Rehab Nursing

No, not the kind of rehab where you go to dry up! This is the kind of rehab that you go to when you're not quite ready to go home, but you're not sick enough to occupy an acute bed. Rehab is for stroke victims learning to live with any deficits caused by the stroke. Rehab is for those who have broken a hip and need to learn how to walk all over again. There is a large emphasis on occupational therapy and physiotherapy.

Some nurses refer to rehab nursing as "not real nursing." I'd rather say that it is simply a different type of nursing. True, there is not a lot of medical or surgical nursing involved, but you certainly need to have a broad knowledge base of both areas to do rehab. Working in orthopedics has given me a great understanding of the procedures that patients have undergone before arriving here. My brief term in medicine has increased my medical knowledge exponentially.

When I leave rehab nursing and return to orthopedics @ HSC (date unknown), I will not think of rehab as this unknown entity where we ship our patients off to when they no longer qualify for taking up a bed on the orthopedic unit.

It's a complicated tale of how I came to be working in rehab, and I won't bore you with details. I accepted this position primarily because of the eight-hour nights, no days and no evenings; it's a term position that is mine potentially until July 2011.

What do I not like about rehab nursing? Hmm, no IV starts, no IV meds, no pre-op or post-op patients. No vital signs needed on nights. No assessments unless indicated by a patients condition. In short, it is far removed from my "the sicker my patients, the happier I am" mantra. The excitement and unpredictability of HSC trauma nursing is not present here, and I miss it more with each passing day.

What do I like about rehab nursing? The nights are relatively laid back which is perfect for right now, but won't always be what I need. I am the only nurse for twenty patients; working alone is teaching me to rely on my judgement and trust in my assessment skills. Handing out meds to the majority of the patients in the early morning hours requires organizational skills and lots of triple and quadruple checking your meds against the patients med sheets. Doing paperwork for twenty patients is amazingly quick! Taping report is a breeze when they've all had a good, quiet night.

Those positives do not include all the positive human aspects of rehab nursing. Of the 17 patients on the ward tonight, I know the names of all of them by memory. And I've gotten to know a lot of their personalities and stories. I've got a feel for the ones I can joke with (almost all) and the ones I cannot joke with (only one). In short, rehab nursing allows you to build relationships past the point of rapport building; this is both a good thing and a bad thing.

To summarize, I'm enjoying my time here and plan to finish my term, but I do not want to finish out my career here.

I've now worked in emerg, medicine, and rehab at this facility. Perhaps a little labor and delivery experience would round out my knowledge base even further.

Television

Every now and then someone's status on Facebook triggers something in the "writer" part of my brain and I've just gotta write about it. Tonight was one of those times.

One of my relatives (Matt, it was you) posted something about the content of today's television program and the decline in content over the years. This, for whatever reason, brought to mind my concern regarding televisions in bedrooms and video game systems for young children. Video games is a whole other issue, this post is simply about television sets in the bedroom.

Mostly I am referring to children's rooms, but I, personally, abhor the thought of having a TV in my room and always have thought that way. Bedrooms are to be used for sleeping and sex, but since I'm single, I use it for sleeping. Having a television in my bedroom (I tried it once for a few months) took me from the living room couch, a central and neutral part of the house, into the privacy and sanctuary of my bedroom. It's much easier to access Mom's time when she's sitting on the couch watching TV than when she's curled up under the covers, half asleep, watching TV.

As for children and TVs in their bedrooms, never never never. I'd be perfectly happy with no TV in the house, period. But, apparently "everyone" has a TV by now! If a child has a TV in their bedroom, what reason do they have to leave their room and interact with family? It takes away from the family's time as a family and promotes the individuality of the child over family bonding. Individuality is good and healthy, but I am referring to placing family as a unit in the background while the individual takes priority.

This is an issue on which I feel very strongly, and am not willing to compromise. My adult daughter, 20, has a TV set in her room, but rarely uses it. She frequently spends her TV watching evenings in the living room of our home, while I putter around doing housework or get ready for work. In general, I am referring to children from birth to late teens having TVs in their rooms.

Families have precious little time to spend together in this era, why would anyone want to sacrifice any of this time by sending their child to their bedroom to watch TV? A better solution, if there is a TV in the house, is to watch select TV programs together as a family.

Please note that my rant against bedroom TV has nothing to do with the content of television programming, but is based more on how bedroom TV takes away from the family unit. TV programming is another post entirely!

Doing the Right Thing

Why do we always have to do the right thing?  Why can't we ever just do what we want to and screw the consequences?

Not sure about everyone else but I find myself  'doing the right thing' even if it means sacrificing myself and what's good for me.  I'm certainly not going to use any examples to demonstrate this, just rest assured that its true.

Some days I just want to say "f**k it" and do the things that I want to do.  Yeah, that sounds harsh.  Don't tell me none of you haven't ever thought or felt that way, or even acted that way.

Okay, so I might be referring to raising kids, no surprise there.  For 23 years I've been doing what's right for the kids (most of the time) and putting my needs aside.  There's been times when I didn't even know what my own needs and wants were cuz I was so wrapped up in my kids' needs.  Now I'm 43 and I certainly know what my needs and wants are but I have no time to indulge them.  Or the money.  The sacrifices we make for kids are unbelievable and every parent reading this knows what I mean. 

And you all know I love my kids more than anything, all three of them.  But, damn it, I want to do fun things.  I want to be able to get up and go for a walk when I want to.  I want to be able to go to the gym and not worry about childcare.  I want to go out for coffee with friends when the opportunity presents itself.  I'd like to be able to spend a portion of my hard earned paycheque on myself.  I'd love to be able to do travel nursing.  I'd like to be able to work full time and not burn out because I've also got two kids at home that need me and my support. 

Call me selfish, I'm just speaking what's on a lot of parents' minds. 

We don't only do the right thing when it comes to our offspring, we do the right thing when it comes to our parents.  Its so damn hard watching Mom have dementia.  Its exhausting taking her anywhere cuz she can't hear and she asks the same questions over and over and over again.  Occasionally she calls me in a state of extreme agitation and bitches me out for something that happened years ago, her license being taken away.  Seems she blames me for it.  Each time we're together or on the phone I hear the same old questions and get the same old response,  its always the same.  Mom, as I once knew her, is gone.  Occasionally, she makes an appearance, but its short and sweet. 

How much easier wouldn't it be to just walk away, or move away, and let my brothers deal with it?  In reality, it would be my sisters in law, as my brothers aren't the ones who care for her on a day to day basis.

And if that weren't enough, sometimes I have my children, two of them, and my mother with me at the same time.  One is constantly asking me to repeat myself, and keeps interrupting conversations cuz she can't hear that we're already talking, one is a toddler that demands close supervision at the best of times, and the other is jealous that I'm paying attention to the other two.  After an hour of this scenario, I'm ready to get in my car alone and drive away from it all.  But that wouldn't be considered doing the right thing.

So we continue 'doing the right thing' and making sacrifices and tell ourselves that someday it will be our turn.

This is not a reflection of how I feel on a day to day basis, it is just written during a period of frustration which was triggered by something that was said yesterday. I am not about to run away from home, at least not for more than a few hours at a time.  I'm not going to stop parenting Kev or Jen (Chris doesn't need so much parenting anymore), and I'm not going to abdicate my responsibilities with my mother. 

I get jealous sometimes when I see single women who have no responsibilities except themselves and have their whole paycheque to themselves.  They can come and go as they please.

But, they don't wake up every morning to a happy smiling Kev who thinks they are just the greatest thing in the world.  They don't have adult daughters to go shopping with.  They are not surrounded by love and commotion on a daily basis. 

The grass is always greener.