I had a migrane outbreak. One Wednesday while at work I had a pretty bad headache. When I got into work I took some acetaminophen and ibuprofen but the headache didn't even budge. I took my normal lunch and when I got back to the prison I took some more acetaminophen and ibuprofen. And added an Imitrex. Imitrex was prescribed to me last December for the migranes but I've only had cause to try one once since then. And just like that time it didn't do anything other than upset my stomach. So I called my supervisor, told her that I couldn't continue to work, and went home.
I then called in the next day as the headache hadn't lessened in the least. The next day, Friday, I went into work but still had a bad headache. Thankfully it was my weekend off, and I felt it melt away sometime Sunday afternoon. If you're counting that's a headache spreading out over five days. Ouch. And it's had an echo of sorts... every day or so it tries to come back. I've beaten it away by avoiding loud sounds (driving with the radio quiet sucks!), and a lot of acetaminophen and ibuprofen. They've helped mange it, but it feels like before I started taking the propranolol. When I see the Doc in October I'll ask him about another step... maybe we can up the propranolol.
This past Thursday was a fun day... or at least it was supposed to be.. Michigan played their first football game of the 2015 season. Their first game of the Jim Harbaugh era. My original plan was just to head over to my brother's place and watch the game there. That way we wouldn't be intruding upon Mom's house and she could enjoy the day. Unfortunately I overheard her on the phone and found out that she planned on having us over here. Now don't mis-understand me... I like watching football here. I can smoke as a please, I know the soda situation at all times, and.. well.. it's home. But having my brother and his kids come over means that it's an "event" for mom. She wanted to cook everybody a meal, but my brother called off... so she made a huge pot of chili for my other brother and me.
She also made a batch of no-bake cookies. I guess she wanted something easy to make and boy did that backfire. She somehow messed up the recipe and the cookies never formed.. they jsut remained small wet blobs. She put them back in the pot and tried to cook out the moisture, but that didn't work. So she threw them away and started over. The 'easy' cookies ended up taking most of the afternoon. As if the Chili and cookies wasn't enough she also decided to make nachos as a halftime snack. Now, when I'm watching the game at my brothers I feel good about saying no to food. But not at Mom's. I don't care how much she says other wise, she gets hurt if you don't eat her food. She swears it was messed up and that she can no longer cook... so she cooks = i eat.
To top the food situation off, my brother bought pizza for him and the kids. He of course offered anyone to join in, but I could see the look deep in Mom's eyes; B doesn't like her cooking and therefore bought pizza instead of having dinner with us. It wasn't true. B didn't want to burden Mom with making a meal for him, his three kids, and one of their friends. But that's not how Mom saw it.
My other brother works on Fridays and generally heads to bed around 10pm... the game didn't get over until around 11pm... so I spent an hour on edge just wishing everyone would be quiet. To top off a stressfull football day... Michigan lost. I fully expected them too, but if you listened in to us you'd think the world ended. My brother REALLY gets into football and was screaming at the TV. And you know the rules... if 'Dad' screams at the TV then that means the kids can be loud too.
The next day at work I had a headache again. A minor one, but a headache none the less. To make that situation worse, I was scheduled in the med room. I hate being in the med room. The day wasn't bad as everyone could see I had a headache, but it ended with me in a Rage.
We have medline at 7pm. It takes about an hour to do medline, then we have a 'last call' for any inmates that had callouts during medline. We try to start that by 9pm. Those aren't just times we picked out of a hat. Our 'bedtime' medpass is set as 8pm. We follow the standard procedure for almost all places that hand out prescribed medicine... we have an hour before and an hour after the prescribed time to hand out the meds. Hence stating at 7pm (an hour before the prescribed time) and starting last call at 9pm (an hour after).
Well at the time of last call we couldn't get an officer to run the mouth checks. All of our restricted meds require someone to make sure the inmate swallowed his meds and our standard operating procedure is to have an officer outside the med window to do just that. The other medroom nurse (another RN that doesn't like being in the medroom) searched far and wide for an officer to help us with last call. She even went so far as to find the on duty seargant and ask him for help. We were told that there was no officer available. By the time we got to that conclusion it was 9:20. We were past the time we felt comfortable running a last call. We still wanted to honor those inmates who couldn't make it to medline for a legitimate purpose, but we didn't want to put out a lot of effort for those who just skipped it earlier. So we cancled it and told the officer that any inmate who can show he had a call out could come in and get their meds.
It would be tendious as Friday Night means the Nation of Islam has their mass.... so there would be a lot of people with legitimate reasons. At about 9:30 inmates started knocking on the window saying that they were ready for last call now. I peeked out and saw that an officer was now there. Well tough titties! We had already packed up the med room and were closing everything down. So I told the officer that there was no last call and that any inmate who had a legitamate callout could come inside for their meds.
It spiraled out of control from there. Someone called and the other nurse took it. She... well let's just sa that she tried to stand her ground, but it was a different sergeant that insisted that we would have our last call. So a few minutes later at 9:45, she came in and said that we were now having last call. Now I'll go toe to toe with an officer on a medical issue... but I won't rock the boat when another nurse has made a call. I'm was fairly sure she had been railroaded into it, but a nurse has spoken and I'll follow. We finished with the medline at 10pm. I sent off a very nasty email to my supervisor and the HUM making it clear that I was very unhappy. That because they couldn't find an officer in a timely manner we had made a nursing decision to cancel the last call. And then once it became convenient for the officers to now have last call.
Well that just doesn't sit well with me. There's something we get hammered into us about passing meds. The 5 Rights of Medicine Administration:
- The Right Patient
- We have to identify we have the correct patient. That's why in the hospital the nurse will almost always ask for both your name and your birth date.
- The Right Medication
- We have to be sure we are handing out the correct medication.
- The Right Dose
- Duh... we can't give out 'nearly' the right dose... when 15mg is ordered, 15mg is administered.
- The Right route
- If it's ordered as a liquid we can't change that up and give it out as a pill or an injection.
- The Right time
- That's right... medicine is prescribed at particular times. For some meds it's less important, but others it's incredibly important.
By the officer forcing us to have a last call at 9:45 he was changing one of the Rights of medication administration. He was making a medical... or rather a nursing... decision. And that is NO WAY part of their job description. The other nurse was worried that she was going to get disciplined for mouthing off to s Sargent... I told her in no certian terms that not only woudl she not get in trouble, but that HE would be getting in trouble for mouthing off to a nurse about a nursing decision.
And as if that wasn't bad enough, that seargant wrote up the situation on the official Situation Report. He wrote something like "2130; nurses refuse to perform last call because their shift ends at 2200, 40 inmates crowding around med windows will not disperse, until ordered to by sergeant whateverhisnamewas".
Umm... no. We didn't refuse...an officer was not made available in the time allowed. It had nothing to do with the end of our shift (trust us, we would have loved the overtime). There weren't 40 inmates. And they dispersed after the sergeant made us give in to their demands of having a last call. I added another email to my supervisor and HUM about that and finally got a response today. The HUM apologized for us being put into a situation like that, we were in the right to cancel a last call that was too late, and she'd be talking to the Captains about it.
So yeah... work kind of sucked. Oh, and I got thrown under the rumor mill. I emailed the supervisor in town about that 'other' job here. She told me that it was should be opening up in mid-September and to ensure that I was still on the Transfer list. I shared that information with my current supervisor as I honestly don't want it to be any kind of surprise if I get a new job. Well.. she shared it and I was stuck at the end of the phone game a few days later when someone asked me what my last day was going to be.
Yeah... the position possibly opening up (which would put me two weeks away from even being considered for it), had turned into it opneing up, me taking it, and me now leaving. Soon.
Grr.
Anywho... I'll keep my fingers crossed for the position to ACTUALLY open up this time and for me to ACTUALLY get it. If it works out I'll be starting there in early November at the latest. Sure, I'm going to miss out on this college football season, but it's still a good job!
I made two purchases since we last talked and am working on a third. The first was Mom's phone. Lemme back up a bit. I told you back awhile ago that I was trying to get into Project Fi. Well the invite finally came through and my phone is now on the Project Fi network. That left mom on an old Sprint Family plan all by herself. It would cost about $130 a month just for her. Now I thought our contract was due at the end of October, and I built in the $100 early termination fee into the cost of moving to Project Fi. But that complicated Mom's situation a bit more. She could change her plan, but she's still on the old 'buy a phone at reduced price and sign a two year contract' system. The new system used by almost all carriers slashes the prices on the plans but makes you buy the phone outright. If I wanted to move Mom to any of their current plans they would tag on an extra $45 a month because she was still under her old contract. And that $45 a month would stay for the full 24 months.
Ouch.
So I had already mentally paid the $100 to break Mom's contract too. She'd be leaving Sprint and probably ending up on Verizon. My next mental step was to get her into a new phone. She still had the same Samsung Galaxy S4 that we got a couple years ago. For her it wasn't bad at all. She barely pushed past it's processor, ram, or storage. It probably needed a new battery, but she doesn't really use it enough to kill the battery every day. It would just be nicer if it lasted longer, charged faster, and charged easier. She also uses a stylus with her phone. Mom always has long fingernails so she isn't so good at typing on that small keyboard. Over the past two years she's purchased three styluses (styli?).
So with those thoughts in mind, I figured the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 would be best. It's a bigger phone so she can enjoy the larger screen. It has a bigger battery with quick charge and wireless charging. And best of all it has a stylus built in! Sure, it's grossly expensive, but it's also brand new so there are all kinds of deals to be had. Once I talked her into it I decided that we'd get it at Best Buy. They could easily deal with getting the number from Sprint and canceling their contract while also setting us up with Verizon. They also had the phone with a $200 best buy gift card and a free wireless charger.
Of course it all got easier the day we went to Best Buy. That day I checked out the Sprint account to see if the $100 early termination fee (from me leaving) had shown up yet... and lo and behold our contracted ended the exact day BEFORE I signed up for Project Fi. Not only would I not have to pay for my early termination, Mom was free to get a new plan from Sprint.
YAY!
So now Mom has her Note 5 and so far she's in love with it. I think she really just loves the wireless charger, but hey she's happy with it so I"m happy with it.
I was going to use the best buy gift card for a case and an extra stylus for Mom, but she went out and bought those things at Amazon on her own. So instead of spending it on Mom, I went out and bought the only thing at Best Buy that kept catching my eye but was too expensive to really consider. A new universal remote.
I have an old Harmony universal remote. To be honest, it works just about perfectly. There are no 'features' that I'm missing out on. But the new one is cleaner, sleaker, has a touch screen, and has a charging station. No more batteries! It costs $249. Like I said... to expensive to just go out and get because it's cool, but take t hat down to $50 and oh yeah baby I get a new remote! I'll have to get it set up tomorrow.
The 'almost' purchase is for my brother R. He's pissed off at the cell phone and cellular service industry. He wants a new phone but is still under contract for about 6 more months. He has very particular desires... water resistant, big megapixel camera, modern processor and RAM, expandable memory, replaceable battery. There really are't all that many phones out there that do that, but it so happens that Motorola just put one out. The Moto X Pure Edition. He wants it.
The best part is that the Moto X is set up for the modern times. It's fairly inexpensive ($479 in the setup he wants... compared to $749 for the Note 5), and will work on any network out of the box. So he can get this phone outright, use it for the next 6 months, and then when he switches carriers, he can take his phone with him. R's birthday is next week, so I put put up a big chunk of the price as a birthday gift.
Oh... and I guess we've settled on our Mexico trip in February. I still need to look over the exact details, but basically we're flying down to puerto vallarta non stop first class and staying at an all included resort (meals AND adult beverages) for just over $1000. We'll be heading out February 1st and coming back February 8th!
I'll talk more about it after I get all the details straight in my head.
I guess that's all for now. Ta Ta!
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