taking a breath of life

Friday Reflections' prompt gave me something to think about this weekend. The prompt that caught my attention was this one:

Give us some advice on how to de-stress at the end of a bad day or week?

At first I wondered how I would give anyone advice on this prompt.  This past year has been so stressful for me that there were days I didn't know if I could find the energy to do ordinary tasks, much less deal with work and what was going on with the rest of my life.

But as it all spiraled out of control, I knew that if I was going to survive, I needed to deal with the stress. One day I stopped, took a deep breath and remembered how I had dealt with high stress times in the past. And so the advice I give comes from the lesson I learned then. It was actually a self taught lesson, a compilation of things I have learned over the years, and the way I survive times in my life when I feel as though I might explode from overload.

I see my life as a plate. Literally. I close my eyes and see what is going on in the here and now as a plate full of stuff. I don't see food, I see the words representing what is stressing me. For instance, if I have a deadline at work, I see a piece of paper with the name of the project on it. If I have several projects going, each one is on that plate. If I have someone in the family with something serious going on, I see them too. (The year my daughter Jen had multiple throat cancer surgeries, she was sitting on the plate, in a hospital gown.) This past year, my husband's pacemaker was on that plate, my cancer was on the plate, the dog bite I got on January 1, 2016 was there, and so was my mum's illness and death. Full plate huh? You bet it was.

In the past, when my plate got too full, I started taking things off the plate to relieve the stress. I quit a job that almost caused me to burn out as a nurse, and several other things too. The problem with this past year is that there was nothing I could remove from the plate. Absolutely nothing. I couldn't run from breast cancer, or the huge bite on my face that got infected. I couldn't run the day Steve nearly died because his pacemaker failed. And I couldn't stop my mum from dying. My plate was as full as it could get, with no room left for anything else. 

When that happens in my life, and it has happened in the past, then I use mental imagery to escape.  I fix a cup of tea, picture a favorite place I have been, remember something good that has happened in my life, and I go there for a little while. I have mastered the ability to be in a place physically, but be thousands of miles away in my mind. I actually discovered this when I was a child, and would live inside the books I read. It takes practice, but I can actually feel my muscles begin to relax, and my breathing softens and deepens. Relaxation. Life. De-stressing in the moment. 

Yoga is another way to accomplish this same thing for me. It is one of the best practices for releasing stress. I recommend it, because yoga has made such a tremendous impact on my life.

Taking care of yourself includes managing the stress in your life. Too often we spend all our days filling them with things to do, tasks for ourselves and others that takes up all our time and energy. And like a fuel tank on a car, eventually that tank goes empty. You have to make the time to refuel so that you can manage that busy life you live. A balanced life is a happy one. For me it is anyway.

And even with all that has happened since last April, I have found my happy spot again. That doesn't mean every day is easy and not stressful. It just means I have regained my coping skills again. 

Found my happy spot. I encourage you to find yours.

...stop, take a breath of life... ~cath

i am @jonesbabie on twitter

why we eat our young

Someone recently told me something that disturbed me deeply. It was something I had heard before, but I chewed on it this time for a while and have been pondering about it since. It involves human nature, and behavior. This was the story:

"A young woman recently graduated from nursing school, and went to work in one of the larger hospitals in one of the largest cities in the state.  She was hired in as a new grad nurse in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) and was excited and enthusiastic about being a nurse.

Her joy was short lived however.  The staff treated her so poorly, and were so rude and unhelpful, that eventually she quit, and now works as a nurse in a non-nursing position, away from the bedside nursing she had dreamed of doing."

Two things disturbed me about this. The obvious thing was her maltreatment from her peers. It isn't the first time I have seen this happen. Over the years I have watched nurses who are rude to the nurses they are training, who don't have patience to take the time to give them the guidance and support they need to become excellent nurses. They often do this because they feel they don't have the time to spend training and mentoring due to their own workload (this is another issue I will talk about at a later time), or they just don't have the skill to teach. Not every nurse is cut out to be a teacher/mentor.

The other aspect that disturbed me is the administrator who hires a new nurse and puts her in a high stress area to work, where extensive, expert skills are needed to keep a patient alive, straight out of nursing school. A nurse does not begin to even understand her job for the first six months, and functions at a very basic level. The book that brought this home to me and taught me a lot about the stages of experience for a nurse was a little book written by Dr. Patricia Benner, From Novice to Expert: Excellence and Practice in Clinical Nursing Practice.  In simple terms, it takes 2 to 3 years to reach the third, or competent, level of nursing doing the same or similar type of work.

To gain experience in an ICU, you have to work in one. This is where it is important to choose the proper preceptor for a new nurse hiring in, give her a workload she can handle with the added responsibility of training a new nurse, and monitor the relationship to make sure that it is the right fit for both nurses. I have to say that in 20+ years of being a nurse in many different areas, I have never seen this happen. EVER.

As I heard the story of the young nurse's disillusionment and resignation from her job, I was saddened, and thought of the saying "nurses eat their young". Simply put, it meant we don't take care of the new nurses coming into the profession, but instead throw them in on their own, with little or no support from the experienced nurses. The meaning hit me full force, and I felt anger and frustration. Anger at the nurses who didn't bring this new nurse on board, and support her as she tried to gain her footing in a highly technical, stressful job. Nurses too burned out, too overworked, too whatever...to see this nurse as the future for all of us, not only nurses, but also patients. Someday those nurses will be patients in a hospital, and facing the same kinds of attitudes they displayed. I wish it wasn't so, but I fear it will be.

The ultimate responsibility though, goes to hospital administrators who don't encourage a different culture of training and mentoring for new nurses. Who think of nurses as a disposable commodity, with access to a never ending supply. As long as nurses are thought of this way, this type of behavior and treatment will go on.

It doesn't happen everywhere, on every unit. But to lose even one new nurse, full of enthusiasm and desire to care for people, is a tragedy. One we will all pay the price for, ultimately.

Let's stop eating our young.

...life is good. ~cath
i am @jonesbabie on twitter

aha! my friday reflection...on friday!

I started out a few weeks ago with the best of intentions.  To blog at least once a week, and reflect on my week every Friday.  
Well, that intention got blown to the moon by life.  I have posted just a tiny bit of what I have been dealing with for the past 2 or 3 weeks.  I've shared a bit of what my last few weeks have been like.  Suffice it to say that it has been pretty stressful.

But that is fodder for another blog.  This is my day to reflect. The prompt I chose for this week was this one:

Reflect on the following quote: "You are never too old to set a new goal or to dream a new dream" - CS Lewis

As soon as I saw this one, I knew it was the one.  THE ONE.  The quote that just jumped out at me and knocked my socks off.  At an age when most people are looking at retirement and planning what they are going to be doing with all that spare time, I was going back to school to learn to be a wound, ostomy and continence nurse.  I don't look at things I want to learn or do as limited by my age.  The only limits I have are the ones I put on myself, and I choose not to limit myself.  Every day that I wake up is a chance to learn something new, to dream a new dream.  Dreams are what give my thoughts flight, and make all things possible.  I also believe that the day I stop dreaming and planning new goals, is the day I start to grow old.  Dreams keep me young.  By young, I don't mean looks, because that is just the wrapping, not who I really am.  When I say young, I mean that my thoughts, my outlook on life, the way I approach life is ageless.  It has nothing to do with the number of years I have lived on earth  I plan to be young the rest of my life.  Goals give me something to look forward to, to strive for.  It isn't about reaching the goal that matters to me, it is the journey getting there that matters.  That is where the learning, the lesson, occurs.


And because this is May 1, and the first day of NaBloPoMo for this month, I decided I would add the prompt for it here too.  Kind of confusing to some people, but to someone who multitasks as much as I do, it made good sense to me.  The May Theme for NaBloPoMo (which I have failed at plenty of times, and decided to take a stab at again) is:

PHOTO

The prompt for today's photo is: YOU. Meaning me...so here I am:

  

me

Your computer is not playing tricks on you.  I am out of focus for a reason.  I chose to edit this photo this way, because lately it is the way I feel.  Off center, out of kilter, not quite balanced. Life is just like that sometimes, you know?  My mantra has always been:

This, too, shall pass.

And with time, it will.  It always does, because life isn't static.

...laugh, when you can't do anything else. ~cath 
find me @jonesbabie on Twitter

of brazilian blowouts and crack powder

This has been a weird week.  The culmination of a week of running like a turkey to keep up at work and home was my long awaited trip to the hairdresser.  I had begun to dream during the past week about the miracle she was going to work on my hair.

But in order to work a miracle, she needed hair to work with.  And about half my hair was gone.

Three months ago, I made an appointment for 8 weeks later to have my hair cut and colored, as I exited my favorite beauty shop.  That was a few weeks longer than I normally wait, but I figured it would be ok.  The day arrived of my appointment, and I had to cancel.  That I would have to wait four more weeks to get another appointment was a shock, but I had no choice.

So three long months later, I was dreaming of Brazilian Blowouts and color that would wow.  But I had a problem.

I'd lost half my hair.

Stress.

I watched my stylist shake her head in amazed disbelief at the change in my hair.  I started to worry...it was going to be impossible to fix I feared.

But Kelly is wonderful.  We put our heads together and decided on a color, and a cut that would make the most of the least amount of hair.  No woman wants to look bald after all.  She went to work on my hair, and an hour and a half later, she was finished.  I looked like I actually had hair!  I was amazed and so grateful I almost cried.  I would have cried, until I asked her what she used on my hair to make it look so much thicker.

Kelly held up a little tiny red bottle and said "I call this crack powder Miss Cathy.  Once you use this stuff, you're hooked on it.  It's addicting."

I laughed loudly at the comparison and told her to give me a bottle of crack powder to go.  I made a follow up appointment written in stone.  No more 3 month waits to get my hair "fixed".  As I left the salon I told Kelly I would be there unless I was laid up dead as a corpse in a casket.

...life is good...
~cath xo
Twitter @jonesbabie