The most stressed I have been for a good long while

I started a new job on October 22nd and life has been pretty crazy since.  I am working part-time nights (every Friday and Saturday, 7pm-7:30am) at Presbyterian (Vivien says it "Press-bye-terian") Rust Medical Center on the Progressive Care Unit, Team III.

There are 3 teams of Progressive Care at Rust that each take a floor of the hospital and specialize in something else.  My team takes all the bariatric surgery patients plus all the other med/surg stuff except usually ortho and cardiac patients.  It has been QUITE the orientation process, involving many weekdays of classes, an entire month of missing church, and enough child care logistics stress to make me want to quit before I even started.  Here is a calendrical summary of classes, times, and sitters.

I had to ask 18 different people just to help me find enough people to cover that first week of classes.  I called in ALL the favors, and then some.  It was stressful enough to be starting a new job, but then to have to worry about overburdening all the people I know and like (especially since we just moved into our new neighborhood/ward) really put the icing on the cake.  And then Rafe got sick, and I would get texts like this and feel even worse.

This one too.

My orientation happened to be over a busy time at Intel for Drew with state and OSHA inspections, so... it was just a joyous time for our whole family.  Then we had car trouble and I had to change a battery by myself.  I felt pretty cool...

  

..until it died again the next day and my friends at the Chevron informed me I hadn't tightened the bolts enough so it wasn't charging.  Heh heh.  Then one morning we were rushing out the door and Merrick slipped on a dust jacket someone had left on the floor and did a perfect slapstick faceplant into the hardwood floor.

  

He had a fat lip for a couple days.  And I had blood all over my face and clothes for my class that day.

My friend Courtney Davies from church, who moved into a house just down the street a week before we did and who also has a pale, blue-eyed, bald, muscular, almost-as-super-handsome-as-mine husband, got a job on the same unit starting orientation the same day, so we've been able to go to some of our classes together, through sunrises like this one:

It's been maybe more fun that it should have been (playing with our EKG strip magnifiers)

Not that nurse classes aren't fun. 

In addition to all the classes, there were a ton of computer based trainings as well.  Some of them I had to do at home.  Annie watched the BLS ones with me:

  

This one cracked me up because there was a demon elevator door at BHC Iwakuni that would smash people all the time.  Also, this computer personality is called "Presbytina."

  

We use a program called Epic to chart at work.  I find it amusing to go to "epic classes" and do "epic charting."  The "epic training program" had New Mexico themed patient names, and I think poor Dr. Sam Stethoscope must be a busy, busy guy.

I had to do 5 weeks of orientation on day shift so I could get a feel for what happens on the unit when everyone is around.  My day shift preceptor was Chris Humphreys.  He is a lot of fun, and I thought it was funny he is a Chris, because my preceptor for my first job was named Chris too.  This Chris is a New Mexico native and loves the mountains and taking Great Courses about everything imaginable.  And using care coordinators to rest on during daily rounds.

Drew helped out a ton in nursery the 5 weeks I had to miss church while I was on day shift.  It was nice to switch to nights and be able to attend again!  Except I still had to find nursery subs because the Primary Pianist had a baby and needed a piano-playing substitute for two weeks, and then I got called to be the Primary President.  *insert indiscriminate noise of jubilation or sorrow* First day of night shift, where I arrived and had to send two patients to ICU in the first 3 hours (one died the next day), then spent the rest of the night trying to help a patient with intractable nausea and vomiting whose PICC line had been pulled on day shift because she was supposed to go home, so she had to have a new IV placed under ultrasound so I could give her some freaking Zofran.  It was a rough start on nights.  

Now that I am off orientation, my normal schedule should go like this:

But there have been a lot of other crazy things going on that have made it difficult to sleep on Friday afternoon (mostly dog and Primary related), and I will often have something in the middle of the day on Saturday (baptisms for Primary, or the awesome quartet group).  And, of course, I have lost my blogging day! Which is why I'm blogging about October in the middle of January... Oh well.  When I get off in the morning I am usually treated to the sight of hot air balloons launching from the field next door.

It's been good/hard going back to work.  I am grateful to be able to use my education, I enjoy the challenge of being a nurse on a busy floor and getting good experience, it's fun to have coworkers, and it is nice to have a little financial wiggle room and build our savings back up (the weekend night differential is an extra $8 an hour--my day co-workers say it's to make up for the 8 years of life you lose working such a terrible schedule); but it's hard to not have any weekends with Drew, it's frightening to come back to something so high stakes after being away for so long, and Sundays are rough, rough, rough.  So we'll see!  It's livable right now.  Here's an early version of my paper brain.  I have to write down all the meds and when they're due so I can check them off when I give them, then I have to make 12 little boxes to check so I remember to chart my assessment, care plans, patient education, vital signs every 4 hours, and pain/safety/potty rounding every 2 hours on every patient.  My brain doesn't work at 4 in the morning very well, so I have to have it all written out or risk missing stuff.  

My hands took a beating at the beginning, but they're getting used to the constant hand washing so they're not splitting at the knuckles quite so much anymore.  Albuquerque is hard on hands to begin with!