pixelRN tagged me. it’s a bit late, but here are the…4 things that i can’t live without as a nurse, and 1 thing i covet. 

can’t  live without my badge. 
      this does not only let me get through the doors that are only for staff, it also literally records the hours i work. with the technicalities of overtime and undertime pay, it gets really tiring doing a manual clock in and out without the badge. also, it has a little bar code that verifies our identities so we can use equipments in the unit.

can’t live without my dansko shoes.
     it took me almost three years to buy my first pair. if you remember what i keep saying here, that i earned just a little over 100 dollars a month when i left the philippines in 2001, you’ll understand why it took me three years to decide. man, i’ve never had shoes that cost that much money! but you know what, if you walk for a total of 11 hours within a 12 hours shift, you will swear how these shoes are worth every single penny. i’m not even being paid to say this, but i will say it anyway. now that i have tried wearing dansko, you have to pay me (quite a bit of money) to wear a different pair of shoes. seriously.

can’t live without gloves.
     i won’t spoil the appetite of those who read this blog who are not in the medical field. you have no idea what kind of things get through our hands on any given day. without the gloves, i might go home and just not touch my kids till clever people have invented a machine that will completely sterilize my hands. gloves are almost like oxygen. at work, i can’t breathe without them.

can’t live without a sweater/jacket.
     coming from a tropical country where there are only two seasons (hot and hotter), there is no way i can survive a night where the temperature is constantly 55 degrees, without some sort of warming gear. sometimes i think that the majority of the people in our unit are either menopausing or just plain warm blooded. because really, who sets the temperature to 55 degrees even when it is winter? definitely not me. that’s why my sweater goes to work with me. everytime.

i covet the energy of other nurses.
       i work three 12 hours  night shifts a week. and honestly, as far as physical strain is concerned, this is more than enough for me. in the past 4 years that i have worked, i have done one shift of overtime, and one try of three nights in a row. and i have no plans or intention to do any of it again. it made me so tired i could cry. for the life of me, i cannot stop being amazed at how some of my co-workers do it. two or three jobs, no day off, no paid leaves. i mean, where do they get this energy? i can only assume that when i turn 40 in 2009, i won’t be able to manage even the 3 shifts a week schedule. old age is such a pain sometimes.

i tag any nurse who wants to share.

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thanks for your thoughts and prayers for our little guy. as i mentioned, we’ll see his urologist on the third week of march. i am filling  my head with positive thoughts, because the negative ones are totally freaking me out. we didn’t have to be nurses to see that his left kidney is not really funtioning to the fullest. the image on the screen showed a lot of fluid being retained even after he was given IV lasix. while his right kidney just sort of grooved along, draining the expected amount of urine, his left was just pretty overwhelmed. i know he can live with only one kidney, and he is 4 years old and not so tiny anymore, but hey, he is still just our baby. if there is some kind of magic that will take this away from him, i will do that trick without even thinking. as it happens, i do believe in the power of prayer. so yes joe, please add him to your prayer list. we will not mind at all.

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as for the house, the “sold” sign has been nailed to the “for sale” sign about two weeks ago. but as our agent says, “till you don’t get the money in the bank, do not open the champagne yet!” we are supposed to close this coming tuesday. if things go smoothly, we should be out of here by friday. that means i should actually start packing. only, i’m thinking that packing, is almost the same as opening a bottle of champagne. so, the new boxes from home depot are just sitting in the garage, like some patient soldiers waiting for something big to happen.