Bits & Pieces

In my lifetime, I have been acquainted with three people who later committed suicide. I get it, they had pain, but they didn't have a clue regarding how much pain and suffering they were leaving to their supporters and loved ones. Usually that suicider made a lot of people miserable, even before they took the easy way out. So I don't have much sympathy for your suicidal tendencies..........you are narcissistic and grossly self-centered. Grow up or give up, but please do it quickly, Ok?

Bits & Pieces

Artists and musicians, and

Other people who made the choice,

To exit on their own terms

Maybe even crashing the Rolls-Royce,

Although, that's not usually the vehicle

More like a gun or a bridge;

But, not too many people

Lock themselves in a Fridge,

Airtight and cold

Or positively freezing,

Nor do they wrestle with an Octopus

For the ultimate squeezing.

The bystanders, stand by

What else can they do?

They can't put your brain back together

With Dollar-Store super-glue,

No, what they're left with

Are bits and pieces of your pain,

And perhaps, it's just as well

That you ventilated your brain.

Because, we all, were very tired

With that pity-party crap,

It might have worked in the beginning

When you dropped it in our lap,

But time, brought understanding

And distance showed us truth,

Your misery was founded

Way back in your youth,

Before we ever met you

Some bad luggage you've carried forever,

And in our loving relationship

You chose to use it as a lever.

So, goodbye to you

Thanks for picking up that gun,

Or you jumped off that bridge

Or dived into the Sun,

Whatever it was

You did us all a favor,

And finally, dear friend

You chose the right flavor.

Fibril_late;

7/8/13

No Coming Back

There was well-known person (celebrity) in the news recently, who made a very personal and difficult healthcare decision. This woman chose to have an elective breast removal (and reconstruction) because she carries (in her family), a genetic pre-disposition for Breast Cancer (reported to be as high as an 85% probability). Persons facing this dilemma, certainly have a daunting “possible future” of Cancer. I am not diminishing their experience by asking the big question of probability: If I might risk dying from a disease, that I know I have a greater than 75% chance of acquiring...........would I choose to remove the organ now?

Wow!    

No Coming Back

If my mom and dad had a brain cancer

Should I remove my brain?,

If I remove my nervous system

Could I eliminate my pain,

If my left leg has cancer

Should I lop off the right?

If I remove both of my kidneys

I won't have to pee at night.

Removing healthy organs

Seems drastic to me,

It was hard enough to grow them

And they certainly weren't free.

Celebrities

Described in magazines and TV,

Do a lot of crazy things

Unlike you and me,

Would you lop off your eyeballs

Just because there was a threat?

You would never see the world again

Children, beautiful flowers or a favorite pet.

Most of us have hearts

Guaranteed to disease,

If we manage to live too long.......

“So, Doctor, I ask you, please,

I want to eliminate the possibility

Of any chance of heart attack”,

Hopefully, my Doctor says, “No, Bobby

You're going down a road, where there is no coming back”

Fibril_late;

6/5/13

Last Breath

Sepsis, Cardiogenic Shock, ruptured Aortic Aneurism and a few other conditions........therapies have changed, become more precise, and yet, mortality is still very high. Our bodies are just to frickin' complex. What happened in 1995, would look the same today.

Last Breath

Not everything I write about is funny

Quite often I write about death,

As a Critical-Care Nurse, I was present

When Billy Bob took his last breath.........

And here I am editing

Words and experiences

Written way back in '95,

A shadow of PTSD

Reawakens, and I am alive,

In the moment of back then

When the night was so long

And the Reaper, was the winner that round,

Why do our memories

Work quite this way

Is this a gem or a bear-trap I've found?

Who was there, I don't know

Just good nurses as usual, per the case,

I  remember the Cardiology Fellow; by name

I saw him at a seminar, and recognized his face,

And we worked our butts off, on this man from Stockton

Already in heart-shock before he would arrive,

Were we foolish to think, that our great solutions

Were the magic to keep him alive?

Memories can be monsters

In the complexity of our brain, they don't erase,

Working on the front-lines of life and death

It is something that we all have to face.

Fibril_late;

6/22/13

Night Shift

Nurses who have worked night-shift for years (the ones that like it), often find that even when they have reverted to normal daytime living, their body still easily shifts back into the "stay up all night" mode, without much fanfare. When my mate leaves town, I stay awake at night for hour, even if I have to work the next day.............it just seems natural.

Night Shift

Massage school

I stored it within,

I'm not a Massage therapist

Is that a sin?

Specially trained

To ease your aches and pains,

I wouldn't have lasted a month

My hands would have flopped

Thank goodness, for my brains.

Yes, I happen to have several

I use them on different occasions,

For example right now I am writing

Listening to the Rolling Stones, those Eurasians,

A band quite renowned

For crazy antics and wild living,

But still they make music for the world

Five decades of giving.

The crux of the problem?

I'm a night person, deep inside,

Ever since age 14

I read to 3am, that was my ride,

Into the ideas of countless writers

Far better than me,

I took up the typewriter at that time

As if the words would set me free.

But the night-time thing

Is nothing to scoff at,

Supposedly night shift workers

Find it easier to get fat,

But as a long time player in that realm

I argue with that silly notion,

Becoming overweight isn't nocturnal

It is an all day, full time vacotion.

A lot of skinny people work nights

I worked fifty hospitals, I declare,

Overweight nurses?

Sure, they were there,

But night shift didn't do it

And that is a fast-food fact,

A lot of stupid things to blame

But night-shift isn't the act.

How did I get to this point anyway

My mate is out of town, that's the thing,

After two days I revert back to night shift

My biorhythms feel cozy and start to sing,

A song about writing and music

Cavorting with ideas sprouting like flowers,

I start projects, write and doodle

The night wiles away past the hours.

And then yowza!, I realize that morning soon beckons

Am I working?, I'm not really sure,

Thank goodness I don't report till 10:30

Four or five hours of sleep is the cure.

Massage school

Was a great learning, indeed,

I don't use it much as an Outpatient Nurse

But at least I can chant Om, when they bleed.

Fibril_late;

6/26/13

Ugly Stepchild

If you work in the hospital, you have been up close and personal with stool. We are nurses, we mess around with the stuff.....lots of jokes to simmer down the nastiness. But when it happens to me (or you) it's time to feel the suffering. So, although this is about me, it's a universal suffering. 

Ugly Stepchild

Gurgle-gut

Is still acting up

Three months later  and more,

Not diarrhea and `

Not constipation,

But certainly

A bothersome chore,

Colitis or IBS

Or one of those irritating cousins,

I guess if I went to the

Medical books,

I would find

Variants in the dozens.  

Norovirus

Is something to shake a stick at,

C-Difficele's ugly stepchild

The odds are I won't be getting fat,

Eating seems completely undisturbed

Cramping, comes early in digestion,

The ever-present gurgling noises

Herald an upcoming decongestion.

Gurgle-gut

I thought it would go away

In a month or two,

I think the scorched-earth policy

In my colon

Was overkill; don't you?

Similar to Agent Orange

Defoliating, that Asian swamp,

Norovirus seems to have decimated my GI tract

During its historical romp.

Fibril_late;

6/30/13

Gobbledygook

My best buddy nurse pal of 24 years, died suddenly this week, quite unexpectedly. She was brilliant, knew so much, and thank goodness we spent a wonderful day together, just two weeks ago. We worked together from 1989 to 2001, and then emailed, phoned, visited, went on local adventures (any outing with Linda was unique) and basically, she felt like a sister. I think many others feel the same way about her.

We had countless conversations on medical topics, particularly Cardiology, our shared interest. And we talked a lot about Nursing in general; the good, the bad and the ugly. Usually after I would post something on  the internet, she would write me and comment about it. Back in the days before blogging, when the "Underside of Nursing" was in print, Linda was physically present for many of those rhyming vignettes that I wrote about, our shared experiences in the CCU.

She would have enjoyed this poem:

Gobbledygook

I never met a care-plan

That made any sense,

Inventors of care-plans?

Please don't take offense,

You were feeling downtrodden

Like you didn't have a voice,

You invented the care-plan...

Not the best choice.

Perhaps you were jealous

Doctors wrote all the orders,

Directed the care

And fired the mortars,

And you wanted to shout

“Hey, what about me?”

The nurse doing the work

Our pay?, almost free.

Now look what you've done

You cluttered our day,

With gobbledygook

We must point-click away,

That later will be audited

To keep nurses on track,

A care-plan, indeed

It's a smoke screen; a hack.

Surely this wasn't

Original intent,

You wanted nursing to have a presence

Inside the medical tent,

But to do it this way

With such a pile of words,

Is like trying to fly with eagles

Little chattering birds.

In our current EMR

Care-plans are a POC,

There are hundreds of them

And it's really no shock,

That no nurses love them

It's just a tedious task,

Another auditing tool

“Oh, please pass me the flask”.

That nurse inventor of care-plans

Should have a statue or a plaque,

The kind that pigeons love to roost on

Leaving guano on the back,

A suitable honorarium

Like the birds in Pershing Square,

It seems like they own the place

Cluster-bombing on your hair.

Wouldn't task lists have been better

Just check them off, as the day passed by?,

Did the infant wet the diaper?

How many times did it cry,

Why call it, a variance in digestion

Or a disturbance in elimination,

Babies pooped their pants for a thousand years

Until care-plans called it an alteration.

Those nurse inventors wanted their own language

Without a care how stupid it would read,

Alteration in fluid volume status

That was Joe-Bob, oh man, did he bleed!?!

And then he had an alteration in perfusion

His brain cells were left gasping for air,

Too bad his bedside nurse didn't notice

She was charting on 14 care-plans, over there.

Christ on a crutch, this gobbledygook

Has tangled up Nursing forever,

Another 20th century invention

Truly an Albatross Award endeavor.

Fibril_late;

6/14/13

Crackers

Once again, another “new build” set of dubious documentation improvements has been downloaded and delivered to our digital disaster known as Cerner. Why didn't I realize that I needed to do more documentation.........that it would lead to enlightenment and Nirvana? I should have meditated more, and perhaps that is why, I am now, certifiably crackers.

Crackers

I've been storing up

I have lots to say,

About all the hospital nonsense

Going on today,

Regarding digital

Documentation and more,

Every three months

They keep adding a chore,

As if hospital workers

Had nothing better to do,

Than to poke at a keyboard

Instead of caring for Betty Lou.

When processes are lengthened

Smart workers are tempted to cheat,

Finding work-arounds and back doors

To get the job done, nice and neat,

Managers and System Analysts

Rail against rebels and hackers,

But why should we care?

They only feed us crackers.

Fibril_late;

05/31/13