We’re back. We had some of the best fun any of us have had in a long time. Its always kind of sad to leave such fun behind. Leaving around 1 am Saturday to an unknown destination was worth the time we spent worrying about where we would sleep. I’ve learned not to worry about such petty things. Who needs sleep? There will plenty of time to catch up on that later…Driving north into Maine, we decided to go to Bar Harbor.

Driving for what seemed like forever, we laughed and argued and gossiped and talked gurl stuff…then suddenly we were right at the doorstep to Acadia National Park. We arrived at 6:30am. First things first- hit the ladies rooms and get a bite to eat and some COFFEE (Irish of course).

It’s a big area up there. Bar Harbor and Acadia are in the same region, same towns. To the west is the park- with big mountains and hiking trails and huge rock cliffs to climb. And lots of snowmobile trails. To the east is the ocean. Best of both worlds. Penobscot Bay connects the park to the ocean. Bar Harbor is a tourist attraction in the summer; in the winter it is pretty much abandoned. Its also a fisherman town. Not the deep sea types…but the commercial types. I didn’t know that. And I didn’t know that they go out, way out, in the middle of the winter. A bunch just came back, the town folk were saying. (Are they crAzy, I thought? Talk about Perfect Storm. Who in their right mind would dare disturb the North Atlantic in February? New England fishermen, thats who.)

We went to the hiking trails. The sights to see were almost unbelievable. The fog banks roll in almost daily some of the locals told us. Those weren’t fog banks. They were waves of fog. And huge ones. Tsunamis. The entire region is lost to view. We stumbled along the trails in the fog, which made things a little tricky. Hiking on dry ground is fun enough, but add slushy deep snow and ice… Good thing the people ahead of us knew where they were going. When we reached the summit of this mountain, we could see the world above the fog. It was cool. It was strange seeing seagulls fly over us, and even stranger to smell the ocean. Yet all around us were thick forests with pine trees and rocks and bushes. One couldn’t see 5 feet in front of themselves. Awesome. And freaky. I bet this is what the dark side of the moon looks like, I thought. It didn’t help that we broke into the liquor up there. I suppose my judgment at that point could have been brought into question.

The people in this area were really nice. They are down-to-earth. Everyone I met dresses in blue jeans and T shirts & sneakers & boots. If they are cold, they slap on the wool sweaters. I felt very much at ease up there. Everyone says HELLO and GOOD DAY… I asked the local cop if it was ok to rollerblade around town and she says “Sure”. So we went around, looking in all the windows of the little shops. There were a lot of souvenir shops that were closed. Then we went over to the docks. Since lots of boats steam into the area, I thought I would see real ports. No-just little white wooden docks that are rickedly and wobbly. From the docks I spotted these HUGE rock beaches with even bigger rock cliffs. Wh-how…I didn’t see any real beaches with sand. Just the rocks and boulders. And more FOG. It was getting dark out so that fog looked even more scary. None of us brought a camera. Damb.

At night we went to a local town pub. That place rocks. And rolls. Music, pool, poker. The people there eat meat and potatoes and fish and chips. No South Beach Diet Fare here. My kind of place with my kind of people. No stiff necks sitting up straight at attention, shirt and tie strangling the life out of the wearer, with napkins in the laps. No well groomed ladies with manicures and silky gowns and wearing way TOO many fumes. Most of the people were semi- slobs, like I can be after a few too many… Spill a drink onto your lap or shirt? No big deal. It’ll dry. Drop some food onto your shirt? Who cares. Flick it onto the floor. Walk into a wall or two? No one notices.
Need a cigarette? Just step out the door and ask.

Jenny and Tammy found a poker game and joined that while Kim, Heather and I learned to play pool. Lots of local fishermen ( and women) were around to help teach. And the drinks. Weird mixtures that tasted very innocent but were obviously more potent than drinks we were used too… We were getting just a too little drunk a little too fast…Other folks were stumbling around, knocking over tables and chairs. We only saw one fight, between two guys who no one could understand because they were so drunk. No one seemed to be bothered. We all just laughed.

Then the dancing began. I think everyone in the joint got up. Older folks and younger folks…Everyone was having so much fun. The last thing I remember was looking at my watch and noting the time: 4:30am. :0 I remember dancing to Pink Floyd’s High Hopes- and others were dancing with me, in tune. I’m not the only crAzy-dAzed person who can dance to that music! I remember going around and around and around, and laughing and laughing… Everything seemed as if it were moving in slow motion. I think I might have gone down at that point…
I have no more to remember after that.

I woke up at noon Sunday; apparently I passed out onto some chairs near the pool table. Kim was next to me on the floor; Jenny and Tammy were at a table slumped over. Heather was on the floor under the table. As was everyone else from the night. People were spread out, on the floor for the most part. Seems like everyone was waking up at about the same time I did. The lady who owned the pub recommended we all take some aspirin and drink LOTS of water. She had a bottle and we followed her advice. The headaches were awful.

Off to the Jeep we went; to the public bathrooms and then to get some coffee. Regular, not the Irish kind this time. One of the things we really wanted to do was go see the whales. It’s off season time up there-not too much is open and not too many tourist activities. But the whale watching continues all year round. They say that winter is the best time to see them. It didn’t take long to find a friendly fisherman who was willing to drag us out to the bay and a little beyond. I really wish we had thought to bring a camera.

We got back into the Jeep at 6pm and gassed it up. Time to go home. None of us wanted to leave. We could have stayed another week. Or two. But being the grown ups that we are, we knew we had to get back to our lives and our realities. I highly recommend to anyone and everyone to go away, with no plan, no itinerary, and no suitcases.
Bring a couple pairs of jeans and Tshirts…Just wing it. It’s the spontaneous things in life that bring so much fun. When there is a plan, there is a box you’re locked into. Who wants to be in a box?

Most skilled nursing facilities have a nursing assistant/resident ratio of about 10:1. Thats a lot of people for one aide to be caring for. But it is reasonable and it can be done without too much sweat. At my work, the ratio is 2:1. The people I serve are profoundly compromised. They require a lot more attention and care. In nursing homes, the residents don’t usually have all the tubes and machines I deal with. And many of the residents can walk, talk, feed themselves; they can help with transfers and push themselves around in a w/c.

On my unit we have 20 beds and the current census is 18. So we have 9 LNA’s scheduled to be at work. This weekend 5 called out sick. That left 4 aides to care for 18 very acutely ill young adults and handicapped children. I don’t complain too much at work; my attitude is JUST DO IT and shut up. I like this quote, and it speaks volumes about my work ethic…So I did it and kept my mouth shut. But my co workers would not do it and did not shut up! They whined and moaned and groaned. The nurse manager kept coming to me, to go do this and that…”Can you do trach care on so & so because his aide is really getting tired…” I smiled and let the other’s workload pile onto my own.

Due to the severity of medical needs we care for, none of the patients can walk, talk, take themselves to the bathroom, feed themselves. Thats my job. So I had 8 patients. The nurse assigned me to all the hard cases because I “do well” with “time management” so she told me. They get taken to the bathroom every 2 hours, in a 16 hour day. Multiply that by 8 and we get 64 lifts. Add in all the showers, transfers into/out of various seating devices for alternative positioning…Consider that the average weight of a patient is about 150 lbs; who knows how many lifts I did all weekend. All I know is by 8pm last night, I was exhausted beyond anything I have experienced in awhile. I hadn’t taken a break all day. The nurse says to me: “Why don’t you go outside. You look hot and tired.” I had just given a patient a shower, and that meant I was soaked from the shower because of the arrangement of shower chairs to the wall in the bathroom. As I walked off the unit, I noticed 2 co workers sitting in front of a TV watching the Super Bowl. I forgot it was even on.

I grabbed my coat and went outdoors. I hadn’t been outside since 6am. I stood for a minute,stretched out and eyed a snowbank. I threw my coat down on the snow. My scrubs were really wet, but I didn’t care about how cold I suddenly got. I just collasped onto the coat and laid flat, looking up at the sky at the stars and a sliver of a moon. It was cold enough for ice to grow around my hair, which was wet with sweat. I lit up a cigarette and relaxed, closed my eyes and felt goose bumps form all over me. Strange as it might sound, I was actually liking being COLD and icy. Steam was rising off of me while I laid there. Kind of surreal and weird. I think I was so tired I just didn’t care. It was feeling good, just laying there in the cold and drifting in and out of reality. Daydreaming maybe? My respite didn’t last long.

A co worker runs out the door, tells me the nurse needs me back on the unit because so & so’s g tube is clogged and she needs MY help. My break lasted a whole 5 minutes. I said to the co worker:
“Can’t you help?” He says: “No, I need a break.”

Knowing that he had been out for a break every hour all day, and still feeling comfortably numb from the cold, I said to him: “You know, this is really rotten. You take breaks all day and I end up doing half your work, and half of everyone else’s work. I’m really going to be done with this shit.” As I walked up 3 flights of stairs to get back to my unit, I thought about learning to say NO. I really need to stop allowing these people to walk all over me like they do at work. Its tough though. And it only happens at work.

Sometimes life really sucks. Some people seem to get a real bad hand dealt upon them.

At work over the weekend, I took care of a very young man who was in an auto accident. The accident happened right after Thanksgiving. He was a passenger in the back seat; the driver was intoxicated. Hitting a tree at 50 mph. the young man was ejected over 75 feet. Onto the pavement.

Here we are 2 1/2 months later; he is still in a coma. His mother stays with him 24/7; she refuses to except the coma state and thinks her son is asleep. He has a tracheotomy;
central line; a JPEG tube feeding him and various other catheters and tubes coming out of his body.

His Glasow Coma Scale ratings have been hovering right around 3…With 15 being like you and me-3 is SEVERE BRAIN INJURY.

The kid is 17 years old and had his whole life ahead of him. His girlfriend comes to see him every weekend, and she wonders if he will “wake up” in time to bring her to the Prom in May.

His Dad is there every day, but goes home at night to work. He is always telling his son to “Wake up, we need to fix your car”…

I have been in this line of work for years and I have seen many young people in coma’s come out of it…In relatively decent shape. But this kid-I don’t know. He has a certain postering and absolutely NO response to anything we do. Rolling a pen across his fingernail-and pushing down hard-(causes me to yell out and leaves a nice bruise on my nail)-when we did it to the kid, as part of the coma assessment, he did not react at all. No eye movement, no wincing, nothing. I hope I am wrong, but I think this kid is going to be remain comatose for the rest of his life. Which could be as long as he would have lived without being in the accident. Such a waste of a life. A handsome young man with dreams and desires and fears and loves. All in there, somewhere. Maybe never to come out.

I was in tears everytime I moved him around in his bed; every hour we were in his room turning him; emptying tubes and canisters and providing tube feedings. Cleaning his trach site and changing his linens; checking vital signs and providing mouth care. Moving each of his limbs through a series of exercises to keep them from becoming stiff and contracted; his arms are already casted due to slight contracures. Of course, he cannot do ONE thing for himself. He is in a deep coma.

Nursing staff are “taught” not to get emotional while taking care of patients. There is a professional line, a boundary, we are expected to stay behind. No matter how we feel, we are not supposed to show any feelings. Sort of like being told to be a robot. Well this robot cried all weekend. And so did my co-robots. It is WAY too hard to see this young man like this. Up above his bed, above the oxygen tanks and tubes, are lots of family pictures. We saw lots of smiles, a family eating a turkey dinner just three days before the accident; a picture of a young man with his girlfriend…

Its a shame. DON’T. DRINK. AND. DRIVE. Or get in a car with a drunk driver…By the way-everyone else in that accident is fine.