Soul Searching

I have noticed what I think is a decrease in posting from quite a few of my favorite bloggers. This week I haven't posted either. I have been in a funk. I did not want to talk about the thoughts that are running a muck in my head.

There is beauty. If I just look for it.

There is bounty. To be bought for a price or just admired.

There are cute places to have lunch with a friend.

That have adorable atmosphere and also good food. Places that remind me of Santa Cruz.

And there is the reality of what is. Sometimes we have to get our heads out of the clouds and face the music.

A budget so inadequate that after the bills get paid (when I say bills I am referring to housing, utilities, and insurance, no others) there is no money for food. The fat has been trimmed, and it is not enough.

That is a budget that will not work.

My time of being a "domestic artist," is nothing more than a little vacation. My husband told me he did not need a housewife. It was not his intention to hurt my feelings. I can't tell you how much it did hurt. It hurt because I confessed to what I have always wanted to be since I was little. That "thing" that no one wants or needs anymore. The wife, the keeper of hearth and home. I suppose it can be justified if their are children but when the children are grown? Is there not still a house to be made into a home?

There is so much in my heart right now that I don't really know where to start. So many fears, a sense of things slipping through my fingers never to be regained. A sense of loss. Several years ago I studied to take the GRE, a test to go back to school for my Masters degree. I never took the test. Every time I took a practice test in the math I failed it. The vocabulary words were some I didn't even know existed and memory work is not my strong point anymore. After three months of study I just put it aside. Do you ever think about opportunities for things as coming by to be seized or lost? I have always thought that we never run out of possibilities, but I may have been wrong.

Here I am again much older thinking about school. The first hurdel is that same test. I think I would be a good teacher in a college. But then I get filled with doubts and fear. Really? Would anyone want to hear what I have to say? Could I even do it? Could I pass that test? I have never failed anything before, what would it feel like to fail? I am getting older, not elderly but older, that half a century mark. It is harder to keep up with technology, it is harder to keep up period. The world has always moved at a fast pace, but it seems to be in warp speed. More power to the engines Mr. Scott!

In medicine I realized that I am part of the group who is being phased out. With my years of experience a hospital can hire two new grads. I don't practice medicine by the numbers, or the computer, or the most recent studies. I practice by what I see, and I know what I am looking at. Empirical practice, the human in your gut "knowing," the kind of medicine that is being phased out. The truth is, I don't even like the kind of medicine that is practiced now. It's not worth the headache. Nursing is becoming so automated and regulated that we are becoming not much more than medication dispensers and bandage changers. The computer tells us what times to be in what places giving what drugs. The computer gives us our assignment and a "work list," it keeps track of your times. Being on time with the computer is what is reflected on your review. This is because most of the emphasis these days is on timely drug administration, as if that is all a nurse is, as if that is all a nurse does.

I used to come to work and get my assignment and write it down. After report I assessed my patients and after checking my MAR's could plan out my medicines. Some could be given together, or closer and usually I could get everything given without giving one medicine here or there every hour. That way I had time to actually take care of people. When you spend time in your patients room you find things out. Sick people need hands on care. Now it seems like the idea is to spend the least amount of time in the patients room. Some things can be taken care of right then, others need the doctor and that means some phone calls, writing orders, taking them off, etc... all those things take time.

New nurses think that I make myself work. They try and tell me if I would "get organized," I could sit on my butt like they do. I bite my tongue. If I went into their patients rooms I could find as much "work" in there. I am from a different time of nursing, a different kind of practice.
It's a fight to practice like that. The stress comes from management that just sees numbers. Numbers and statistical outcomes, studies and legal- cover your ass-protocols, keeping to the the check list. The stress comes from having hospitals run like a business, on a schedule with no room for the human element. I can't do it anymore. I don't want too; and it's all I know.

Welcome to Walmart would you like a cart? I can do that.

How do you change your career at my age? I am not old enough or rich enough to retire. I have to work. I cannot afford the luxury of doing what I really love to do which is be a home maker, not if we want to eat. I am fat, I like to eat. I can eat less but nothing is not a good plan. Our housing situation is pretty cheap, we couldn't rent an apartment for this much. So this is it. I thought I could trim enough from our expenses to stay here, but it won't work.

I could teach maybe. If I could find something to teach. How can I teach nursing, when I hate what it is becoming? Maybe I can, by making them see they have human beings in those sheets. I'm afraid I would talk a good percentage of them into finding other careers. All of the ones who do it for the money!

How can I teach nutrition when I am fat? No one would listen to me, they listen to the skinny-skinny equals credible. I don't think that all this skinny is healthy. Somewhere in the middle is probably right. Women are getting too thin. We are even wanting our little babies and children to be thin and that is ridiculous.

If I could pass the test, what would I teach? That is the biggest 'if' I have ever seen.

So here I am, with all these thoughts to sort out. I am thinking that I am probably not alone; with thoughts running amuck," because you have been quiet too.

I will leave you with a good thought. No matter how hard things are getting here at home in the good old USA, they are still good. If we but lift our gazes from our own front door and set them across the seas to lands devastated by famine, or chronic states of poverty, or starvation; we look at our lives full of wealth and can only give thanks for our plenty. The poorest of our poor are still rich here. We live in a land full of every good thing.

We live among a people who still value each other. We are still free, perhaps not for much longer; but for now we are still free.

For now there are still options for us. The courage will come, it has too, there is no other option.