Charm City Chronicles

Coming soon . . . .

Back after a very long pause . . .

Wow, I somehow made it through the past two months in one piece. I did my five-week, full-time internship in the county hospital ER. Was also working my two part-time jobs and preparing for a move to Baltimore. As of last night, I am finished! Graduating from nursing school on May 10th.

My experience in the ER was great. I learned a lot and got to practice skills (drawing blood, starting IV's) that I didn't get to do in my regular clinicals. I also learned that people who shoot other people in Indianapolis have really bad aim---they always hit the hands, the leg, or the butt (which is probably where we get the expression to "put a cap in someone's ass"). Or maybe they don't have bad aim, maybe they just want to send a message without risking a murder sentence.

Anyway, the nurses I met and worked with there were great---smart, competent, and pleasant to spend time around. There's a spirit of teamwork and cooperation in an ER that you don't find in the other units of a hospital. (OK, maybe there's teamwork in an OR, as well, but the thought of having to stand still for the most part for hours on end holds no appeal for me.) I spent enough years working alone as a librarian, and now I'm ready to work as part of a team.

The move to Baltimore has so far entailed driving out there a month ago to interview for jobs (after hounding recruiters on the phone for weeks---despite a nursing shortage, jobs for new graduates are hard to come by this year because of the economy--new grads cost a lot to train). Got a job at my top choice hospital, in the ER! I will be working nights . . . not exactly looking forward to becoming a sort-of vampire (I'm not a "night person"), but newbies in any ER generally have to work nights. Will grin and deal with it and hope it doesn't last too long.

Two weeks later, drove out again to look for a house. Found one, made an offer, which was accepted. Flew out this past week for the home inspection. Am now in negotiations with the sellers surrounding the (few) problems found during the inspection.

If I could move whererever I wanted, Baltimore wouldn't be anywhere near the top of the list, but it's a step up from Indianapolis, so I'm excited about the move. Haven't lived on the East Coast in 23 years.

My Newfound Appreciation for Costco

Over the past two years, I've been stuck with the not-so-great health insurance that IU makes available for its students to purchase at a group rate. This plan does not cover prescriptions, so I've been paying for my maintenance med out of pocket. CVS, Walgreens, and Osco all offer the generic version for about $36 a month. Last month, I learned that Costco sells the same med for $10 a month or $19 for a three-month supply! And---here's the part that makes me really feel the love for Costo---you don't have to be a member to use their pharmacy!!!

I wish I'd learned this sooner, as I could have been saving over $300 a year, but better late than never. I'm not sure I'll ever actually join Costco, but I will think about it. I've heard that they offer good deals on tires (which I will need to buy eventually) and lenses (for glasses---another big ticket item I need every so many years). And caskets, although I plan to be cremated, so I won't need one for myself. The prohibition on cremation is the one aspect of Judaism that I chose to sort of ignore when I coverted. I have no problem with the blood and guts involved in nursing, but the prospect of rotting in the ground gives me the heeby-jeebies for some reason.

I doubt that I'll ever feel the need to buy the bulk food items they sell at Costco. It's just me and Max, and besides, I tend to mostly cook variations on beans (or lentils) and rice and fresh vegetables. (It's cheap, it's healthy, and it's what I prefer.) I tend to avoid the processed kinds of "food" that you can buy at a place like Costco. But you might see me at their pharmacy!

The Latest Funny

When you're holding down two jobs, a full load of classes, and raising a kid, every now and then you need something that makes you laugh. This is doing it for me right now. That's Dave from the hilarious show "Flight of the Conchords." Too bad the video doesn't give us a glimpse of his "huge VHS, 8-track, and cassette tape library" or the perishable goods.

So, what the heck am I doing in nursing school?

I've had to explain this more times than I could begin to count, so I've decided to copy and paste an essay here that tells you everything you might need to know (and then some) about this mid-life career change I've undertaken. Here goes:


I grew up thinking I wanted to be a reference librarian. I liked the idea of sitting at a desk and helping anyone and everyone who came to me with an information need. As a student, I worked in library support positions for seven years. After completing the requisite schooling, I worked as a law school reference librarian for a decade. That makes a combined total of almost twenty years spent working in libraries. While I was more than competent in this work, I found it somehow less than satisfying. I realized the full weight of my discontent after giving birth to my son in 2004. At the end of my maternity leave, I returned to the library and found spending my days apart from him especially difficult. This timing coincided with the decision of whether or not to apply for tenure. (In the IU system, librarians are considered faculty.)

I set out to find a more meaningful career. I began by asking myself what I did like about being a librarian. That was easy---I enjoyed helping people find the information they needed, and I also loved teaching legal research skills to law students and graduate students, thus empowering them to be self-sufficient. So my ideal job would involve helping people as well as teaching. Then I asked myself what I disiked most about being a librarian. I did not like sitting at a desk most of the day; I wanted to be moving around and using my hands as well as my brain. Finally, I asked myself what topic had interested me most in school. The answer was physiology, which I took to fulfill a graduation requirement at UCLA. In that class, the marvelous intricacies of the human body filled me with awe, and I had thought about the material often since then.

What career involves (1) helping people and sometimes teaching them, (2) dynamic movement as well as critical thought, and (3) the study of the human body? Nursing! Over the next two years, I continued to work full time while caring for my son and taking all of the prerequisite courses for nursing school (Anatomy--complete with cadavers!, Physiology, Microbiology, Nutrition, Lifespan Development, and Statistics). I earned straight A’s in these courses, was admitted to the IU School of Nursing , and enrolled in August 2007.

My immediate goal is to graduate and find a job, ideally in an emergency room. I feel a bit of déjà vu when I daydream about emergency nursing: I picture myself waiting for people to come through the doors in need of help, just as I used to sit at a reference desk, waiting for someone to come to me with a question. But this time, the need for help will be more visceral, more readily apparent, and---I believe----inevitably more satisfying.

It is worth noting here that, while I was in law school (and yes, you do need a J.D. to be a law school reference librarian), I published an article on EMTALA, the federal law that prohibits emergency rooms from refusing to treat people who fail the “wallet biopsy” (i.e., they are unable to pay for their treatment). Partly as a result of this law, America’s emergency rooms are now the facility of first and last resort for the uninsured, the undocumented, and the impoverished. Given the nation’s current economic woes, this trend will only worsen. It is my hope that someday, given my legal training and---eventually---my experience on the front lines of health care, I can be in a position to somehow help further the goal of universal health care in our lifetime. I am moving closer to this goal one step at a time.


Watch for the upcoming post "Why I Want to Work in an ER"!!

Chillin'

Yes, that is a surfer making his way onto a snow-covered beach, with a lighthouse in the background. Turns out there are quite a few people who've taken up surfing on Lake Superior. Year 'round. I lived in Duluth in 1996 and 1997 and commuted up the North Shore Highway (the same Highway 61 revisited by local boy Bob Dylan) daily to the courthouse in Two Harbors (and a few times a month to the one in Grand Marais). I don't remember seeing any surfers back then, but it turns out they were there. Lake Superior is the most beautiful body of water I've ever seen, and it was hard to take my eyes off of it.

According to an article in Friday's New York Times, these guys wear thick wetsuits, gloves, booties, hoods, and petroleum jelly to protect themselves. The water in that big old lake averages around 40 degrees year-round, which means it's often warmer than the air. But you wouldn't want to get wet and then expose yourself to the frigid air (thus the petroleum jelly).

I lived six blocks from the lake and would walk down there (Duluth is built on a very steep hill . . . think San Francisco but smaller and less expensive) with my dearly departed Labrador, Chamois, almost every day. She would fetch sticks for hours no matter the weather. When it was hot out (mid 70's counts as hot in Duluth---my idea of a perfect summer), I would wade in with her but only to just above my knees. It was too cold to proceed any further. Well, not without a wetsuit.

There Are Raccoons Living in My House . . . Again.

I first heard them about this time last year. I'm renting a house that was built in 1890 and which has suffered through numerous renovations over the years. The raccoons live between the original (very high) ceilings and the newer (lower) ones. They make a LOT of noise.

A trapper caught three of them over the course of a couple of months last spring, then my landlady's handyman sealed up all of the openings they'd created into the house. I thought that was the end of the story . . . until today, when I heard them scurrying about overhead. It's their mating season right now, so things could get much louder soon.

Movies Whose Acclaim Completely Eludes Me

In no particular order:

1. Forrest Gump: OK, the many bits of history thrown in was a novel gimmick (recently done again in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"), but I was bothered by the message of the film, which seemed to be that it's honorable to be not-so-bright and accepting of whatever life hands you. And it's very bad to protest government actions---you will pay for this recklessness.

2. Little Miss Sunshine: Just plain dumb. Insultingly dumb. And a little creepy at times (e.g., when Alan Arkin was teaching his young granddaughter to dance like a stripper).

3. Jerry Maguire: OK, I will admit bias against Tom Cruise, which didn't help matters here. The underlying message of the movie isn't a bad one, i.e., it's a good idea to treat your clients well and be honest in all dealings with them. Yeah, that's all fine and good. But the annoying catchphrases and bizarre, incredible plot twists (e.g., Jerry marries single mom Dorothy because he likes hanging out with her kid??!!!) were just too much.

4. Atonement: Where to begin . . . OK, this one definitely scores high for eye candy, but I didn't buy the plot for a second. Our 'tween narrator sends the object of her crush to prison rather than let her sister pursue a love affair with him???!!! And from that point on, things only get even more depressing (e.g., the hero and heroine die horrible, lonely deaths at a young age). It might have been a good book (I don't know, as I have not read it), but why anyone would subject herself to this nonsensical gloomfest is beyond me.

5. Crash: I think the lack of sympathetic characters was a big problem for me here. Then we've got racial stereotypes, incredible plot twists (I lived in LA for a number of years and find it really difficult to believe that these folks just keep running into each other---that doesn't happen in such an enormous, sprawling city), and an overall mood of unpleasantness that left me scratching my head. This was not Oscar material.