A Cautionary "Old Age" Tale, and Some Advice for New Nurses

I’ve had a bit of a rough day today with pain and all… my back aches, my left hip hurts. I’m getting my neurotomies on Tuesday so the end, for awhile at least, is on the horizon. I need to earn a little more money to see an ortho doc about my hip. I have three projects in various stages of readiness; two have tight deadlines that I won't meet if I can't sit at my desk.

So it’s been one of those days I have been reflecting on how I got here, all beat to shit. There are two reasons why I am such a physical mess today: horses and working as a nurse. One gave me pleasure, the other money and heartache.

I rode daily from fifth grade to my senior year in high school. I rode anything with a mane and tail that I could climb on. Several times that meant I climbed on something a bit rank and paid the price by hitting the pavement. But I wouldn’t change a thing, because horses kept me out of a lot of trouble and you truly do not know companionship with an animal until you have teamed with a horse. I miss contact with horses on a daily basis. I love my cats, I really do, but there is nothing like the challenge of an equine.

The second reason I am paying physically is from working as an RN in a small community hospital that enjoyed being understaffed. I suffered too many back injuries to count, doing work that should have been done by housekeeping or a nurse’s aid. Might I have put up with the pain longer had I been properly “engaged” in the job?

I remember a pair of days when I showed up to work and the other RN was an older woman, older than I am now, who worked v-e-r-y slowly and was usually better at passing medication all day. It was all she could do to keep up with the medication needs of anywhere between 10 and 24 patients. There was everything at that hospital—med/surg, OB & newborns, pediatrics, and a 4-bed ICU/CCU. As I recall there were no critical patients in that room those days. During the day shift an RN would be called upon to stay with a patient in post-anesthesia recovery, which was the ICU. Same location, slightly different duties.

One of us had to be charge nurse. I stepped up, but the director of nurses said “Rose is older than you, so she’s charge nurse.” So I passed pills, took care of a couple of post-op patients, and took care of a woman in labor while Rose sat on her duff and took “reports” from nurses’ aids. I did the work of two RNs that day. I didn’t even have time for lunch. Rose took hers. And both breaks.

The way that hospital was set up, all the meds nurse did was pass pills (scheduled and as needed) and make sure she charted what she had done on the medication record. IF she had time on her hands, she could volunteer to help where needed. Because Rose was so slow, that seldom happened. Because Rose was so slow, if I had a patient who needed a pain med, I’d get the chart, find out what I could give, go to the medication cart where Rose was no doubt hanging around, ask for the narcotic key and medicate the patient myself. Rose usually made patients wait awhile, because she didn’t want to wreck her train of thought.

Fifteen minutes before the shift was to end, there was a medical admission from the clinic next door—I believe the guy was a possible pancreatitis, because the doctor told me the patient was an alcoholic and to give him some Librium STAT to keep him in the bed. Rose should have taken that patient and prepared his nursing assessment, but she said, “I am busy charting and getting ready for report, you do it.” She wouldn’t even take the doctor’s call—I was called to the nurses’ station from another patient’s bedside to take the admission orders! Again, something Rose as charge should have done.

So when I claimed 2 hours of overtime that day the supervisors flipped. (I did not finish my paperwork and the paperwork of the new patient until 5 p.m., shift “over” at 3:30 AND I’d had no lunch break that day, because if I didn’t do it, no one on my shift would have!) I told them Rose had been utterly useless, that I had done the bulk of the work that day (easily verified by looking at the patient charts, I was flying!) and that I would NEVER be put in that situation again. “You either work me as charge, pay me that differential and I’ll run around and do the work while Rose plugs along passing her pills, or you will not expect me to work with Rose as the charge nurse EVER again.”

A month later I looked on the schedule, and lo and behold, there were two RNs scheduled for one anticipated slow day—me and Rose. There was a “C” by Rose’s name, which meant she would be charge nurse. I went to my immediate supervisor (the one who made the schedule) and said, “I told you that I will NOT work in that situation, and if you don’t fix it, I won’t show up. I will NOT do the work of two nurses because one is too slow!”

Their excuse for doing it again: “We want to engage Rose more.”

Mind you, she was retirement age then. I was in my late 20s or so, and had worked as an RN for six years at that hospital. I was the nurse who never refused a shift. I was the nurse physicians inquired about regarding my availability to take care of their laboring women or women who needed elective labor inductions. I was the nurse who would come in for the night shift and stay for the day shift, or work the p.m. shift and stay into the night shift to help.

And which nurse SHOULD they have tried harder to engage?

I did not work that shift. Well, I didn’t work it as it was… I was taken off the schedule for that day, but the place got busy and asked me to come into work, which I ALWAYS did. There was Rose, plugging along with her precious pill cart, where she needed to be. I delivered babies, covered ER, and had a great day with a nurse closer to my age who worked as charge twice a week.

So what is the moral? Don’t kill yourself doing your job, because 20 years later, no one cares. You have to care for yourself, NOW. Be careful, and make smart priorities. You will thank me in the end.

Happier Things

I have not written much about my first love, horses. It’s about time I do.
I was always a horsey kid. I cannot remember a time when I didn’t love them. My mom has a photo of me, perhaps at the age of 12 to 18 months, sitting atop a neighbor’s horse (the horse’s name was Sammy), holding onto the saddle horn. I have no memory of that photo.
One of my earliest memories, perhaps at the age of three, is that of me feeding a horse from our backyard in Eureka. In hindsight, that horse might actually have been a mule, but that’s of no matter. I remember waiting for that equine’s daily visits.
My first horse was a pony named Dynamite. My non-horsey dad brought him home one day while I was at dance class. I vividly remember being dropped off by the neighbor, whose daughter was my age and at that time my BFF. The gray pony was tied to the swing set in the front yard. I think my dad was busy building his pen.
Years later I learned that the pony was a stallion and probably only half-broke. My dad borrowed a saddle from one of his cousins, and the bit we used on him was a ring snaffle with no stopping power. My riding lessons consisted of being put on Dynamite’s back, and being told to kick and cluck. I am sure that he ran off with me too many times to count, straight up the hill behind our house, toward the low oak trees that grew on the property surrounding the house. I remember one time that Dynamite had done just that, and my dad was not going to climb that hill and rescue me. I was crying, kicking that little devil, trying to pull him around and point him down the hill.
There was also the time Dynamite cornered me and bit me on the shoulder, managing to get his mouth and teeth all the way around my scrawny left shoulder. Again my dad rescued me—that pony was like a pit bull, with his laws firmly locked and me screaming hysterically.
That pony was gone by the time I started kindergarten. I bought my first real horse when I was in 5th grade, with my own money earned from babysitting and working in the fields. From that time, until 1997 or so, I was owned by at least one horse.
Here I am 50 years later, horseless. So I try to live vicariously by looking at horses from afar, wishing I had a place to keep a horse, brave enough to defy my doctor who told me that horseback riding was not a good thing for a fused back.
So for today, I am sharing two images of horses that have touched me and made me miss my horses all the more. One of the photos, that of the dark bay horse, is Zenyatta, 2010’s Horse of the Year, and one of the best thoroughbred mares to grace the track. She’s only the second racehorse I have been attached to, the first being the immortal Ruffian.
We know how that ended. Zenyatta’s story is much happier—she’s recently retired and waiting to go into heat, when she will be bred for her first foal. Z’s handlers have a website for her, with a daily blog entry. It’s so sweet that her people love her so much, that she is more than a machine. Z herself has obvious personality, and I am excited to meet her first not-yet-conceived baby.
The other two photos are of a paint mare that recently went through an auction ring in New Jersey. I do not know her name. With the economy in its present slump, many well-loved horses find themselves at auction, with no buyers, and no hay at home to feed that horse anymore. This mare, said to be a family horse, lived that nightmare on Wednesday night. She ended up in a feedlot pen, that is, she was headed to slaughter in Canada. Of all the horses that ended up in pen #10, she is the first one I would have taken home.
She had until today (Saturday) to find a home, or there was a very good chance she would be headed to Canada. Last night I learned she was still there, and I just sat here by myself and cried. Not only am I on the other side of the country, I had no money to buy her or even call the sales barn and offer to pay for her food for a week, just to buy her more time.
This morning I learned that pretty paint mare been purchased and would be rescued from pen #10. It was a nice way to start my Saturday.
Even though it makes me sad, I think I will take the time to write about my horses. Now if I can find photos …