My new daughter.

I was informed that I am adopting a beautiful bouncing baby girl.  A 19 year old baby girl.  And I know I'm adopting her because she told me.  

I had to do a one on one with her at work because she was a fall risk.  She is recovering from a long illness and her body isn't always strong enough, but she likes to get up on her own like any teenager would, so she needs constant help.  It was the single best day of work I've ever had.

The girl was hilarious, and her recovery really had her spirits up.  She knew why I had to be there to watch over her, and she was ok with it unlike a lot of patients.  Really she enjoyed the company.  She had also figured out the exact wrong things to say to the nurses for her own amusement.  

Nurse: "How are you today?"

Daughter: "Oh, feeling a little suicidal...       nevermind, I just had to burp."

A comment like that, even in jest drives the nurses nuts.  They have to document it, if it keeps up they have to order a psych eval, and it generally just worries the hell out of them.  Which is exactly why she was doing it.  So I spent all day hanging out with her, watching tv, and comparing practical jokes.  At the end of the day she informed me that I was adopting her over Christmas break. 

Right now the plan is to send Denise to Memphis to visit her sister, have the new daughter move in, and when D gets back just pretend like she's been living here the whole time.  

So far at work they have thrown me right in to some heavy patient loads, lots of work, lots of running around. A day like this though completely wipes out all of those.  

I ain't got time to bleed.

With the end of the semester at hand, and the new job, holy shit am I busy.  Of course every teacher is piling on the end of semester research projects, presentations, papers, and asking you to babysit their 9 year old bratty kid just in case you had any time left.  The job is also piling on the hours, with 50 hours scheduled my first week.  Fortunately I had spent a lot of time getting ahead in my classes while I wasn't working, gonna be interesting to see how this works out next semester.

So far Denise and I have had a bit of a competition to see who could keep straight A's the longest.  It's horrible but I need her to get a B soon, I think I'm good for this semester but who knows about next.  I do have an advantage because she gets a grade every 6 weeks where mine hold off until the end of the semester.

So far I'm really loving the job.  I know I made the right choice in changing careers.  Sure it's all new and exciting to me, but still it doesn't even feel like I'm at work.  I never once had a single day like that in construction, no matter how much I liked whatever project I was on.  I can't completely describe it, I just know I'm where I'm supposed to be.

The race is on...

To see how quickly I can make new friends at my job.  I spent 24 of the last 48 hours on the floor for the first time, and I'm loving it.  The patients and families are all amazing, and almost all of the staff made a wonderful first impression.  Of course, there was the 1%.

On only my second day I managed to get someone mad at me.  That may sound really soon, but for those that know me I was probably a day and a half behind schedule.  The lady in charge of training me is an exceptional worker that doesn't try to get by with the bare minimum on anything.  We didn't take all of our breaks, we helped other people as needed, and used every minute of our day to get the job done.  A couple of people we were working with however did not share this approach.  As I was running around trying to keep up with my trainer I was stopped by another employee with my same job, and he told me to slow down, we don't have to work that hard.  This isn't my first time dealing with his type, so my contempt for him didn't take long to surface.  I tried to avoid a confrontation by explaining that we had a few things to get done and still had to clean up three people and get their beds changed, so we were a little behind.  He told me he can clean a patient and change their bed (with them in it) in three minutes.  I told him that's great, but I can do it right.  I don't expect to be getting a Christmas card from him.

The majority of my new coworkers though were amazing.  With the job and the environment they provided combined it didn't take long at all to affirm my decision to change careers.  They were all hard working, responsible for their own actions, and willing to help when you needed a hand.  Hell, I was asked if I needed help more in two days than in the four years I spent in the bricklayers union.  After a day off in school I'm really looking forward to going back tomorrow, just hope I can balance all of these hours.

Say hello to the new boss

Yesterday was officially my first day in my new career.  There were parades, dancing babies, an aerial show, the Chinese national ping pong team, rainbows, and unicorn fights to commemorate the occasion.  Unfortunately I missed it all because I was sitting in a tiny classroom doing orientation.  Today was much of the same, but was a little harder to sit through.  The part of the orientation that applied to me was over after about an hour, and the rest was directed at the new nurses.  I paid attention, hell if I can glean any useful information out of it then bonus.  The only problem was most of it was filled with jargon and abbreviations that I didn't know, so it was difficult to pull much out of it all.

On the plus side, I got a chance to talk to my new boss for the first time since the interview.  I think she's going to be a really good boss, and I'm looking forward to working with her.  She wants the job to be fun and exciting, and she values education.  This will be great for me because my primary goal for this job is to supplement my education.  I can use any downtime I have to study treatments and procedures within the hospitals system, and I can take many of the continuing education classes that are designed for RNs to get a jump start.  These along with the experience and exposure to the job will be worth much more than the pay.

Yesterday was also the first time that I really got a taste of the bricks to bandaids.  Sure I've dealt with some people's reactions, but less than 5 minutes into orientation I could already see huge differences in the industries.  I'm not talking about patient care to building, or any of the extremely obvious stuff, but about the employer/employee relationship.  The orientation opened with the heads of every major department in the hospital saying hi.  Everything they said to us was about the hospital family, and how important we were to them.  They told us about a breakfast they host after we have been working there 90 days to hear our opinions and feelings about the job and the facility.  We do this again after 6 months.  As a bricklayer, I met my bosses a total of 4 times between both of them over a period of 4 years.  Two of them were one sentence conversations, the other two were the typical negative jokes you hear on a construction site.  Neither of those bosses were even at an equivalent level as the ones I met yesterday.  I know it's probably just for show, and they likely don't give a damn about my opinions, but it does say something that they go through the effort of showing up.

The other stark contrast is the lunch after 6 months of employment.  They chose the 6 month mark because they feel at that point you're settling into your job and comfortable enough to open up about what you've seen.  As a brick layer at 6 months you were wondering which day you were going to get your layoff check.  The hospital has a goal for employee retention.  They want it, they work for it, they understand that if you're good to your employees they'll be good to you.  This concept was completely missing in the union.  You didn't keep your job by being good, you kept it because you had some hunting land one of the foremen liked.  They didn't  educate and train employees with long term goals in mind, they used you to fill a gap.  I know ultimately that any job will only keep you around if they need you, but the long range planning of the hospital is an unbelievable change from the short sightedness displayed by the union companies I worked for.

So far, nothing but good changes that I can see.