Life-condensed

The Silence is Deafening

Karen

I have a new night time routine – I listen to rain or beach waves while falling asleep. I’ve also been listening to various YouTube ambiance videos while writing or working at my new desk. It relaxes me. It helps me focus.

But I’ve always been an advocate for silence. Silence is under-rated and rare. When is the last time you stopped and listened to … nothing? Even if the TV is off. No videos are playing on your computer. The room you’re sitting in is quiet … it’s not really silent, is it? For example, I’m by myself, at my desk and I hear the ceiling fan, my typing and the occasional car drive by outside. Even though it’s quiet, I”m comfortable. Because there is SOME sound around me. When you stop, shut off the ceiling fan, stop typing, close your eyes and listen … the silence is almost uncomfortable, because it’s so unusual… unnatural?

I’ve never heard my blood rushing through my veins but when you close your eyes, put in ear plugs and hear nothing but your heartbeat … it’s almost humbling.

I’ve always said our world is way too noisy. I crave silence. I crave quiet. I get overstimulated when there is too much sound, too many things going on at once. Yes. I’m an awesome multi-tasker, but only for a time period. Too much stimulation for long periods of time EXHAUST me. I mean, bone-weary, can’t keep my eyes open, exhaust me. It’s like my body shuts down.

This Ted Talk about silence and what it can teach you about sound is really interesting. I think we all need to learn to be more comfortable with silence. Shut it down, world, we need to recharge.

 

Abundant Life

God Gives People the Responsibility of Governing Themselves

Karen

Now more than ever it’s important to be involved, and/or at least aware, of what our government is doing, or trying to do. More and more I hear people say, “Oh, I don’t pay attention to politics.”

Truth moment – I used to be the same way.

I think people, as they get older, naturally start paying attention to government more because policies affect older people more. If we don’t pay attention to what our government officials are doing, then we wake up one day and realize that half our paychecks are being taken from us to pay for government programs that are inefficient and worthless or we have less freedoms to live our lives because an elected official makes decisions for us because they “know what’s best for the people.” *snort*

We have to pay attention and vote for the best person to represent US, the people. And if they aren’t representing the people, then we vote them out and get someone in there who will.

It amazes me that people like Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, continually get voted back into office and for what? What have they accomplished other than pit people against each other and chip away at our rights?

(Or any government official for that matter, regardless of the party affiliate, who consistently does a bad job).

We, THE PEOPLE, have a responsibility of voting these power-hungry idiots OUT.

It’s time to wake up and #walkaway

Happy Sunday, by the way.

Can We Talk?

Something Big Happened on September 11, 2001

Karen

Remember 9/11?

There is a whole generation of people who were never taught about that fateful day.

And I think a lot of people who were alive on that day have forgotten.

History is not being taught to our children. Progressives want to erase history so they can re-write it. History is necessary so that we can learn from it and not make the same mistakes again.

This video brought tears to my eyes. I will NEVER FORGET that day. I was on a shuttle bus, on my way to college campus when the bus driver suddenly turned the sound up on his radio. It took a few minutes for people to stop talking and start listening. It was shocking. I made it to campus just in time to watch the second plane dive into the second tower. The busy campus was silent. Everyone stood stock still and stared. Walking through campus after that was like walking through a graveyard. People were zombies. Many were crying. It was horrific to think of all of those innocent lives being burned in the towers.

And then, watching them fall and people running to try and escape the huge, toxic smoke clouds chase them down the street.

I have to wonder, would Americans have the same reaction today? Would something like this unite us once again, or have we eroded our patriotism down so far into the gutter that people would actually cheer?

I’m afraid we all know the answer to that question.

I truly don’t understand the riots and the violence right now. I guess I could at first because people were thinking (incorrectly, I might add), that police exist to hunt black people down. Police exist to maintain law and order. It’s easy to understand – don’t break the law. And if you find yourself in a situation where the police have been called, don’t resist arrest. Fight it out in front of a judge.

These brats that riot, loot and execute people who don’t agree with them need to be shipped off to Cuba, or Africa, or China, where they don’t have rights and they exist to serve a communist government. You think America is unjust? Try stepping outside her borders.

September 11, 2001.

NEVER FORGET. 

Can We Talk?

September 10th Thursday Thought

Karen

Today’s question is …

In what ways would you like to change the world?

Opinions. I’d like to teach people to listen with an open mind, to weigh all of the options, from both opposing fences, and then to come to a fair, logical and informed decision.

Too many times, people are only getting one side of the story. Whether that’s from media, from friends, from family … how many times have you listened to a friend complain about a spouse, or something that happened at work, or a time when they got into trouble and you based your opinion on what that friend told you? You reared your righteous indignation on behalf of your friend and automatically rallied for your friend’s predicament or side?

Only to find out later, that there were TWO sides to the story and lo and behold, your friend wasn’t as “innocent” as he/she led you to believe?

Or you listen/watch a news story and you get worked up over THE INJUSTICE of it all, only to find out later that OOPS, that news outlet didn’t exactly give you all of the details and maybe, just maybe, it’s not as cut and dried as they (the news outlets) wanted you to believe.

Nothing – NOTHING- irritates me more than to not be given all the facts.

Another example: teaching evolution in schools. Okay. Fine. Teach evolution, but also teach creationism. Then leave it up to the individual to make his/her own informed decision. It’s insulting to only give one side of the story and then to expect people to just blindly agree with that side.

Facts are pesky little things, but they’re also necessary little things.

So, moral of this post? Get ALL the facts, THEN make up your mind.

Your turn …

Podcast

Podcast: Uproar Over a Tweet Taken Out of Context

Karen

 

Episode description:

We sort of hate to board the crazy train from President Trump’s tweet this week, but we couldn’t resist giving our two cents worth. All of this crazy actually came from a portion of President Trump’s tweet and when you read the entire tweet, the portion everyone is up-in-arms about was actually taken out of context and does not mean what everyone is trying very hard to make it mean. Is anyone embarrassed? We think they should be. Also, don’t try and make something out of nothing, context is key.

Bullet Journal

September Bullet Journal

Karen

Welcome to another mediocre bullet journal post.

Moving on to September …

Here is my cover page:

Feel free to download it and use it for your journal. The image is an A5 size if you have an A5 journal. I get the pictures from Unsplash, a freely-usable image. I can’t draw, I’m certainly not an artist, but I do like pictures. I picked this picture because we will be traveling to Florida very soon.

*gasp* Yes. We are daring to travel. Don’t worry. We will be cautious and will be socially distancing as we’ll be spending the majority of our time on the beach.

That’s pretty isolating, overall.

Anyway, I’ll talk more about that trip soon.

I’m really digging my new spreads.

I like this book template a lot. And my overall mood and step tracker. Nothing new there.

I’m sticking to one color and black throughout the month. I’m liking the consistency and it looks more uniform and less messy.

Still doing the weather tracker (I’m doing a weather tracker primarily because I want proof to refer to when people start commenting on “this is the wettest summer we’ve had on record” or whatever the case may be because then I can go back and say, “Um … actually …”)

I changed up my sleep tracker. I wanted someplace to document the amount of sleep I’m getting and on what days. I don’t really sleep that well so I’m trying to track a pattern. I’m liking the layout so far.

Got my travel plan and my packing list for our trip to Florida. (Notice the travel details are blocked out because … well … it’s the Internet).

My journaling pages so far.

And the most fun tracker I’ve done to date – a productivity tracker. I DID A DUTCH DOOR! Not very well, granted, but still, not bad for a first attempt. Not sure how often I will do dutch doors but I do know that if I’m going to do them again I need an X-ACTO knife because it’s near impossible to cut close to the page without accidentally snipping the binding, that would suck.

I’m sure my activities will change from time-to-time but for now, I tried to incorporate my most common activities. There are more activities on the back of the dutch door. Those are more housecleaning and general entertainment activities.

Anyway, I was immediately intrigued about the productivity tracker the first time I saw it was a “thing” and knew I would have to at least try it once. So far, it’s been pretty fun and also sobering. I’m not really that busy, anyone who knows me knows I’m one of the most boring people on Earth, but it DOES motivate me to do more just so I can put an icon on my productivity tracker. And that’s really all I want it for – to motivate me to BE more productive in whatever I’m doing.

If you would like to know more about what a productivity tracker is and how to set it up, I recommend you watch this video.

I’m pretty happy with these spreads and I don’t really see myself changing them or adding any more on, but you never know. I’m not sure if I’ll continue to post anything about my bullet journal at this stage as it’s pretty straight forward and not very pretty to look at, but if I change things up or start adding calligraphy at some point I might post periodic updates.

I highly recommend keeping journals. Not necessarily bullet journals, but just someplace to write your innermost thoughts. It’s therapeutic in a lot of ways and helps clean out the clutter in your mind. I think journals have been very helpful to me because now that my blog has been discovered in my “real life”, journals allow me a space to write what I’m REALLY thinking as I can’t really do that on this platform because I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings by my “honesty.”

Anyhoo, I hope you’re having fun with your journal journey!

In the News

My COVID-19 Experience and Thoughts

Karen

“In the face of a novel virus threat, China clamped down on its citizens. Academics used faulty information to build faulty models. Leaders relied on these faulty models. Dissenting views were suppressed. The media flamed fears and the world panicked.

The current coronavirus disease has been called a once-in-a-century pandemic. But it may also be a once-in-a-century evidence fiasco.”

Two questions: how did we let it go so far? And what can we do to ensure it doesn’t happen again?

How are you, really? This whole Coronavirus experience has been a bit of a shit storm, wouldn’t you agree? I feel like I’m stuck in a Draconian nightmare and I can’t seem to wake up. There is light at the end of the tunnel, so we’ve been told, but I wonder how getting back to normal is going to actually work. Our government has dug us into a hole, I’m not sure I trust them enough to get us out of it. And the longer we put off opening our country, the harder it’s going to be to dig ourselves out.

My head is spinning with so much data and thoughts about things I’ve heard and watched that I truly don’t know where to start, so I guess I’ll just start at the beginning. Please note, these are my thoughts and opinions. These thoughts in no way reflect how the hospital I work for, nor the people I work with, think or feel. This is my experience, it’s unique to me, everyone has their own unique experiences. You are free to disagree, it’s okay. We can agree to disagree. In return, I will work hard to remain fair and objective about this whole situation as the goal of this post is to record my thoughts and experience and to hopefully give you another perspective, or, to perhaps confirm thoughts you have but are too scared to admit out loud.

And isn’t that a sad state of affairs when you are afraid to voice your thoughts for fear of being attacked and ostracized?

Here’s how it began for me: This nightmare for me began the week the doctor I normally work with was on vacation with his family. He was out-of-the country. Two days into his vacation, shit hit the fan. The COVID-19 scare began and since none of us knew what it was or how severe it would be, we all freaked out, myself included. But still, I’m the sort of person who tends to downplay something, to not panic, until facts present themselves and the situation truly turns dire. THEN I would panic. But I would lying if other people’s fears didn’t affect me. What exactly are we dealing with? How serious was this virus? The fact that no one had ever seen anything like this before, and it was HIGHLY contagious, was … concerning.

The hospital responded the moment it became a pandemic. Most of the entrances were shut down leaving two main entrances and the ER open. We had to stop and have our temperatures taken and elective surgeries were shut down. The hospital also published travel restrictions stating that if you had traveled outside the country you had to be quarantined for 14 days either using ETO (which is estimated time off) or unpaid time, regardless of whether you tested positive for the virus.

When the cases exploded in New York, the hospital put up a tent outside of the ER and patients had to be screened for the virus in the tent first before they were allowed into the tent. (That tent is still up, by the way). A local business donated money to the hospital and they built a COVID wing in preparation of COVID patients. To my knowledge, they’ve only had a few patients use the wing, thank God.

(Update: that wing is about half full now and has been consistently half full for a few weeks now).

We all started worrying that the hospital wouldn’t allow our doctor back to work since he traveled out of the country. We were super worried when the hospital starting furloughing employees – they gave us the option of either working from home, if we could, or staying home using ETO or unpaid time. The hospital’s response to all of this was to try and protect the employees, which was actually pretty great – they worked very hard to put employees in other departments in order to try and avoid sending anyone home because let’s face it, who can afford to stay home without pay?

Oh right, millions of non-essential workers, that’s who.

I don’t know how, and it’s really none of my business on the details, but the hospital allowed my doctor to come back to work. Never one to be idle, he and his mid-level started coming up with a plan B because when he returned, we were essentially shut down and not seeing patients – at all. God bless my team because they come up with a plan to keep people working: They suggested Telemedicine.

I have worked for this clinic for almost nine years and we have never, not once, ever considered offering Telemedicine visits. It couldn’t be done, we were told. Our doctors needed to examine the patients to determine if surgery was a viable option for them. But now, given the option of either trying it or doing nothing, my team started really breaking down the details and asking questions on how we could make it happen. We were willing to try anything at this point, anything to keep the lights on.

We were especially motivated because we were hearing stories of entire departments being shut down simply because we weren’t seeing patients outside an emergent situation and we were scared we would be the next department to get the ax. We hurriedly came up with a plan and started using a program that worked, but was sort of clunky. But again, at least we were moving forward and not sitting idle. We then quickly shifted to using Microsoft Teams since it was a program that the hospital had purchased a license for and if it wasn’t for my lovely nurse and an administrator figuring out the details, how it worked and how it should all come together, we probably would have been told to stay home sooner.

Patients were reluctant at first. And setting up the visits was pretty stressful at first, but we have since figured it out and have come up with enough troubleshooting solutions that we have a pretty good handle on it now. However, it was slow going and instead of seeing 40 patients a week, we were seeing about twelve. And not all of the doctors were on board with this option at first. A few of them fought the option and refused to participate which ultimately led to management calling an emergency meeting letting us know that they were going to have to ask all of us to stay home at least one day of the week – we could use ETO or just not be paid.

It was a sobering meeting and one I will not soon forget. We all gathered in the main lobby, all standing six feet apart, of course, looking serious and crestfallen knowing what was coming but not sure how it would logistically pan out. Our director had tears in her eyes when she told us and though it was shocking to hear it was happening, none of us were surprised. We all saw it coming, and honestly, we were more surprised it hadn’t happened sooner.

When this was asked of us, the providers that weren’t on board with Telemedicine were suddenly on board. I think they felt bad for us, quite frankly. Even though it was in no way their fault, I think they felt a bit responsible for us because let’s face it, our jobs are solely dependent on how many patients and surgeries they do.

Fortunately, this new “normal” only lasted two weeks. Since we were one of the last departments to make any staff changes, it happened shortly before the hospital started allowing elective surgeries again, which was the first part of May. In the meantime, patients started being more receptive to the whole Telemedicine thing and we were “seeing” more patients at one time. In fact, in some ways, it’s been working out better than actually seeing patients in the office because it’s allowed us to really focus on the patients that truly need to be seen for various problems. I know my doctor has been getting quite a few surgeries and he’s been very happy with the process so far. And to be fair, I think the patients have been happy with it as well. My doctor has the ability to share his screen with his patients and he’s able to pull up their images and go over them with the patients so the patients can see what is going on with their spines. Our mid-level has thought of creative ways to do exams over web cam and except for being able to do vitals on the patients, honestly, our process hasn’t changed all that much. I mean, it has, but we have just found a new way to treat patients.

As of this post, the tent is still out in front of ER, we are still only seeing patients via Telemedicine but the city and the hospital are getting ready to implement phase 2 of this process starting June 1st, which means we can see a handful of patients in our clinic but everyone has to wear a mask and we have to space the patients out in the waiting rooms and/or put them in an exam room as soon as possible.

Though we’ve been given the green light to do so, my doctor doesn’t want to see patients in the office yet. He would prefer to only still do Telemedicine which … is fine with me, it means I have a job and it keeps the lights on, but it is a lot of extra work on my part to get it set up because it’s not a quick get them on the schedule and be done with it, a two minute phone call turns into ten minutes, then I have to put them on the Teams schedule, then the normal schedule. Then I’m on the phone with them on the day of their appointment for 15 minutes updating their chart and talking them through establishing a connection. Our doctor doesn’t want to start seeing patients in the office until we have a vaccine, but let’s be honest, that could be 18 months from now, or never, quite frankly. I’m sure he’ll cave once he sees his partners allowing patients back in the office. But who knows, I’ve gotten so good going with the flow lately that I’m sure I’ll deal with whatever new challenge is thrown at me next.

Now on to my thoughts about this mess …

Continue reading “My COVID-19 Experience and Thoughts” →