Are you having a turducken for Thanksgiving?

I was watching the Food Channel and they were talking about turducken. Man this dish must be yummy. I remember my mom's recipe for stuffed boneless chicken. Now that is just great eatin'.

Japanese lacks role model.

I can't believe that anyone will ever love a giant raddish. If this plant ended in our ICU, it will end up on our plate as garnish.

Lucky Bastards...

Hahaha, I can't imagine going to work after winning the lottery. I guess it's how they are programmed to be workers. Maybe they want to make sure that whom ever was holding the ticket will show up to share the loot.

I remember one time when I was in Kaiser Sunset. The evil charge nurse P was holding the winning ticket. The loot was about $90. She said she threw the ticket away. What the fuck? I was laughing. I told the other nurses not to trust the bitch. She's a fucking crook. They made her pay for the winning. I didn't bother find out if she did. I wasn't part of their pool. I buy my own ticket, coz if I win I'm not going back to work. No sirre.

Holiday Season.

The dilemma of the holiday season is when do I get to see my relatives and not to piss off the bosses at work. I'm working this Thanksgiving day. Not only am I working that day, I'm also working the days before and after. Terrible. Christmas I'm off but I'm working two days before Christmas eve and two days after Christmas. New Year I'm working both eve and day. What a bad holiday schedule. NOOOT. I'm calling in sick! Hahaha. I call it self scheduling.

I do have time to negotiate the holidays but if the bosses don't give me the days off, the influenza virus is there to rescue me. I signed up for registry work just in case I get fired. Huh, there are plenty of jobs out there. I might not get the $ 0.15 raise next year but I get to see my neices. The cutie pie twins. Ummm, their cute. The hospital can keep the $0.15 raise, there is nothing like family time.

Over the years, I've tried to spend the holidays with family. The last time I saw my mother before she passed away was Thanksgiving day of 1997. She came to visit me in NC. Spending the holidays with family has always been important. Life is too short to be worrying about work. One thing I know for sure, the hospital will not care about me after I retire. Yeah, maybe a retirement party but after that, I'll just be another, "he used to work here as a nurse".

My niece, E is now 4 years old. Every time I look at her photos when she was 2 I always say to myself, man, I'm glad I was there to take that picture. She's a little girl now, no longer a baby. Those baby years are gone but ever present in my mind, heart and ofcourse, pictures.

Looking....
I've been told that the reason I move to different nursing jobs is that I am restless. Every now and then, I find myself looking for another gig. There has to be another way to earn a living. A charge nurse at work got his masters in nursing so he can teach. We had a couple of incidents at work where a couple of Mexican families wanted to have their way in our ICU. They continuously fought with the nurses and will not follow the visiting rules.

I have a lot of problems dealing with the Mexicans. They seem to have a hard time dealing with illnesses in their families. They reflect a lot of their anger towards the nurses that is helping their loved ones. What exactly does this do in terms of caring for their family? Nurses hate taking care of the patient because the family is over bearing and hostile.

Don't get me wrong. I don't hate anybody. I care for anyone willing to be cared for. Why families goes after the nurses when we tell them they can't visit for more than 5 to 10 minutes? They think we are uncaring and we want to just sit around doing nothing. One patient family member asked me why we don't have hispanic nurses. My answer was there are no hospanic nurses applying to nursing schools. There is a nursing shortage and Koreans, Indian, and FIlipino nurses are imported to fill in the gap. I asked her if she knows any Mexican nurse and she said "no". There you go.

Okay, grandma is on the ventilator. She is 7o+ years old. The family wants to go in the room and stay there all day and all night. There are two patients in each room. Not much room to move around. Do they care about the other patient? I don't think so. When told to leave they give nasty looks and frequently asks the nurse how long will the care take so they can come back. Man, what a bunch of pain in the ass. I'm not even involved with this patient and they are stressing eveyone out. The doctors hates to go in there as they are barraged by stupid questions. We asked them to have a spokes person but the concept doesn't seem to make sense to them. Why can't they ask the nurses the same question over and over by different family member? Well, if we just answer the same question over and over, we can't take care of the patient.

There is a lot of cultural issues that Asian nurses can't really understand about the Mexican culture. Not even American nursing schools teach us how to deal with this culture. I've taken care of other cultures of Central America and there are no problems. Maybe the Hispanic Nurses Association can answer my question.

Is there a fast food mentality or hotel mentality with this culture. Do they expect quick acting medicine.? Do they expect hotel service type of treatment? I don't know. Maybe somebody out there can make a poll of Mexican patients and see what they expect. If they expect to have hotel service type treatment, should the hospital expect them to pay for the bill just like a hotel. Hah, I don't think so. Maybe they think we owe it to them since the US took over their land. Maybe, we should ask for a green card first before they get service. Or maybe their rich Mexican neigbors should pay for it. There has to be an answer. I know the politicos will not touch the immigration issue. Even the governator will not touch that issue but he wants to mess with the working people of this great state.

Ah, tomorrow is another day. Another day where I expect a Mexican will treat me like shit as I save their loved ones life. I love it, only in America.

We are the mighty mighty nurses.

The bastard governor lost. I LOVE IT!

THE SPECIAL ELECTION Voters Reject Schwarzenegger’s Bid to Remake State Government
LA Times 11/09/05

Schwarzenegger Initiatives Are Defeated in California Wall Street Journal 11/09/05

THE SPECIAL ELECTION Californians Say No to Schwarzenegger San Francisco Chronicle 11/09/05

Schwarzenegger Is Shrimp Toast, Aloha!
Huffington Post 11/09/05

Sargeant.

Here is a blog about my favorite dog. The pet that releases all the tiring emotion when I get home. He wakes me up at 2,4, and 6 am in the morning just because he wanted to play. My fault, I leave him at home alone all day. He sleeps and wakes up at night. Can I blame him if he wanted to play at 2 in the morning. I try to keep him quiet by letting him stay in my room while he stays in his kennel.

Sarge is an indoor dog. Not much of a guard dog., he doesn't bark when the post man is delivering my mail. He just looks at the door.

Toy dog he is. He loves to roam inside the house, marking it with urine as he goes along. I need to watch him closely as my humble abode will turn into a toilet.

We have been having walks during the night. Boy it's cold out there. He doesn't like to walk much more of a sniffing type of a dog. He pretty much sniffed my front yard one night and marked it with his trade mark peepee.

We are going out tomorrow in the backyard. Gotta give him some fresh air. He like grass now more than before so we can cover more grounds this way. I wonder if the train will let me have him for a trip to San Fransisco. That will be a fun trip.

Demonstration.

It's been more than a decade since I was last in a demonstration. This time the California Nurse's Association was demonstrating in Long Beach Ca. against the proposition the bastard Governor Schwarzenagger has proposed in this costly special election. Proposition 75 was written to silence the voice of organized labor of nurses, teachers, fire fighters and police in the state. This favors the corporations to lobby against the unions without resistance. Long term damage will be lower income, no benefits, no retirement, and larger income to the corporations, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies.

The hospital I work for has defeated past union attempts to organize nurses. This time, another attempt by another union called CNA, California Nurse's Organization, is knocking on our hospital doors. Management attempt to stompt this attempt are called union busting. Our president has a good tract record of this. Unfortunately for him the CNA released public records of his income of which he gave himself a raise of more than a million dollars two years ago. Our hospital is part of a group of hospitals in the Covina, West Covina and Glendora area. The President/CEO said the income released was not true. The truth was he gets three separate paychecks from the three hospitals. Crafty way to conceal income.

As the CEO and other big bosses in the hospital recieved 1 million to 500,000 dollar raises, they slowly strip the benefits they added when other unions were trying to organize. They removed the weekend differencials, they made us pay for days when we call in sick, they gave us high premium insurance coverage, and they do what they please with out assignments and patient coverage.

Many nurses do not want the union dues that cost $800/year and is tax deductatble. The benefits of a union will be free health coverage, $18,000/year added income compared to $o.15 per hour increase, and a retirement account without employee contributions. It's a no brainer.

Hospital union busting pretty much had to do with trying to tell the nurses that the unions are the bad people. They will get our money and disappear. The truth is the union will make the hospital put out more of its income to benefit the workers. Management always have the incentives to bust unions. They will pay out certain nurses to talk the other out of joining. They will increase benefits and other perks that they will later remove.

Back on the demonstration. I walked for what seems to be miles. Round and round a large oblong, chating anti-Arny slogans. A few people even saw me on t.v. My friend called me up and asked me if I was in Long Beach. He said he saw me demonstrating. HEHEHE that was fun.

Lunch was provided at the Long Beach Hyatt. Buffet meal with my choice of beef, fish, chicken, and vegetable. There was cake and all sorts of desserts. I chowed down for I missed breakfast. I was thinking that they will feed us breakfast but they didn't. I made it up with lunch.

We also did some phone banking where I called CNA members and remind them to vote no on all the propositions. An act of defiance against Gov. Arny. I wish he can walk in the nurses, teachers, and firefighters shoes so he knows where we are coming from. I wonder if any of his kids are attending public school.

BTW Arney backed out from stealing the firefighters pension fund as he was tagged as a mean person for harrasing widows and children of deceased firefighters. What a fucking bastard. He also backed out from removing the Board of Registered Nurses and making it a part of the the Consumer Board that watches over hairdressers and barbers. He said the hairdressers can be trained to rule over the nurses. HAHAHA what a stupid shit head. I think there is only rusted steel in this governors head. He said "I learned the hard way." It's scary the governor is just learning about running a state. It can cost the lively hood and the future of hundreds of thousands of dedicated professionals.