My last shift was preceded by 10 days of the busiest I can ever remember. The waits were hours long, it being high season for colds, flu, pneumonia. I did 5 straight shifts in triage, much of it alone. One week we had no COVID19 suspects. Then, a patient with cough, fever, SOB. The travel to Asia was not mentioned until I specifically asked about it. Then it started to blow up. Biogen conference fallout. COVID suspects were isolated, most not sick enough to need immediate care, so delay in being seen, delay in turning over the room. Over the weekend, the COVID condo tent had been erected, staffed by useless people like department heads who never, ever did anything clinical... but they were pretty proud of themselves, high-fiving each other and planning their celebratory drinks after the tent closed at 5 PM. We got a kick out of watching them congratulate themselves for remembering which end of an electronic thermometer to use, as evidenced by the high living and group congratulations. They were having their butts handed to them in that tent because the ER was chronically understaffed and we regulars couldn't be spared.
Then, nothing. Patient numbers dropped, the tent dwellers dealt specifically with the hundreds of patients who, as usual, were sent to the ER by their PCP. Most had no symptoms. The only ER patients were actual ER patients. No visitors allowed, which was actually....great. Ghost town. Not a soul in the waiting room.
From crazy to eerily quiet. I worked another couple of shifts. Then I got sick.
BTC (Before the Time of Covid) I would have probably worked my next scheduled shift, but...with the cough, I was feeling crappy enough (and just a little scared) to go to Urgent care on a Saturday. I stopped just inside the door and announced myself to the masked nurse in the empty lobby, standing at the ready to intercept and direct the infectious public. "I have a cough and I'm an ER nurse".
I was given a mask, asked one or two particulars (none of which was "are you short of breath") and sent back to wait in my car. They would have the PA call my cell phone.
After 3 or 4 minutes, I was beckoned to a side entrance, shipping door, whatever. Not through the lobby. Straight to a room where the PA did the intake, VS, exam, tested for flu and ordered a CXR for pneumonia. Both negative. Since I was an ER nurse with symptoms, to my own ER I was directed for Covid testing. My. Own. ER.
I was taken to a negative pressure room. "I feel stupid", I muttered to my colleague. From outside the room I read her my VS from my urgent care sheet. She handed me a portable pulse oximeter since that reading was not documented. "It's 88", I called out. "What?!" "Just kidding, it's 98".
I tested negative for COVID-19. I waited 4 days for the results.
I tested negative for COVID-19. I waited 4 days for the results.
While I waited, quarantined, I got worse. The cough was relentless. And the fatigue. I have rarely had an illness wherein it was necessary to stay in bed and pretty much sleep for three days. When I wasn't coughing and dizzy, and short of breath from coughing.
.
I didn't go back to work. I was way too fatigued. Simple tasks around the house required prolonged rest periods. This lasted about a month. Employee health called me every week until the end of April and asked me the same questions about the timeline of my illness. I'm not sure they ever wrote any of it down.
Mid-May I wasn't sure I wanted to go back. But I felt guilty. And worried about money, although there was no place to go to spend it. "We're fine. You don't have to go back to work if you don't want to" , said Mr. Ednurseasauras.
I didn't go back to work. I was way too fatigued. Simple tasks around the house required prolonged rest periods. This lasted about a month. Employee health called me every week until the end of April and asked me the same questions about the timeline of my illness. I'm not sure they ever wrote any of it down.
Mid-May I wasn't sure I wanted to go back. But I felt guilty. And worried about money, although there was no place to go to spend it. "We're fine. You don't have to go back to work if you don't want to" , said Mr. Ednurseasauras.
In early June I was sure I didn't want to. I still felt guilty.
By July it was certain. An impersonal letter from HR removed any doubt. If I wasn't going to work the minimum required hours as a per-diem, I was done. I never bothered to respond.
By July it was certain. An impersonal letter from HR removed any doubt. If I wasn't going to work the minimum required hours as a per-diem, I was done. I never bothered to respond.
I was fine with that.
It took me another month to declare that I was actually retired from Emergency Nursing after 40-plus years.
I'm fine with that, too.
But...would I recommend nursing as a career??
6 comments:
I'll be sorry to see you leave the blog. You're almost as old as me, I graduated from a diploma program in 1966. 3 years of near-Hell, but we ended up great nurses. Yes, things are way different these days. I retired 10 years ago after working in the OR. I couldn't handle 12 hour shifts & physically hauling around bigger & bigger patients. Bean-counters are running things & staff is overwhelmed by documentation requirements. It is what it is. Enjoy your retirement.
Thanks! I still feel like I'm not quite ready to pull the plug, but perhaps soon.
An older nurse once advised me that the two happiest days of a nurses's life are the day you graduate and the day you retir. There is certainly lots of truth in that. Sometimes, I think the biggest snakes in the den of serpents that is hospital administration work in personnel (or (human relations in today's vernacular) and oversee nurses. Nurses are never supposed to get sick and if they do, they better come to work even if they are scrubbed in the OR with a strep infection. I once came to work evenings after having 4 impacted wisdom teeth out and Alice, my supervisor yelled at me because my mask was not on tight enough - my jaw was aching and the pain was exacerbated by the mask. Yikes...Don't get me started.
I hope you have a wonderful and fulfilling retirement. It's lots more fun to write about nursing than suffer it out at the bedside. I hope you continue blogging.
I’m almost at that spot. I can handle 2 day stretches but 3 days is killing me. Plus I’m a walking risk factor. My focus is zero debt and retire in 3 years. 1976 was a really long time ago, and I never expected to,be still doing this. I’ll probably a part time faculty position just to supplement income.
I've read and re-read your last two posts so many times. I think you're just me, closer to retirement age. I've been doing this for only 12 years - as long as you've been running the blog! - and I can't imagine doing this for another 25. Which, unless I want to get into admin or another non-bedside track, is pretty unlikely. I don't know if I can hold up for another 25 years of this, but I don't know what else I can do.
Anyway, existential crisis aside, I hope you're still doing well and not regretting any of your decisions. Were I another couple decades along in my career, I think I'd be making the exact same ones you have.
Oh, my dear Shrtstormtrooper. I think we both started blogging within a few weeks of each other, you at the beginning of your journey, me at the last 1/3. If I was only 12 years into ER nursing in the current climate I would most certainly not have made it for the length of time I did. For one thing, I always had more than one job. I dabbled in same day surgery, travel clinic. Pediatrics. School nursing. Visiting nurse. Too many others to mentions. Taught CPR and First Aid to business, scouts, dental offices. Having different perspectives kept me going. All while still working in the ER. I started at a tiny ER, when it was fun as the lone 11-7 nurse. No secretary, I had to type the charts myself. We had relatively few actual emergencies. I then went to bigger and bigger ER's. Physically I did things in reverse order. Honestly, if I was back in the tiny, fun, freestanding ER I had to leave 7 years ago, I would probably still be working a bit per-diem. But it's an urgent care now, and I just don't enjoy it. I enjoyed caring for really sick people, which the urgent cares of the world don't provide. ER's have always been at the bottom rung of the ladder, and that takes its toll on a person's body. People just are not meant to take that level of physical and mental abuse for 40 + years, it's not healthy. Recognizing that, almost all of the 30-somethings in my ER became nurse practitioners (8 at last count) and the 40-50+ went to teaching (3) and same day surgery (4). Two tried travel nursing but came back because no amount of money is worth being treated like crap by strangers. I know you will figure it out, something will change for the better, or the job will become intolerable and you'll move on. It's okay to branch out and find something else to do. I will always love emergency nursing, but I'm not sure it always loved me. Stay healthy, stay sane! Hugs to you.
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