weeks will be the same recipe and the only difference will be the egg substitute that I use.

The egg substitute that was used was the chia seed egg replacement. This is an easy egg replacement. But sourcing the chia seeds was annoying. It started when I opened the chia seed bag and there was less than 2 tbs left. This is not enough. It took me 2 stores because the first store was sold out.

The recipe for the chia egg substitute is 1 tbs chia seeds to 1/3 c water. Warm or hot water would be best. Let the mixture rest at least 5 minutes depending on the temperature of the water. I let the mixture sit while I went to an Employee Health appointment about my leg. When I got back there was a gelatinous mass in the bowl. This is what it should look like, an amorphous mass that gives when you poke it and pours out easily, leaving the bowl mostly clean.

I made the cookies as usual, substituting the chia seed egg replacement for the 2 eggs I would normally use. The dough was a little stiffer than normal and it took longer that I anticipated to incorporate the flour.

The best thing about these cookies is that they bake up wonderfully and are gorgeous. If you looked up cookie in a photo dictionary, these cookies would be the picture.

The resulting cookies are less chewy but more “snappy”, if you know what I mean. There are hints of chewiness in them. I found them delightful.

Another thing I found delightful is that, for the second week in a row, the bowl that I used had zero dough residue on it. Normally, there would be dough scraps clinging to the bowl but these past two weeks were clean.

Interesting.

Best Kept Secrets of the OR #25- Conference edition

I am an introvert who is also quite shy. That is a double whammy when it comes to being engaging in large groups. Especially people I don’t know. Even people I probably will never see again in my life.

That being said conferences are particularly hard. It is best that I am rested. Not well rested, this is a hotel that I am most likely staying in with its vagaries in bed comfort and light levels. The hotel that I just stayed in had a night light in the bathroom with no door to the bedroom. Low levels of light all the nights. Which isn’t exactly conducive to sleeping.

The operating room encompasses so much space in nursing. Goodness knows that the department encompasses a pretty big majority of the operating revenue. Goodness knows that running an OR is a very very very very costless enterprise. Never mind the human capital, the outlay for supplies and equipment is immense.

That being said, conferences are important. Not only to meet the people who are like minded and that you have loads in common with, but also to share experiences across the board.

Did I have fun at the conference? Sure. For a value of fun.

Was the conference exhausting? You bet. I suffered a fall at work just over two weeks ago and my left lower leg, knee to toes, is such pretty colors and shades of purple. The hotel was half a mile from the convention center and I walked it every day. Well, I limped it.

Except the morning it was raining too hard to contemplate it. This was also the day I was to do a poster presentation of my pilot study that I completed last year. The one about the pre-Wheels out behaviors of the operating room. So I had makeup on.

Every night I peeled off the compression socks and elevated my foot/leg. But the pain was worth it for the opportunity to present my own research and talk with the chapter that I belong to in the organization.

I made sure that my carry-on was mostly empty. Because conferences give out a lot of swag. By that I mean that conferences give away paperwork and pamphlets about their products. There is also a certain amount of toys and soft things that are given out. I don’t collect a lot of the pens that these companies give out but I pick up a few to give away to my coworkers.

The majority of what I bring back is education that I learned. I get to impart to my coworkers the latest and the greatest of nursing knowledge.

I also collected many colleges so that I can curate a binder for shared governance and to share it with, again, my coworkers.

The thing about conferences is that you are at the mercy of the weather in the host city. We were in Boston and it rained every danged day except for the day we arrived. That day was beautiful and showed off the city well.

Tuesday Top of Mind 4/8/25- The little boy judge in NC who doesn’t like being told no

This is happening in my state.

There was a race for the state Supreme Court. And there were two people running Allison Briggs, a Democrat, and Jefferson Griffin, the aforementioned little boy that doesn’t like being told no.

All the votes of the November 5th election were counted. And recounted. And recounted again. Each time Allison Briggs was the winner by 700+ votes. And each time Jefferson Briggs raised his hand and said I object.

And he pressed all the pedals of the judiciary that he could. Appeal after appeal, defeat after defeat.

This has been going on since the November election.

He finally hit on what he believes is a winning strategy.

To disenfranchise 60,000+ votes of voters who voted according the laws at the time of the election. He wants to take their votes and declare himself the winner. This would shift the balance of the NC state Supreme Court in the Republicans’ favor.

Make no mistake, this is a test case for how to steal elections by stamping feet and shouting NO as loudly as can be. It is akin to a tantrum by a snot nosed, streaming eyes toddler who is red in the face about NOT getting what they want, regardless of how fair it is.

This is a test case for how the heavily Republican state legislature can change the rules in December and have it count for an election that took place more than a month prior.

How else to put their thumbs on the levels of power and swing what should have not been contested into the “appropriate to them” direction?

This is disgusting. And unworthy of a grown man.

How much louder can we be?

Our elections that is a founding tenet of this country of ours are under attack (but not from the fictitious illegal voter) and our duly cast votes are in danger.

Are you paying attention yet?

There are so many hateful shenanigans afoot I feel that we Democrats and the people who are non-political but still paying attention are going crazy trying to plug all the itty bitty holes. Not unlike Hans Brinker in the 1865 novel The Silver Skates where he plugged up the hole in the dike with his finger and sent his brother to get help.

It is just as easy to die from a thousand cuts as it is to die from a slashed neck. Blood loss is blood loss and eventually the loss of blood will cause the heart of the republic to stop.

For North Carolina voters, please check the The Jefferson Griffin’s List site at https://thegriffinlist.com/.

Make sure that your vote is not stolen by a spoiled brat who can’t hear the word no.

Gee, I wonder who he learned that from?