JBInvolved

About Me

My first 4 weeks at this new position have been quite the transition from my norm. I am now carrying around two phones. One is the phone that keeps me connected to friends and family, this I am used to. The other is one that is connected to my hip at all times, especially if I am on-call. I am constantly connected to the people I work with at Mid-America (MTS). This is not a bad thing by any means, well to some it is I guess, it’s just something I have never experienced before.

Something else is the fact that I am no longer getting up at the crack of dawn to go work a 12 hour shift in scrubs. I have to change my mentality because I now work from home and could just sit in my pjs all day long if I wasn’t careful. This would be ok on the days that I am, again, not on-call but on those days I am…staying in my pjs is a bad move. See, once I get a call, I have 90 min from the time the hospital called MTS to get to the location of the patient who is potentially brain dead or dying. So I must get out of bed and get ready for the day. I had to go on a shopping spree, I know horrible huh, to get a new wardrobe for this position. That’s right, I am a professional woman now. I have to wear pantyhose, heels, and nice clothes all the time. Again, a huge transition.

Now on to the biggest change, I work with dead people. I was working in an ICU with the ultimate goal of saving people’s lives. Now I’m being called in after someone has died to save people’s lives that I have never laid eyes on. It is a huge separation I have to have mentally in order to maintain sanity. Everyone I am working with has already left this world. I don’t even have contact with people’s families now, this is a huge part of ICU nursing. That used to be one of my talents, working with the most difficult families. These people where dealing with very hard situations, traumatic and unexpected. On top of that some families were just really hard to deal with. Living in the Ozarks makes for some very interesting family dynamics and situations, but that is another entry.

With these changes, I am still learning, still in training. I am driving back and forth to St Louis every other week. I get to be home with Chris for a week and have certain days I am on-call. Then I travel back to St Louis for a week to be on-call 24 hours a day the whole time I am there. It is pretty exhausting, this training thing. I’m hoping for it to be over by mid to late March so that I can get back to some kind of normal schedule at home. Normal, I don’t think that is going to be possible again. I like not knowing what is coming next but I hate not being constantly busy with my adrenaline pumping.

More changes for me. Three 12 hour shifts a week with constant adrenaline and movement, wondering when the next time will come that you have time to go to the bathroom or eat something. You are moving so much that you forget that you even need to pee or eat. However, I do not miss the unit as of right now. All the drama, attitudes, backstabbing and stress; it is nice to not have to bring all that home all the time, I can breathe. I still work with a bunch of women so I am sure it is not totally gone from my life. The atmosphere of MTS though is different, they don’t keep anyone around very long that brings those things into the mix. We spend a lot of hours together, sleep deprived, and I don’t think those characteristics would fit into that scenario very well.

I have closed one door in my life as a working nurse and opened another. I am excited for this change and look forward to what is to come.