Life Is Strange, Isn't It?
Life is strange, isn't it? I've heard about those people that actually plan their lives out and then live them just like they planned them, more or less, anyway. I know not all the little details go the same way as they saw them in their heads, but some people grow up thinking, "Gee, I wanna be a teacher when I grow up" and then guess what? They grow up and they become a teacher! They think they will have 3 kids when they get married, and sure enough...they have just that. That's the kind of things I'm talking about.

My life has NEVER gone quite like I thought it would. Maybe it was because I had parents that were so ahead of their times, or maybe it was just me, or maybe I am a product of circumstance. Could be that it was a combination of all of the above, I just know that it has been one hell of a ride so far.

My father was quite a character. He was one of nine children born to parents during the depression. There were six sisters and two brothers, with him coming in somewhere around number six or seven, I think. I just know he was the baby boy, and the only one with black hair and blue eyes in a sea of cotton tops. He had a flirtatious nature that the ladies swooned over and was a man's man in every sense of the word, and he had a fierce love for my Mama.

My Mama was from a family of six children, the baby girl, and was only 19 to my Daddy's 31 when they got married. (He found out how young she was when they filled out their marriage license, and almost had a heart attack) She was raven haired, dark eyed and had six feet of legs that she generally wore dressed in stilettos. She was tall, a guard in basketball and voted best athlete her junior and senior year of high school. She was and remains a lady to this day, and she had a love for my Daddy that didn't end even with his death to cancer in 1985.

I don't recall that my father ever told me what he wanted to be when he grew up. He just went to work as a truck driver at aged 16, and never turned back. He worked different jobs and ended up in the oilfield business, where he stayed until he retired shortly before his death.

My mother told me that she had always wanted to be a nurse, but that she knew it would cost a lot of money to go to school for that and her parents simply didn't have it, plus they had two other children left at home, so instead, she had opted to go to business school instead. This is something that has paid off for her over and over to this day. She is a volunteer at the hospital and finds it rewarding, so she gets the best of both worlds.

Me? I had originally wanted to get into fashion designing, but in the small town in New Mexico that we were living, I would never have made it, and I was too attached to my family to leave and go to someplace like New York, Dallas, Paris, etc. So then I thought about Interior Design, but there wasn't too much out on the market about it back then. (Just think, I coulda been bigger than Martha! LOL)

I even had a full scholarship to Ft. Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. What happened? I got into an argument over a tardy with the one and only art professor when I left my sketches in my car one morning and had to run back out to get them after first period before coming to his class. He marked me absent before I got in the class and never went back and corrected it to a tardy.

Later in the 6 weeks, he posted it on the wall as an unexcused absence and told me I had D-Hall for 3 days. I explained I hadn't been absent, I'd been tardy, showed him the sketches he'd graded AND DATED for the date he was telling me I was absent. He wouldn't budge. An argument ensued and you can imagine. I was told he was dropping me from the only art dept in the school as a result. Goodbye scholarship. Not that having a scholarship was the key to my going or not, it was just that it was about the same time that I said goodbye to it that I was saying hello to a new boyfriend that later became a husband.

I never left town. I married a month after I turned 17. Life is strange, isn't it? I was NEVER one of those girls that had wanted to get married at an earlier age. I always expected to graduate college, get secured in a job and maybe even be climbing the ladder a rung or two by the time I married "Mr. Right"

It would take waaaay too long to explain all the things that went askew with that last paragraph. Let's just suffice it to say that we went through not only "Plan B", "Plan C" but a few more past then.

Somewhere along the way, art got slowly shelved further and further back, and a deeper layer of dust began to form. Nursing was the only means available to me for so long to support my daughter, that I had no other choice, but somewhere in the back of my mind, I always thought...someday, there may be someway that I can do it once my obligations are met to her.

Over the years, I worked as a nurse, mostly as a Director Of Nursing...or as my daughter likes to call it, "A Work-a-holic". I'm afraid she paid the price during those times. While I was trying to make sure the bills got paid, and that she had everything most other kids had, and "do it on my own"...I did put in some long hours, usually working 16-18 hour days, sometimes dragging her to the office with me, just so we could spend more time together. I kept telling myself it was all going to be temporary, that someday we would get it all together enough to calm down a bit, and at times, we would actually get a glimpse of it for a few months, but it never lasted long.

I found scuba diving in the 1980s and found that it has an art of it's own. It is almost Zen-like. By 1991, I was an Instructor. I figured by the time my daughter was done in college, I could travel and teach scuba. She was married and had a baby by the time she was 18. Life is strange, isn't it?

During a really awful time in my life, I actually got offered three Club Med jobs in the Caribbean teaching scuba lessons, but it would only have paid me enough to cover my expenses, and a little bit left over for some souvenir t-shirts, certainly not enough to be spoiling a grandchild.

And besides, by that time, I had already met people that were too much a part of me and my life.

So, that left me with working in the nursing field for a while longer. There is something that they should teach all fresh faced, young nurses while they are in nursing school, but I suspect they don't because they fear too many might drop from class. Nursing is hard work. It is physically demanding. Nurses don't get to wear the cute little white nursing uniforms we wore when I first started (not that I really mind this, you understand), but the point is, the uniform has evolved because the work has. A nurse will usually be required to work either a 12 or 16 hour shift...ON HER/HIS FEET! People are living longer now, but they are not always in the best shape, which means you will be lifting a lot of people, and we as Americans tend to overeat and indulge ourselves, so that means we will be lifting some really heavy people. Some of these people can't even roll over or turn themselves in bed, so you are looking at doing it for them every two hours. You will be doing it more often if that person is incontinent of bowel or bladder and has to be cleaned, and God forbid that they have medication or a disease process that affects their bowels and the frequency...plan to run in there every 5 minutes! We won't even go into the brain injured or stroke or Alzh. patients that are confused or combative and actually swing at you.

Top all of that off with the fact that you have to make walking rounds with physicians (ALL of them) and that they never come at the same time, so you drop what you are doing to work with them and let them know what is going on with their patients. It goes on and on.

Now, try doing that if you hurt your back...twisted your ankle, had a car accident. You are out of work. Or...like a year ago, when they diagnosed me with what they thought was ovarian cancer, and I had to go to surgery when I wasn't planning it. (Mine turned out to be benign, thank goodness, but I ran into complications and was off for an additional 3 weeks, for a total of 9.) You better have short-term and long-term disability. You are out of work. And if you don't get to come back when you are expecting..."sorry". If you happen to be the primary bread winner, tell your family "sorry".

Hospitals seldom offer retirement to any nurses except those in a managerial position. It is pretty much the same in any healthcare facility. Nurses need to plan retirements for themselves, but they generally don't, justifying that they can't afford it because they are just out of school, or paying back student loans, or finally getting to make some money and by the time they get around to it, the clock has been ticking.

This is what I have tried to do and why I have tried to advance myself over the years into more managerial positions. It has the ups and downs with it, having to deal with the responsibilities, and with a lack of family time, but offered long term goals and stability.

It is also one of the reasons why I had left the hospital I'd been at for the past three and a half years as a Patient Care Supervisor in Acute Med/Surg and Neurology/Ortho to take the Director Of Nursing position at a hospital that was to open in New Orleans east. Within 5 months after my cancer scare, my husband had been diagnosed with cancer and even though he never missed a day of work (thanks to the guys at the EMS station for all of their help and rallied support of him during that time) this was not an easy time for him. We were not sure if he would be able to continue to work, and it finally got to the point that he said he didn't think he was going to be able to continue. I'd been telling him to quit all along, but he kept fighting to continue. He continued and never stopped. Still, since the cancer wasn't encapsulated and had metastasized, microscopically, and he would be on treatments for 2 years, I didn't want him to be in a position where he felt he HAD to work. I already paid all the house bills and my truck note, the only thing he was having to pay was his credit cards and he bought a great deal of the groceries because he loves to cook and I usually screw up the grocery shopping..LOL. So, I figured I needed to find something and make "one more move...a last and final time" to a place I could stay with and retire.

Life is strange, isn't it?

I'd been offered a DON position 3 years ago with another hospital by their Chief of Staff, but had turned them down because I am so leary of Medicare and how some hospitals manage themselves and their viabilities as a result. This was especially critical to me after the first hospital I'd gone to work for in New Orleans, as a Case Manager, had gone through 3 management companies, before they finally closed in bankruptcy. I was offered another DON spot about a year before, but passed for the same reason. This one, however, appealed more so, because this one was being done by a rather large corporation owned by a local boy that had done well for himself. That sounded promising.

We'd gotten our hospital completed, got staff hired, got equipment in, got policies and procedures written, etc. State and Feds came in and checked us all out. We passed with zero deficiencies!!!! We started getting our patients in. It was running like smooth glass. We had just opened in May. It was amazing and I was so proud of us all. Then Hurricane Katrina came knocking and it was gone. Flooded to the ceiling.

The corporation ended up losing several facilities, and while the owner was checking into refinancing at a lower interest rate before the storm...now he has decided to sell off 80% of his corporation as a result of this...80% so far. It just went down on Friday. It also leaves me not knowing what I should do for a job.

If you've read any of my earlier blogs, you know I hate what I am doing with a passion (working a weekend gig at a nursing home...ewwwww), but I love the hours and the pay, so that more than makes up for it.

What you haven't read is this...I just got with a college here and was all lined up to take a course in Graphic Design and some others to see if my creative juices have dried all up.

I think I would like to try my hand at doing something else if it pays enough to cover my bills and give me enough left over to go and play a little bit.

Seems like everytime I start heading back over to the art direction, blowing the dust off the shelves, something wants to prevent it.

I'd figured this would be so ideal! New Orleans will have to rebuild herself for years. That is job security in itself. With my love of putting colors together, archetural details, fabrics, sketching, there just has to be something that I can do with it. My current work schedule would afford me the opportunity to go to school for this, as would my salary.

My daughter is raised, and my grandsons are living with her next door, so how perfect is that? Maybe that is what was wrong with it...it was TOO good.

You see, if the owner of the corporation has sold 80% of his corporation to a new management company, then the game may have just changed, because the chain of command may have just changed, and I suspect more changes are coming.

The corporation owned approx. 35 facilities, mostly nursing homes, a couple of LTAC hospitals, an asst. living facility, one high end apartment that has nothing to do with the healthcare field. These facilities are located in New Orleans, Baton Rouge and there is even one in Texas. Our Corporate Headquarters used to be located in St. Croix, Virgin Islands until just recently, because of tax breaks, however, when they changed some laws down there and the breaks were no longer beneficial, then the owner moved the headquarters back to Baton Rouge, where he is from.

On Friday, he closed the deal to sell all of his nursing homes in Baton Rouge. That part is fact. It is rumored that the ones in New Orleans are also going to be sold. No news on the Asst. Living, High end Apt, etc, but those are in Baton Rouge anyway.

The way the Chain of Command was working was this: The Owner, His Regional Manager, Me, The Administrator (and I were on the same level), and then the Director of Nursing, the ADON, Supervisor, RNs, LPNs, etc. The Regional Manager has been wound like an eight day clock, and I wonder if she isn't concerned about her own job security as well.

I am NOT a nursing home nurse. It ain't happening. It isn't the residents...it is the staff. I would have to kill them. I fire at least one employee and suspend 1-3 every weekend, and we are in desperate need of staff in New Orleans right now, but I guess I just have a higher standard of care expectation, and a zero tolerance for attitude. (Yes, I took pictures of my truck before someone decides to key it) And I have only had one "love letter" slid under my door so far that reads "WATCH YOUR BACK WHITE TRASH BITCH, YOU'LL GET YOURS SOON, I PROMISE YOU!" Great! Bring something to the party!!!! That was almost 2 months ago, and I still keep running them off.

But back to my issue. If a new management team is coming in, I figure they are going to find it difficult to justify paying a DON salary to a weekend special, and I can NOT do a week in that environment, so here I am sitting and brushing off a resume...again, damn it. Just hope I can get something that allows my classes to go on. Maybe I could do agency nursing, that would be flexible scheduling and pays pretty well too. So much for that one last move, one last time.

Life is strange, isn't it?