Adventures

I hope this finds everyone doing well!  These past two weeks have been me getting used to the new units and being oriented to them.  I know I may have said it a few times, but, I am working the Ambulatory (which basically means "outpatient") Treatment Infusion Center and it's sister unit, the 23 hour observation surgical floor at Stanford.  The pace is very different from an inpatient oncology floor and presents unique challenges.  Each hospital, each unit, each specialty is challenging in different ways.  It can be refreshing but can also make you feel incompetent until you learn the system and flow of care.  I have enjoyed my coworkers very much so far!  They are very positive, encouraging and helpful.  I think I will enjoy the units and the patients, although I am missing oncology.  It feels great to be back to work and I was reminded this week of how much I really love nursing.  It can be a really fun and neat job! We have had an i...

This has been such a fun and interesting experience so far--travel nursing that is.  I will say, when I pull out some clothes I haven't worn in a while and they smell like Extended Stay America, I do dry heave a little bit.  Three months in hotels was plenty, thank you. And, Sacramento was a little lonely for the first three weeks, until my friends in the Bay would encourage me to meet them halfway or come hang out with them and their friends from home any time some were coming to the area and I finally felt like I had friends at work.  So, that helped take care of much of the loneliness and lack of social life in Sacramento.  On the positive side of things, I am blown away by all of the awe-inspiring and breathtaking sights there are to see here all within such close proximity.  I haven't gotten bored yet in the Bay--there's always somewhere we can go, something we can explore, something new and exciting to experience and that will take our breath away and fi...

My last entry about earthquakes was written a couple of days ago and I had still not felt any shaking.  This morning around 10:10, I was sitting on my bed, as I still am, facebooking, and my bed started "shaking," but felt more like rolling from side to side, I looked up at my jackets hanging on my door, they were shaking, and my water was shaking.  I would say the bed was moving from side-to-side about 6 inches or so, lasted about 10 seconds and I heard a very low rumbling for the duration of the shaking and for several seconds after the shaking stopped.  It took me by surprise and I did not have time to think about getting off of the bed to a doorway! As I was checking the USGS earthquake website  here  to see if they were showing a new quake, the tv show, "The View" (don't judge me--I have limited channels!), was interrupted with breaking news as they said, "If you think you've just felt an earthquake, you have!  We just had an earthquake about 6.1...

No, I haven't felt one yet.  : ) I was just getting your attention!   I've been reading up on them and have become more interested in them, especially after flying over the region a few times and being able to visualize the ripples in the land the sliding of the tectonic plates causes as well as being able to see faults from the air.  There are also many speculations of our sea lions fleeing the docks at Pier 39, of which there were about 1,500 when I visited last, because "the big one" is coming.  I became increasingly more interested, so here are the results of my internet research. : ) Quakes are happening all the time around fault-lines, just most are not felt.  In fact, there have been several in the Bay Area just in the last week and a few within the last day.  You can visit  this webpage  to see the United States Geological Society's latest mappings of earthquakes in the Bay Area and  this webpage  to see all in the US and world...