Time Out - Take Time to Relax

Summer is finally in full swing at my house.  My daughter started her first camp today, golf camp, and we both have started our summer reading lists.  You would think that we would be just exhausted from the school year and wanting to just lay low and recoup, but it seems like Summer is "Having Fun - At Break Neck Speed."  We need a "Time Out."

We went to the Oregon Coast over the weekend to visit a friend who recently retired and moved in to her beach cottage.  Just about the time I'd sit down and get comfy in a chair with a book, my daughter would come along and say "Come on Mom, let's go to the beach, or Let's throw the football."  Yikes.  I finally put my foot down and said "Enough! Relax kiddo!"  One of the reasons I love going to Gearheart is that I don't have to worry about jumping up and cleaning something, or running an errand or being Mom's taxi service.  I think we often fill every minute with something instead of filling downtime like weekends with nothing.  

This summer I'm letting my daughter go to a couple of different camps, but I'm also making her take a week off in between each one in the hope that she will let herself relax and enjoy her summer by going to the pool and relaxing with a book or a picnic in the park.  She loves to go, go, go, but I want her to learn to stop, just every now and then, so that when school starts again in the fall she doesn't wonder what happened to her summer.  

Our family is going on vacation in August for two weeks.  One of the two weeks I'm going to the beach EVERY SINGLE DAY - period.  I'm taking the beach umbrella, a cooler and my beloved beach chair.  The only activity for those days will be an early morning walk and moving my beach chair to suit the sun and the tide.  I'm going to read and just enjoy being home.  The second week, we are planning a trip to Washington DC and some other fun stuff.  I don't want to come back to Oregon and wonder what I did on my vacation.  

This weekend, 4th of July, is all about Jam and sitting by the pool and cooking out.  I'm going to take at least one "time out" every day to just enjoy being off.  Isn't that the point of a long weekend? Listen up kids... YOU DON'T HAVE TO GO, GO, GO  ALL SUMMER LONG!  It will be over before you know it - 104 days is all.  Enjoy it, because before you can blink an eye, you will be out of school and going to work EVERYDAY and you will miss those 104 days A LOT.  It gets pared down to 2 weeks. That's not a lot.  I know I miss summer vacation and some day I'm going to find a job that will allow me to have those 104 days back.... Hey I can dream, right?!  :)  Have a good summer.

Last Day of School Memories

  Tomorrow is the last day of school for most kids here in Oregon, my daughter included.  When I was little the last day of school was always a good time.  My daughter has a full day ahead of her.  We only went to school for just long enough to pick up your report card and tell all your friends, " See ya in September!"  Then the adventures of summer began!  My mom always took the day off and we'd go to Rehoboth and get hotdogs and french fries at Louie's or Grotto Pizza.  Then we'd walk on the boardwalk or if it was warm enough, we might go to the beach.  I always remember that being a very fun day.  Even when I got older,  it was still fun.
  Tomorrow my daughter will "fly up" to middle school.  A big deal indeed.  Her teacher is retiring after 45 years of teaching.  He told me that in the fall he would be headed back to his native Australia.  I'm not certain if he's going back for good or just for an extended vacation.  My daughter wanted him to have a present so she picked out some pens made from recycled water bottles and a leather bound journal that he could write about all his travels in.  The best part she thought was that it would fit right in his back pocket.  I felt like this was her best year of school so far.  Mr. Seggie was indeed revered and achieved "Rock Star" status early on in the year.  I thought the gift of a journal was especially sweet since he just raved about my daughter's math journal all year long.   I wonder what he's thinking about on this eve of his retirement?
  I feel  a little bad that I'm not off tomorrow or Friday, but we will do our celebrating next weekend.  We are taking a trip to the Oregon coast to visit our good friend Pat, who just recently retired and moved into her beach house.   We will ride bikes, maybe take a hike or two and spend time just enjoying our beautiful Oregon coast.  The town where we are going reminds me a lot of Lewes back in the day.  Before all the T-shirt stores, fancy shops and restaurants.  It's like the Old Lewes, when the last day of school was a big deal, and us kids were so excited to be free for 100 days!
Happy Last Day of School to all you "kids and kids at heart" out there.  The best 100 days of the whole year are about to begin!

New Beginnings: The Real High Cost of Healthcare

As many of you already know I am no longer a "hands on nurse."  This was my second official day in Nursing Administrating.  So far so good.  I was really nervous about giving up clinical practice, but after today, I decided that it's ok.  I can use all that knowledge that I've worked so hard for the last 17 years (I'm counting nursing school in there) and put it to really good use.  My official title is Sr. RN Charge Capture Analyst and today I felt like I proved that I was worthy of such a lofty title.  It was so nice to be respected for all that I know and looked to when trying to wade through some very complicated surgical procedures. I've never been prouder of the job I'm doing.  I remarked once that I was going to use this job to try and untangle the health care debacle one surgical record at a time.  Surgery is a huge money maker for a hospital, but I think sometimes we tireless healthcare workers, and I'm talking about my colleagues who are elbow deep in it everyday, are often blamed for the high cost of what happens when we enter the hospital to be treated for what ails us.  Honestly, I swear it's not us.  We are there helping to make our patients better and looking in every nook and cranny for cost savings to pass on to them.  Now I get the chance to prove that by the job I'm doing.  I'm still looking in every nook and cranny for cost savings for our patients.

Oddly enough, it's not the band-aids and the everyday items that are expensive and drive up the cost of health care it's the pens and the do-dads that the sales reps from the drug and gadget companies hand out to the nurses and doctors that are part of the rising cost of health care.  I know it sounds crazy, but if you look at the cost of pens, flashlights and key chains (I'm talking about the good ones) you'll see.  It adds up.  I don't take those things from the reps.  Some people call it "advertising", I think it's like "nurse/dr. crack".  The reps bring in a swanky pen for everyone and there you go -- it takes $$ to purchase those things, even in bulk and guess who pays?  Yep, the cost of the gadget or drug gets passed on to the patients, and that includes the "advertising."  My health system might just have eliminated the pen problem, because we just implemented an electronic charting system called Epic, and it is.  It's so much easier to account for everything and I know in the long run it will save our patients money. Incorrect charges can be immediately identified and corrected before the patients ever get the bill.  Hopefully,  when they get their bill, it will be easy to read and hopefully accurate as to amount.  So the next time you are in the drug store and some drug company is handing out pens, just say no thanks.  Sooner or later they'll get the message, and maybe if enough health systems adopt an electronic charting system like Epic then pens will become obsolete in the medical profession and we can all rest easier when we have to go to the hospital!
Cheers!

Summertime

We are about to jump into my favorite season - Summer.  It is already summer where I grew up.  Temps in the high 70's  - low 80's with sunshine etc, and of course the weekend warriors driving down from Philly and over from DC to enjoy the Delaware beaches.  When I was growing up the official start to summer was Memorial Day Weekend. My mom would break out her white shoes, and purse, as well as pants, as did Dad.  They were stylin' let me tell you.  It used to take the whole month of June to get warm enough to even think about starting our favorite family sport known as Olympic Beach Sitting.  That entailed packing up a  picnic lunch,  and  the Coppertone suntan lotion - the mere thought of it makes me think of that wonderful smell - it was the smell of summertime. I liked #4. We also packed up the beach umbrella, a cooler of Shasta sodas and usually a bag of Fritos.  Once we got to the beach mom and dad would give me some change to go to the snack bar and get pixie sticks and Lance crackers.  I always got new flip flops and a new bathing suit, and of course we'd have to visit Mr. Frank Fox's 5 & 10 for new sand toys, bucket & shovel and watering can.   Summertime was wonderful.  We loved the beach.  Olympic beach sitting was so much fun.  After we got there, we'd stay all day long.  If you got sunburn, you'd put zinc oxide on your burnt parts and sit under the umbrella with a t-shirt on.  We'd go home as the sun was going down.  Sometimes we'd go later on in the day and stay and go water skiing in the evening.  Dad would trot up to the Dairy Queen and get hamburgers and hotdogs and my uncle would bring his boat around and the adults would ski and the kids would splash and play at the water's edge.  Those were good times!  We didn't worry about much back then.

Here in Portland things are a bit different.  Summer is usually delayed until the 4th of July, but after that look out! It gets warm and bright.  Sunshine everyday and it stays light out side until after 10 at night.  Even when it's a nice hot day (high 80's) I still usually have to warm up in the hot tub before we head home because it cools off so fast. Humidity is just non-existant here.    Kaysie and I are fortunate enough to have a nice pool where we live.  It's one of the big reasons why we have been here for so long.  Instead of beach sitting, we do Olympic Pool Sitting.  We pack up snacks and a cooler of drinks and the waterproof UNO cards, and we stake out our spot.  For the first few years we camped out at the umbrella table in the shallow end.  Now that Kaysie is a very good swimmer/diver/flipper we camp out at the umbrella table at the 5' end of the pool.  Sometimes we go early and stay until dinner time, sometimes we go later and stay until dusk and cook out on the gas grill that our community has for its residents to use.

Tonight we made the pilgrimage to buy our stock of summer bathing suits, cover up, flip flops new pool towels, suntan lotion and swimming goggles.  There was also a waterproof football and Kaysie wanted her own pool bag.  I put a bottle of #4 Coppertone Suntan lotion in the cart for later in the summer when I'm a little browner and can afford the #4 SPF.  I took the cap off when we got home and inhaled that wonderful smell...that smell of Summertime and decided that I'm very glad it's here - even if it's only for the weekend!

Connections

Today I had the chance to help out one of my new colleagues get the month end work done.  I have to say that we had a great time.  We have a lot in common.  We both have kids that are about the same age and we have both been single parents for a long time.  She is getting married in a few weeks and of course I have  a really great man that has walked back into my life.  We also share an affinity for the singer Adele.  I felt like we made a connection today.  It was good and I think it set the tone for what is to come in the next few weeks.  I have to say that I have been a little nervous about my new job.  Not bad nervous, just unsure about what is about to happen.  Some of that has to do with working with people that I really don't know.  I'm feeling better about the people thing now.  I can cross that off my list.

I think it's good to make connections with people we don't know that well especially when you work together.  Some of our newer nurses I didn't really get to establish that bond with, mostly because I've been so focused on training and getting ready to move into this new position.  It's a shame really, because there are a great group of people working in the Operating Room at my hospital these days.  Most of them are just starting out in nursing and have lots of fresh ideas and ways of doing things.  A lot of them are very technologically oriented and that is really wonderful since we are about to make the great leap to a completely "paperless" system.  I think sometimes when we are faced with a change we beg for more time.  For me, I wish I had more time.  Just a little while longer to get to know some of these very energetic new people who have come to work for us; to make a connection with them on some level.  It's not that the opportunity will be lost, but it will be different.  I've made up my mind to have lunch downstairs at least once a week.  Maybe we can make a connection that way.  Purely social, purely friendly.  Seems like a good idea to me.  

I would encourage anyone to make a connection on some level with someone you don't know well.  The results might surprise you.  You might find that you have more in common than you thought.  It might be an opportunity to make a new friend or an exercise buddy.  Approach a new employee and offer to show them where a good "cheap eats" place is for lunch or where the closest coffee shop is.  Make a connection - you might just make a friend!