The busyness came mainly from scheduling. Our clinic generally schedules between 20 and 40 appointments a day. Those appointments are spread between many nurses, and my share is often a bit less as they have to leave room for the various transfers that invariably come in.
On Tuesday we had 64 scheduled appointments. Even with reducing my 'share' of appointments and leaving me room for transfers I still had 10 appointments. So once the day started, I got running and never slowed down. There were only four transfers, but I didn't even START getting them ready until around 7 PM. And of course there were a few urgent cases. By the end of the shift I had taken care of 16 appointments.
That number alone doesn't convey just how busy I was. Sometimes appointments are things like taking a blood pressure, or reading a test result. Most of my appointments that day were full on assessments. An inmate has a complaint, and I get to start from scratch. "Oh, your back hurts, well let's talk about it for 20 minutes while I try to figure out what the hell is wrong with you (probably mental) and what I am going to do about it (or NOT do about it)". I've had more appointments in a day, but Tuesday was one of the busiest non stop days I've ever had.
The reason I say I dread and enjoy those days is the simple fact that it can go off the rails so freaking quickly. One extra urgent call is all it would take to push it over form 'busy' to having to reschedule several appointments because I couldn't get to them. I don't like admitting I can't do everything that was laid out for me, so I'm constantly worried about that.
All of that GO GO GO throughout my shift had me wired. So when I got a phone call at round 9 PM, it's impact didn't immediately come clear. It was my supervisor, and she said that the morning RN had called in sick. She calls in occasionally like this and I have to write a note out for the other morning nurses and make sure I report the change off to the night nurse. But not this time. It seems that the morning RN that called in was the ONLY RN on duty the next morning. And the supervisor tried calling in another nurse to cover, but either got out right 'No's or worse, just got a ringing phone and voicemail. So when she couldn't voluntarily gather someone, she started up the chain to mandate someone.
Everyone on the seniority list below me was unreachable, and it's not as though I could hide form this particular phone call. I was in a place where my supervisor knew, and a place where I couldn't NOT answer the phone (even if I knew it was her calling).
Yes... I got mandated to cover the morning shift. This would be in addition to me working my normal evening shift. I would be at the prison for 16 hours straight. I've been mandated for the overnight shift before, but this would be the first time I worked a morning shift in.... Damn.... 22 months.
I didn't have a lot of time to let that sink in... remember I was very busy... until I started my drive home. I left work at 10 PM. It takes me an hour to drive home. I want to eat (I skipped lunch at work), and then unwind. On a normal day it takes me about 30 or 45 minutes to unwind. After a busy day like Tuesday it took me over an hour to unwind. When I started readying myself for sleep I had to set the alarm. So I started counting backwards.... I had to be AT work at 5:30 AM. It takes an hour to drive in, so I have to leave at 4:30 AM. I want to add in an extra 15 minutes just in case there is some weird busy traffic vortex. So leave at 4:15 AM. I'll have to do the normal morning things (shit/shower/shave), plus make lunch, plus carve out at least 10 minutes to take a few sips of coffee. So I set the alarm for 3:15 AM. Only when I looked up at the clock and saw that it was already 1:00 AM did it hit me...
I'd be working a 16 hour shift. The first 8 hours would be more stressful than normal as I'm not familiar with the ebb and flow of a morning shift, in addition to adding taking Labs (I'm horrible at taking Labs). And I'd be doing that on about 2 hours of sleep.
Ouch.
I won't bore you with a minute by minute reckoning, but I will say that I punted on the Labs (even with my supervisor coming in early to help, we couldn't figure them out with any confidence so we rescheduled them), I had to deal with three urgent, go so worked up that I could only eat a couple bites of my lunch and dinner, took a 20 minutes nap (in 5 block) and exited the day so damned wired that I couldn't fall asleep until about 1:30 AM.
More or less I had a Tuesday and then woke up this fine Thursday morning. Wednesday was just not ever part of my week.
OH.. while I'm posting this about Wednesday I may as well put this in here. On one of my breaks I set off the metal detector in the bubble. It's nothing major... it happens sometimes... but I take the extr precaution of taking off my watch whenever I set it off. The officer manning the metal detector is one that I don't know. She works the morning shift and therefore we never cross paths. She noticed my watch and asked if it was "one of those smart-watch thingies".
Many officers ask me the same thing when they see it. I told her the same thing I tell them. Yes, it's kind of a smart watch. It's a Pebble watch.". Well... it seems she wasn't just experiencing some random curiosity or tech envy. She wanted to know because in June of last year the Michigan Department of Corrections evidently made a rule saying that smart watches were banned. That's two months after I started wearing my smart watch to work.
Now understand, I'm no fool. I knew that having a smart piece of technology may be banned by the prison. So before I ever wore it into the prison I emailed our inspector and asked if I could bring it in on a daily basis. I explained that this wasn't like most smart watches. It didn't have a microphone. It didn't have a camera. And it couldn't connect to any device beyond a smart phone with the right software, and smart phones (or any cellular phones) aren't allowed inside the facility. That's why I say it's "kinda" a smart watch. Outside of the facility it's a smart watch. Inside the facility it's a watch with multiple digital faces.
That's it.
He gave me permission to bring the watch in whenever I wanted. Since that time, he got promoted and is now a warden at a different facility. The new inspector, when told by the officer manning the metal detector that I was bringing in a smart watch, went by the simplistic regulation of 'No Smart Watches" and informed me (through the officer) that I had to take the watch out to my car and never bring it in again. This was after I presented the email from the previous inspector giving me permission.
I was told later that I couldn't bring it in because of it's recording capabilities.
IT DOESN'T HAVE ANY FUCKING RECORDING CAPABILITIES!!!
THAT'S ONE OF THE REASONS I GOT THIS DAMNED WATCH!!!!
It was a busy day and I was sleep deprived. I figured it wasn't a good time to try and talk my watch back in. Later today I'll email the inspector and see if I can get permission back.
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