Yesterday I had lunch with a colleague. We spoke freely and honestly about life in medicine. He said how he, like me, came from an academic background, where you had to take vacation every two months, only one week at a time, but you had to take it, and how 'sometimes it really helps to get far away and not think about anesthesia for a week and clear your head.'
I was thinking about that. We were both discussing how difficult it is to get coverage (someone to work for you while you are away). One woman asks to be a certain call number (good pay) for all five days she covers! This is unreasonable demand, no one who works gets such good days in a row!
In the meantime, I just took a walk in my garden, the first one in a week. I've been that busy!
I realize that the last twenty years of my life have flown by, and a lot of it is because of compartmentalization. I can't really even remember it, except generalities, because so much of the time has been spent in the O.R., where everything is pretty much the same from one day to the next.
Today I'm going to share with you a little of the fragility of the medical/healthcare system, from first-hand knowledge, and also, the emotional toll working in healthcare takes on the individual. It's better to have inside knowledge, and prepare accordingly, than to believe the lies society wants us to accept.
This is the lie.
I must admit after reading a First Aid handbook, I too, fell for it. That there are ways to fix everything, and that there's good, honest people working to make cures happen.
What is the Truth, on the 'front lines'?
Well, shortages are one of them. there's always been a shortage of some sort in the last twenty years. right now, at my hospital, we lack local anesthetic with epinephrine added. We have to add it ourselves. At the surgery center next door, they have it. I understand from memos from pharmacy that hydralazine i.v. (a blood pressure lowering medicine) and metronidazole i.v. (an antibiotic) are in very short supply now too.
We have equipment shortages, both on the anesthesia side and the surgery side. But usually it's something we can 'work around'.
From what I hear, our competing hospital in our same town is on the verge of falling apart, but the administrators act like nothing is wrong. They have had to close their surgery center due to lack of staffing. The ICU had fourteen nurses quit. And this is the place that offers like a one thousand dollar a day stipend to nurses to work in the ICU, on top of their regular hourly pay. Websites nurses use to rank job conditions have said the place is a 'no go' zone, so now, they don't go. As a surgeon described it, they can't coordinate to effectively deliver healthcare anywhere in the system at that hospital, including the O.R. This place is like a county hospital, and they take all of the CalOptima (Medi-Cal) and similar patients.
While their hospital system is teetering on the edge, mine has some issues at both facilities I work, with breaking/falling apart medical equipment. For example, the anesthesia cart has been used so much, the drawers don't pull right, and tip not the cart over, but tip inside the drawer as if it is going to fall on the floor. Mind you, these carts are made to be indestructible! I've seen handles fall off the carts, with stylets bent to create makeshift ones. We ran out of suction tubing and are using different ones at my hospital. It's just so much mileage on the car it's nearing the end of its useful life...
There's only so much resilience in us, as anesthesiologists...my mentor is slowing down/retiring soon, because, as he put its, 'he can only take so much more of people trying to die on him'...
That's how it is. Unhealthy people, sick people, are very unstable and need lots of care, above and beyond the healthy ones. And even the ones who are healthy or so it seems can have issues once they are asleep on the table...
One surgeon was yelling at me. I'm in good company. My colleague told me how a patient (this surgeon is noted for not having good work-ups on patients pre-op for their safety) was coding or very near coding with a different, cardiac anesthesiologist at the helm. The anesthesiologist was preparing to resuscitate the patient, the code blue cart was wheeled into the operating room, and there may have even been chest compressions going on.
The surgeon, oblivious, was asking if he could just put in a little scree while they were working on the patient?
The anesthesiologist said, 'that's not the way it works. This patient is dead or about to die very soon. I need to resuscitate them before you can work on them.'
This surgeon, actually, had retired. But lost lots of money in the stock market. And it appears that the interest in people like this one--perhaps not necessarily this one--are that they want to be able to bill the patient and that's the extent of the interest they have in the patient... My colleague and I considered it shameful to have it reach that point...
For me, my patient didn't have an i.v. It had infiltrated on the floor. The night nurse left the problem for the day nurse who came on shift at 0700, then this one left it for me. The patient was NPO for surgery, and was very dry because there had been no i.v. fluids.
I tried everywhere to get an i.v.
Patient was screaming every attempt, due to dementia.
Finally the PICC line nurse came in. Got one. But it barely flowed. It was just enough to get the patient to sleep and then it blew entirely too.
I was trying to get a central line in but the PACU RN who had just came on shift was also a life-flight nurse, and was able to get one before me. But during the case, it too stopped working. It stopped due to a kink but I didn't know. The tubing was all bent. She was able to put one in the foot, a second one, and I was able to unkink this main i.v.
Actually even the blood pressure wasn't measuring at the beginning of the case. I had excellent bounding pulse ox traces, and normal EKG. I knew the patient was perfusing. But there was no BP cuff working, it was mechanical. So the surgeon wanted to proceed with the case! I was like, this isn't possible without a working BP cuff! A new tubing from the machine to the cuff was brought in and then it worked...
This was my memory of my mom.
It's the predominant one...her anger and her vicious attacking me, and my being withdrawn and trying my best to ignore it.
It's a shame I don't remember the good things. If I use logic I'm thankful for her washing my clothes and driving me places and getting me lessons and helping to pay my rent when I was in college.
She was definitely not my best friend.
The thought occurred to me perhaps God used her to train me for my life in the O.R., just like my violent uncle who would beat my cousins unconscious and bloody in the bathroom prepared them for their life in the stunt industry?
All I know is, it's not good for my energy system, and I do my best to mitigate the effects of the workplace on myself and others.
Yesterday when I told the team we would be taking time for lunch, no questions asked, they were so thankful. I was told that other anesthesiologists call behind the team's back, and tell the surgeons to move up. They are that greedy.
Just recently we had patients and their family members who were really inappropriate in how they treated the healthcare team.
One refused an i.v. and ended up needing transfusions in childbirth due to complications.
Another one the nurse told me the family member was 'a little strange and in your face too much' but was okay to me since I was the doctor. Lots of people treat nurses and others 'differently' from doctors...
The dementia patient couldn't help but be difficult, they weren't really fully 'there' to comprehend the situation of the broke bone that needed to be fixed.
The husband was uncommunicative but the wife harassed the surgeon over the gallbladder needing to come out (husband was septic, advanced disease of gallbladder, very clear indication for it needing to go.)
I've seen too patients who won't make up their mind about the surgery, they say yes then no and cancel and then reschedule during the same hospital admission.
I do my best to be calm, and the Reiki helps, but it can only go so far.
This is just in the workplace.
You add to it the 'Ascension', the whole deal with the NWO and that agenda, and the increasing control over things..the rising prices...everything is a bit 'too much'.
No wonder why I need rest and relaxation? No wonder why I haven't made any progress in the Christmas department, except Friday night I took Anthony to the mall to buy gifts for others on his dad's side of the family before it was a last-minute thing? It was a lovely outing. And we found some really nice toys for the children in the family.
Our tree only has one string of lights on it. No decorations. And I haven't switched out the china to the Christmas one like I do every year. It's cheap Oneida from Big Lots I bought twenty years ago, but it means a lot to us...
I like to watch YouTube videos. I have to watch them after I eat. I can't go right to bed. Last call, I skipped dinner because it was eight when I got out of the O.R. It's funny, my surgeon was throwing a party, none of us were invited, and he was in a hurry to go. But I didn't even eat except for energy bars and jerky I keep in my bag. It was enough for me. But strange coincidence. I don't even fight it any more, my 'I deserve meals' because that's how it is in my industry. You just don't eat. It's like camping really.
I watched some fascinating ones about a woman who grew up in the coldest place in the world,Yakutia in Siberia. You could throw boiling water into the air and it freezes instantly (-60C is the temp).
I watched another in the series of this guy who drives around bad parts of town and homeless places, this one was from Santa Ana near where I've been living since residency...I realized that communities are truly a reflection of the prevailing vibration/mental thought patterns of those who live there. It's not just the money/lack thereof. It's the mindset of the people who are living there and experiencing it. Here, there's beautiful homes, well-kept, and most people doing what they can to live their own lives, in what is basically a third-world country in the middle of this area. It's not like the United States exactly...it's hard to explain unless you've been there. Rich in culture is a nice way to say it, I suppose?
I saw a Gregory Decapolite about a massless man in a church, where he praised God for having the timing so perfect...he was able to take communion and if it had been ten seconds one way or thirty seconds the other it wouldn't have worked out...
I'm grateful for things like that that make us think of God.
Graffitinati on instagram posted his Twitter post about how people are looking for someone to come and save them, but many of the 'truthers' are heavy pot smokers who just are on computers...so...Trust God to save you. It's not like these truthers are an army trained and ready to take over anything. Even though they are wonderful people like himself and are doing what God wants them to do.
I always am happy to see someone pointing towards God.
I also really liked this nun...Mother Miriam
How I cope is Instagram. I follow the quokka sites. Look at their smiles!
I also look at beautiful photos from Japan, Switzerland, Italy and France. It helps me to appreciate what is still beautiful and good, not just with the planet, but with the people who capture these images and share them with the world. There's so many places I wish to see, and the list keeps growing longer!
Ross
Here we go with Carla and her Quokkas!
If you see the latest by ReallyGraceful it might seem like not anyone is going anywhere near Australia anytime soon, especially if not um, 'poked in the arm', doesn't it?
But as Mother Miriam says, this is a wonderful time to be awake and preparing for the coming of the Lord.
There are TWO 'Lords'.
There is the AC.
Then there is the Real Thing.
You can't have one without the other.
Do your absolute best to be a good person.
Avoid persecution if at all possible, but if it is your fate, then so be it.
I want to invite you to ponder what Carla is communicating to you, is this a form of persecution, to be working various weekends and holidays under such working conditions (twenty-four hour call?) in order to be able to survive?
I invite you to look further at yourselves, at how much of this 'struggles and challenges' you have learned to overcome with grace and dignity in your day to day lives?
In this, I want you not to be afraid, for there are many so-called 'degrees' of 'persecution' and what you have been able to overcome, and what people in the five most dangerous places to live--extreme heat, cold, altitude, and other things--have adapted and learned to thrive!
And spiritually, if you understand fully the comparison to life as you experience it 'there', and how things are 'here' in the Higher Realms--you are the toughest of the tough and the strongest of the strong to help liberate the people here on Beloved Gaia at this place in time!
I want you to go out today and do something you enjoy. Only for yourselves. I want you to congratulate yourself on having made it this far in our journey. And to celebrate with all your heart what is to arrive! It will be the Ultimate, the getting rid of all that is not worthy of the Face of God, our loving Creator. In this it is the Ultimate 'Decluttering' in a Spiritual sense.
clap! clap!
Aloha and Mahalos,
Namaste,
Peace,
Ross and Carla
The Beautiful Souls
