Life of a Break Nurse

Work Work Work and then play. Tuesday I met up with the Meetup group for a wine tasting. I was in North Park at the H2O Splash Wine Bar. I met a great couple and a really gal. Both of the husbands are in the military so that’s an interesting dynamic. Brandon warned me about those military guys. No eye candy for me though. :(

Wednesday and Thursday I went to Balboa Park near downtown and visited all the museums there plus some of the famous gardens. I was very grateful that I bought the Passport card which got me in to all for a lower price. Some of the museums weren’t of my extreme interest so I’m glad that I didn’t limit myself to just a few museums, because you just never know.

My favorite museums were the Photography Museum and the Museum of the Living Artist. The Photography one had an exhibit of an Indian man who documented in photos woman that had escaped their domestic violent homes or brothels that their poor family sold them to and arrived at this shelter. It was quite moving. The Living Artist museum is an exhibit of current works of artists for sale. Such imagination and creativity surrounded me. I loved every moment of it. It would be so nice to have a couple of really nice pieces of art for my house but I have no clue!

I also met up with Scott for a visit to the Contemporary Arts Museum and saw an amazing exhibition by Tara Donovan. Her show included a ceiling of ’clouds’ that were made of Styrofoam cups, “rubber tires” that were old rolls of typing paper, like old calculator paper, rolled over and over to create these massive circles laid over each other. The folded mylar paper that formed circular half globes for a space like ground formation. Then there was the tiles of roof asphalt/tar stocked on top to create what to me looked like volcanic striations of the Earth . A favorite model was the wall of straws moved closer or further from the wall to create a “Haze”. Another was the bubble wall where she had small circles of the silver mylar paper rolled up and attached to look like multiple balls of mercury beading up all over this wall. It was so neat! Such simple items creating such extraordinary works of art!!!

And Friday I attended the Tran Siberian Orchestra concert along with fellow meetup members. We met up at a beer bar called Gordon Biersch. I got caught in hellacious traffic so I didn’t eat and chatted up before carpooling to the concert. I met a fellow travel nurse whom shares many similar interests. Next week would be nice if it wasn’t planning on raining so much of it!!! ;( We’ll see. San Diego rain could be like Houston in the sense that it rains for 2 minutes and dries. I crashed hard afterwards as I had to switch of nights to work all weekend.

I do have to comment on something that I got to experience first hand this Saturday at work. Break nurses. According to California law, nurses can never be monitoring more than the specific ratio for their unit. ICU being 2 patients:1 nurse, IMC 3:1, Tele Med Surg 4:1. In TX, there is no such thing as ratio safety laws for nurses and I could get tripled in ICU, have up to 8 patients on the floor! Hell no! I’ll never work the floor for that reason alone…I could end up with 8 patients. No thank you! So yeah, break nurses are there extra, with no patients to watch the other nurse’s patients as he/she goes on break therefore one nurse will never cross over the ratio. Great Idea!!! So I got to be a break nurse and the resource nurse all night. Resource is basically an extra hand to do anything from sinking NGs, starting IVs, insert foleys urine catheters, helping with coding or not coding a patient for that matter. I had fun. It was an easy 12 hours that I’m glad I had. I’d do that as opposed to get canceled!

I’m really having a good time here. But at the same time I miss my friends in Houston. I talk to my family pretty frequently since I can annoy them for the simple fact that they are family. I still have my man obsession that I can’t get seem to get over or maybe I‘m not meant to get over. Time will tell. Why do I torture myself?!? Need to keep more and more busy!!!