Ch-ch-ch-changes

I am going to stop pretending like I'm actually going to get caught up on blogging about our summer, and I'm just going to get caught up on our October. What do you think about that?

So big changes around here. Right after I posted about my home health job, I got a couple of phone message about resumes I'd sent out earlier, both calls arriving when I was sleeping after a 12 hour night shift. One call was for an RN residency in a hospital--exactly what I was hoping for. The other was for a GI endoscopy clinic (a clinic that sends scopes "in both ends" to check out your guts--colonoscopies and upper endoscopies). I was very interested in the residency. Not so much in the GI clinic because it didn't sound interesting to me. I didn't plan to follow up on the GI position.

I mentioned both calls to my neighbor, who is a nurse, and she told me I should absolutely follow up on the GI call because as an endoscopy nurse I would be starting IVs (which nurses don't get a lot of experience with anymore because most places have IV teams), I'd be doing conscious sedation, in her opinion endoscopies are very interesting, and most important to me for maintaining some work-life balance--in a clinic setting you do not work nights, weekends, or holidays.

So I called back on both jobs on Monday morning. After the HR interview with the GI clinic, they asked me in for an in-person interview that day with the nurse manager. And then she asked me to come back the next day for a "working interview." I absolutely adored the nurse manager who interviewed me, and when I did my working interview (on the floor following a patient from admit thru the procedure, and then thru discharge) the RN I followed told me about how she had quit after her residency at the same hospital I had interviews set up for because she was "so stressed" from a high patient load and "had no life" because of the night shifts, and she said she had not regretted it one day because she is so happy here. And I could totally feel it--every nurse there seemed happy to be there. Most had been there at least 7 years, although there are two younger RNs who were hired in the last year.

A week later they offered me the job!!! Same base pay as the hospital, but no weekends!!! No nights!!! No holidays!!! Seriously, you have no idea the jail I was just released from. For the last two years, I was prepared to suck it up and miss Thanksgiving and Christmas day with my family and suffer through a year or two of night shifts because that's what new grad RNs have to do. But here I was offered early parole!

I started last week part-time while I finish up with my home health patient, and I. Am. So. Happy. It is interesting. The team is great. My manager is every bit as cool as she seemed in the interview. My preceptor for this month, who is teaching me to admit patients and start IVs, is ever patient and encouraging, and either as chill as can be, or an amazing poker player because she does not seem fazed in the least by my newbie mistakes.

It feels AMAZING to get up at 5:15 to go to work instead of being 10 hours into my 12 hour night shift at that hour. I have a life. I get weekends with my family. I'll be working 4 ten hour shifts a week, so I'll have a day mid-week to run carpool, volunteer in the school, get to the gym, and maybe, possibly, if I feel like it and they are disgusting enough, scrub the toilets. After my last shift with my home health patient tomorrow, hopefully I will be done with the night shifts forever because UGH. The night shift itself is not so bad--it's the drive home and then trying to sleep/eat/adjust the next day or two that is awful.

But it's not a perfect world. It is work. Today was kind of a crappy day--my IV starts did not go so well. I could blame it on the patients, but it was far more likely "user error." But my IVs went great yesterday. And nobody seemed concerned that I had a bad day with my IVs today. I mentioned it apologetically to my manager and she just shrugged and said, "Yeah, we all have days like that. Even after ten or fifteen years you'll have days like that."

So that's what is going on. I am now the queen of butt and fart jokes, so feel free to give me a call if you are running low.