97 - Alert and Oriented x3

In this special episode, nurse educators Izzie Wilkes and Jennifer Evans hijack the podcast and join host Eric Miller to answer students’ questions including advice for nurses starting out in OB/NICU nursing, how to ensure effective communication with family members of patients, how to manage the emotional toll of difficult cases, tips for working night shift, how this podcast came to be, how to get through difficult days at work, if we ever doubted wanting to continue nursing, and more!

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Transcript

0:01

Help me! Somebody help me! Jen, should we take him out? Yeah, no, no, we're not ready for him yet. Okay, keep duct tape on a little longer. Yeah, keep the duct tape on. He's real chatty. He just needs a little time out. no. Oh, shoot. Hey, they're here. Hey, my name is Izzy. And we have hijacked Eric Miller's podcast called Feeding Our Young. But I suppose we should probably actually let him in. We had this brilliant idea of interviewing him. Meanwhile, we took him hostage and took over all the technology. So we'll let him out of the bag and we'll start with some questions. You guys ready? All right, let the cat out. Be cooperative, Eric. Thank you. It's hard to breathe in there. Oh, this is so much fun. We had this idea separately together. If you've heard Izzie's episode, Jennifer's episode, or Jen's episode, or Niffer's episode. I don't know how many people are here today. It's just all of us. All right. Well, we've gathered some questions. A few of us have gathered some questions from students. Students, thank you for providing those questions. This was a dream of mine a long time ago. to have a nice Q &A episode. So I've got a list, Izzie's got some, Jennifer brought herself. And so, so let's not waste any more time, we'll jump right in. One of the very first questions I got was, and they prefaced this as saying, as someone who wants to work OB one day, what advice would you give to nurses just starting out in OB and NICU nursing? My advice for someone new in OB would be to ask questions always. don't... It's my personal pet peeve of mine when people think they know. Things in OB can change really fast and get really serious really quickly. And so I want to know that I have somebody who is going to speak up and say, hey, I'm not sure this is going on. You know, what should I do? versus just thinking they can handle it on their own. Because the reality is, is you're really not proficient for at least a year, and that's probably dependent on experiences. I think that for a nursing student when you're on an OB floor, watch, observe, soak it in, all that stuff, like Jen said, ask questions, ask questions. I think in OB, and I'm sure it's like this on other areas of medicine, but if you want to be in OB, have to remain, you have to have the ability to be coachable throughout your entire career because OB changes, like our practice changes, the guidelines change, this, that, and the other thing changes. We no longer put oxygen on all moms having D cells. Our area of medicine is ever evolving and we can't get too stuck in our way. Even though we do have our lovely sacred cows as Jen refers to, we still have to be adaptable. and moldable even in my old age. Advanced, wiser age, old age. And I let you guys answer that one more because, you know, being the baby of the group, figuratively and maybe literally, as far as OB and NICU nursing is concerned, I mean, the only thing I would add is as you advance in your careers, never, ever, ever forget the one thing I always tell my students, which is you're part of somebody's miracle. You'll get caught up in, you know what I mean, all the... Yeah. technicalities and especially early on you're worried about getting everything right and making sure you know all that but don't forget you're part of somebody's miracle and don't get jaded to that that would be my only two cents to add to that I like it. Awesome. Another question comes to us. How do you ensure effective communication with parents in the NICU? Okay, so apparently we've got an OB NICU theme going on here. That started out early, but don't worry everybody. We're not just talking OB and NICU. But how do you ensure effective communication with parents in the NICU, especially when delivering tough news? One thing that I have learned is that it's best to just truly just sit with your patients. I will pull up a chair. You know, don't think about it maybe in nursing, but the parents in the NICU are not the patient, right? It's the baby, but they're at the bedside. They're usually sitting. But if I'm towering over a patient and... even just speaking with them, but this is a highly emotional situation if there's a kiddo in the NICU for whatever reason. Sitting down and instead of just starting with, hey, blah, blah, blah, here's all the things that your baby is struggling with, meet them where they're at. I like to get to know them very surface level, but like, what baby is this for you? Is this your first baby? Okay, well, let me walk you through what you're seeing with your baby, right? These are the leads, these are the monitors, these are the wires, this is all of this stuff and everything in the NICU beeps. Don't panic. If I'm panicking, then you can panic, but everything in the NICU beeps and usually it's just not reading how we want it to. And just acknowledging that this is really hard and that there's no stupid questions, ask whatever you've got and I don't expect you to remember everything that I say the first time I say it because you probably won't. It's taken time for me to recognize that. cause I, I would have these thoughts. I'm just going to own it. Like, seriously, like five nurses have talked to these parents and they're like, know nobody's told me that nobody's told me that. I'm like, well, I was here yesterday when somebody did tell them that, but really recognizing that, that they're, they're not at their best, you know, mental capacity. This is a really stressful time for them. And so I've embraced that. Like I said, it took a little time for me to really, really lean into that. But sometimes you do have to say it multiple times in multiple different ways and that's okay. That doesn't mean they weren't listening. That doesn't mean they're not attentive. They're just managing a lot. So I don't know if that answers your question or not, but that's my answer. Um, I think my, can answer that more so in the capacity of like a laboring mom. I don't really spend much time in the NICU. It's not really my jam. so what I find with, you know, delivering unfortunate news to parents, birthing people is, I don't sugar coat things anymore. I don't soften it, but I use, I speak slower. calmer, lower tone. Like Jen said, I don't ever stand above them looking down at them. I want to be eye level or lower. I think that's in part to not try and intimidate them with news, but just being very truthful, even with not so great news. And just slow and kind of see from them and their eyes, like, they understanding these terms? Do I need to change my language a little bit? Things like that. And just, I think back in my earlier years of nursing, I tried to sugarcoat things and just try to make everything seem okay. And really, you know, the news we're delivering doesn't always mean things are okay. And so I was always trying to find the sunnier side of things. And now I'm like, yeah, the truth is better. Now having been a NICU mom and poor Jen had to deal with my texts and phone calls getting through that. But like Jen said, I... It's so appreciated when as a parent, the nurse will sit with you and explain what you're seeing. So, um, and kind of take baby steps with you, baby language, I guess. Yeah, yeah, and I mean, don't... When it... I've talked about this in relation to grief in particular, you know, having the death of our first child and all the things. One of the big things I try and teach in Hammer Home is that, you know, don't use replacement words. You know, we try like kind of on that subject of softening things, right? Like grandpa kicked the bucket, you know, I mean, that's actually not even that soft, but you know what I mean, bought the farm, kicked the bucket, but the words that are used often, right? past. We've lost someone. You know, we didn't lose them. I'm not out looking for my keys. didn't, you know what mean? I I don't remember where I misplaced them. You know, the loved one has died. And using words like died and death in particular, I guess answering the last part of that question is kind of, that's, that, that, that'd be my two cents to add there because yeah, don't soften it. Just call it, call it what it is in a loving, respectful way. Excellent bedside manner. But I love that both of you bring up just that. the positioning, because you forget that too. You know what mean? There's a lot of times if I'm doing discharge education on a totally different matter, I will sit down in the, I don't like using the stools we have at our bedsides, but I will sit down and use them in those moments, because I want to be eye eye. I want to be, you know what I mean? I'm not, this is not authority on high from above you. This is me talking to you. We're on the same level. What questions do you have, et cetera, et cetera. So Awesome. So moving on to the third question so far. How do you manage, I guess that piggybacks well off that last question. How do you manage the emotional toll of difficult patient cases? So this is something I've actually talked about recently with a few students. I had a student who witnessed in our OB clinical a newborn resuscitation. We had talked about it beforehand, like a couple of weeks beforehand, what to expect, what they're doing, that kind of thing. But it really rocked her. And she came to me later. I offered a debrief that day. She was like, no, no, no, I'm good. I was like, I think we should debrief. And like really? replay at all and she was like, nope, the nurse went through it with me. I feel good. She came back to me the next Monday. Can we debrief? And I was like, of course, yes, come in here. But it's not always offered, but ask for the debrief. Ask for that opportunity to, I'm a verbal processor, so that helps me. Debriefing should be normal. And even this was a great outcome. The resuscitation worked beautifully and the baby responded so well. And it was a great resuscitation, everything you would hope for. But it just didn't, the delivery didn't start that way. And so absolutely debrief. And the other thing for me is my community in a less formal setting is just having friends we're blessed that we work on this unit where we're really our family. But having somebody that I can go to that may not have been part of that situation, but they've had their own situations and just having empathy for one another, you know, I'm so sorry. I've had a situation like this. It was really, really hard for me. I think it's helpful. And for the really, really tough ones, I have like the, when I've lost babies, um, I, I, I have to journal my feelings and I have one instance that I am thinking of that I think I stayed up till like two or three AM writing and rewriting and editing and just getting, facing it. You know, I think today nobody wants to face the hard, um, that's a generalization obviously, but there there's fear of what is hard and there's fear of what hurts. But when you go through it and you face it, I think you can start to heal from it and incorporate it into who you become after it. I think Jen said it really well and part of it I think is unique to our unit. We do have a huge sense of community on our floor. So if I have, you know, a sad outcome or just a rough day, I can, you know, take space from the unit. Sometimes we go out to breakfast after work or get coffee or just phone a friend and debrief with them and You know, we are on a unit where, you know, sometimes we hand off our hard cases to a coworker, a friend to take care of them. And so we can all kind of relate and come together. And our unit's great with brainstorming, like, Hey, my patients are struggling and I'm struggling taking care of them. What should I do? And we have really wonderful advice and a strong sense of community to back ourselves. Also, when I get home, like I hug my kids, if I've had a hard day, that makes me really grateful for what I have. get home, hug my kids, snuggle them up. And I mean, we've all had, you know, sad sufferings in our lives. And it just, it's a wonderful reminder to be appreciative for what we have each day, because we don't know what tomorrow's going to look like. So it, it personally reminds me to be living the moment with my family and our household. Yeah, those, I can't say anymore that I go home and drink a glass of wine. That doesn't really happen anymore after a hard day's work, but just celebrate what we have and give our patients what we can. I guess I'll blend both your answers even though they don't need blending. My motto always was cry with those who cry, celebrate with those who celebrate, and let all the feelings out. And I figured as long as I could do those things, I could work in pediatric oncology indefinitely. Turns out there was still a limit. But the point is, I think that motto right there prolonged my career. I tell my students feel the feels, let it out in a safe space, safe way, safe place. And then, like I said, turn to someone you trust, talk to them, whether it's your instructor, start with your instructor if it's someone you trust, and then go from there. Your parents, your friends, your best friends. Yeah, this last same thing, last rotation, we had two students who dealt with some pretty difficult shifts. And it was kind of funny, Jen, because you said one of mine was the same thing. She was like, no, I'm good. I checked before. We even made the assignment. And then after the end of the shift and all the things, no, I'm good. And then I get a text, 530 that night. You know what? No, I get home and for whatever reason, here it is. Like, yeah, it wasn't a matter of if. I knew it was just gonna be a matter of when. So, yeah, that's how to do it there. That's how to do it there. Next. when you say like, let it out and, you know, just cry with them, let it out. And I think that it was like eight years into my labor and delivery career, I finally did a training for demise families and the instructor advised like, Hey, if you feel emotional, cry with the family. And I had never heard that before. And then, you know, had more experiences and then started like not have, I would stay in the room. wouldn't leave the room to go have my own tearful moment, but would be with the family. And I'm like, my gosh, this is a little bit easier for some reason. to be with them in their grief. So yeah, I appreciate you saying that, Mr. Eric And we wouldn't ever, of course, it, you don't ever make it about the nurse. That's not what it is. If you are, you know, ugly face sobbing and everybody's looking at you, maybe we're going, you know, don't let that much out. Let a little bit out and then let that part out after you get home. I don't know. All right, yeah. training a nurse years ago. She's a nurse practitioner now. was a long time ago. And we had our first demise patient and she, it really affected her quite emotionally. And I, you know, we excused ourselves and I told her, said, okay, so this is that ugly cry. You go do that over here. I can come with you or whatever, but in the room, you don't get to cry harder than the patient. Like this is, this is a horrible situation. This is devastating. This is you know, so sad, but it's not your loss. And so you have to make sure you're like exactly what you said, Eric, you're not making it about you in those moments. Next question, and Izzie's gonna leave this one off very easily and she'll explain why. Do you have tips for working night shift? Ha ha ha! Because you guys are a podcast immediately after? Is that the answer? You flippin' day walkers, I can't stand either of you. You went to the light side and shame on both of you. Just for all you wonderful listeners out there, Night Shift rocks. You get paid more, you have more fun, and there's no management around and it's fantastic, so ha. Anyways. Oh, night shift. There's some, actually, that's funny. I just lectured on this with my students last week. So I just did a presentation on this, huh? And how our bodies are fighting our circadian rhythms. yeah, I got a three-year-old banging on my door outside. Hey guys, go away. Please edit that out. Is that all that works? And how do you parent your children? Oh, there it is, we got it. Parenting Tip 101. Yeah, she totally did. She totally did. Okay. This will be entertaining. on. Dude, what's up? Okay, you can say hi to my friends really fast. Oh, hello. gotta go back to work for a minute. Nope, say hi to my friends. Okay, I gotta go. Give me a kiss. You want to say hi? Okay, wave hi. Bye. Now wave bye bye. Okay, I'll come out when I'm done and I'll come play, okay? Bye bye. Okay, bye bye, love you. Sorry, it would just... on. Still think you guys should be ashamed of yourselves for working day shift. Quitters. No ma'am, Okay. I love it because we have the spectrum here. Jen is, as soon as you could get out, you got out, right? Izzie is like, I'm still doing nights. And for me, I thought I'd be a lifelong nightshifter and then ended up, because I wanted to teach Izzie, ended up having to go to days, whatever. Okay, just for the record, I've gone to Day Shift like three or four times and I keep going back to Night Shift. So you guys, are designed for some people. does that too. hahahaha Beth Beth Beth you've been name dropped as um not Pick-A-Lane Beth Pick-A-Lane hahahaha So sorry Izzie was there anything else you wanted to say on that before either of us chimed in? just you've got to really evaluate your life. You've got to, you know, invest in, I'm gonna do like my top 10 tips for night shift living. Invest in excellent blackout curtains. Make your, where you sleep, if it's your bedroom, your couch, make it like an oasis. Sound machines are great. Weighted blankets, heated blankets. Have a home environment, whether it's roommates, partners, or if you live alone. have everybody be on the same page for quiet hours in the house. know, no parties when you need a snooze. Honestly, having pets or a puppy you need to walk. It's kind of rough when you're working nights. So I see a lot of our night shift nurses, new grads who get out of school and they immediately get a puppy and I'm like, oh Lord, you're not going to get a full day sleep girl. But yeah, lots of water. I don't recommend sleep aids. I will be honest with that. I recommend. making better life choices to help you sleep. So avoid the sleep aids if you can. Yeah, that's it. no, don't drink after 3 a.m. Because what would kill me was getting up to pee. And then I was like, done for. I mean, I might fall back asleep, but it would not be good quality sleep. Yep. Empty your, yeah. Empty your bladder before you lay down to go to bed. Try and get seven to nine hours of sleep if you can. Try to get four and a half or five hours if you can. man, sound machines baby. Brown noise, brown noise baby. Oh, and also this is, right? It is helpful. But I'm gonna, I'm gonna plug this and then we'll be done. Doing the four, seven, eight breathing technique. Right? so unpack that really quick. In the interest of time, I'm now quickly realizing the error of this idea that we could get the three of us educators on here and blow through 20 questions. So if you gave us a question and we don't answer it, my apologies, because we have a very hard timeline we're running up against. So we'll try and speed up our answers, but this is very practical, very practical. What is it Izzie? Google it you guys, there's wonderful YouTube videos on it. It's a method of breathing that helps calm you, relax you, decrease anxiety. Often for people if they repeat this, they go to sleep faster. There's studies on it. So what you do is you, what do we do? You inhale for four seconds, you hold your breath for seven seconds, and then you exhale out of your mouth for eight seconds. And then you just repeat this. And I've got my nursing students actively doing this right now since lecture, but my nurse practitioner who advises for me to help decrease anxiety and help improve better sleep, she does this every night and by her third cycle, she is out. She is knocked out of sleep. So it can really help with stress anxiety and improved sleep. Awesome. Izzie, you said you have a question or two there. yes, Mr. Eric. Number one. Okay, I guess. Okay, I'm gonna have to so reserve me two questions. This beautiful brainchild of this podcast. How did how did this how did this bloom? That's right, you did ask that in your episode. And we said we'd save it for this one and now I'm feeling pressure. Okay, so as far as this goes, I had a good gentleman that I made an acquaintance with. I got to be the convocation speaker for the master's degree. I was the master's degree representative convocation speaker once I got my master's degree through WGU during our celebration in Washington, DC. It's Googleable, it's on YouTube, it's 10 minutes long. and I don't advise doing it. anyway, point is, by doing that, I met a gentleman who was just absolutely amazing, Mr. Jeff Burton. And he's a producer. He does all these things. And he genuinely believes that everyone should have a podcast. He said, anyway, so I get this text from him six months later. He's like, hey, you want to be a guest on the WGU Alumni Podcast? I said, absolutely. What does that mean? I've never listened to a podcast, never done a podcast. What do need me to do? And it was just this. He just interviewed me. It's audio only, very low key, all the things. When we were done he goes, I genuinely believe everyone should have any goes, but Eric, you're outgoing personality, blah, blah, blah, blah, you should do one. thanks, Jeff, that's great, thank you. And I'm like, who wants to listen to some podunk from Spokane, like male postpartum, what am I gonna do, like what? Today's episode, how I brush my teeth. You know what mean? So I put a pin in it, I was like, thank you, I appreciate that. And it wasn't until our students, it was spring semester, or. Yeah, spring semester last year. And as part of my outgoing interview process with them, I of course do their evaluation, but then I also ask how can I improve and all the things. All of them, many of them came back and said thank you and not me, but everyone for providing a safe space to practice and to not feel judged. And after multiple of them, and they're just an incredible group of students, every last one of them are, but this group in particular just for whatever reason, that's where the spark hit. And I was like, wait. That's the podcast idea right there. Interviewing other nursing students, other educators, other nurses, with the main goal of having nursing students walk away going, yeah, I can do this. So that's how this all started. And I threw out texts to my initial, all the groups of students I had had before, which wasn't many, but got 20 people to say yes. And I was like, okay, there it is. It might be a 20 episode podcast and that'll be it, but we got 20 students willing to do this. and it's just grown since then. So for all you initial yesers, thank you so much for making this happen. So there we are, as quick as I could, pound that out. We're ready to go. Okay, next question. Your merch. I love your merch. Where'd you get the sweater? So it actually is a nice polyester shirt. No, so that's the next one. for those audio only, obviously, what you're not seeing is I'm wearing one of our, I have two Feeding Our Young shirts, one of which I've just made through custom ink or Redbubble or somebody, or no, custom ink. And then this one was actually through a company called The Jersey Guy. And he sent me a free sample. He's like, hey, if you like it, let's connect and da da. So I love it. Like on the back of it, there's like, you can customize it with, cause the ideas there like a polyester softball jersey type things. So yeah, so you can customize it with your own name and number. So anyway, that's one of the many ideas I have for merchandise that I have yet to implement because I'm too busy doing the darn thing. And so that's one of my goals this summer is to establish. merchandise line so that all 10 people who are interested can pick up something of their own. Okay, awesome. That was very weird. Those were questions just for me. We'll go back around and get to the questions that people care about. Just kidding. I mean, maybe you cared about that one. What pushes you to keep going when you've been having a tough day at work, either with a tough caseload or difficult patients? What pushes you to keep going? For me, it's the fact that, another motto I have, and you'll find you have these little mottos that you're just gonna preach to yourself whether you believe it in the moment. And for me, it's like, my motto is you can do anything for 12 hours. And for me, I work 12 hour shifts, so would it fill in with however many hours you have. But for me, it's, you can do anything for 12 hours. And I've had a couple shifts that have pushed that to the limit. Those shifts where you're like, man, if someone came and replaced me right now at hour 11, I would go. You know what mean? I can't do 60 more minutes of this. But that's not emotional, that's not a nice, deep, spiritual, emotional answer for you. But that has times saved my rear. I don't know. like going through the shifts in my mind that have been difficult. And you remember them, don't you? Yeah, you'll never forget them, you guys. You'll never forget them. But I think that I'm stubborn as all get out. And so, like, I think without actually acknowledging it to myself, I have this idea that, like, nobody's gonna tell me that I can't, you know, like that I can't keep going, right? You can't, you know, and I've been fired by patients. It's kind of comical looking back for various reasons. But. Like I had a sweet gal who was trying to get her epidural and she kept swearing at me as I was attempting to get her blood pressure. And I was like, so I need a baseline blood pressure before you get your epidural. And she was like, GTFO. And my charge nurse laughed that I got fired. And I was like, no, this is, she goes, this is, you're like a real nurse now. And I was like, wait, what? I don't, wait, wait, what? And she goes, just happens. And so she went back in and talked to the patient and the patient was like, I'm so sorry. just, know, emotions got the better of her and she rehired me and she got an epidural and it was great. Um, I don't know. I think that I, and I preach this to my students that every patient, regardless of why they're in the hospital could be to have a baby and everything's going fantastically. It could be that they're having surgery, maybe it's a cancer diagnosis. They're vulnerable. And I think that is what. really is the root of me like having that not give up mentality is They're at their most vulnerable. And so who am I to have this attitude about how, you know, their attitude isn't great or they were mean to me? And I also, it's taken time. Like Izzie was saying, I used to, you know, kind of nicely lie to my patients and be like, you're doing such a great job pushing. You're almost there and we've got three hours to go. I've grown out of that, but also, you know, I've learned over time to stand up for myself. and to have those just direct conversations with the patient and say, you know, I'm offering A, I'm offering B, I'm offering C, and you're not wanting any of these things. Can you tell me exactly what it is that you want me to do for you? Because I'm not coming at it from the right angle. And I wanna help you with whatever your situation is. And it's that sit down moment, right? Where, okay, hold on, I'm gonna sit down. What exactly are you hoping for today? help me understand what your goals are, what your fears are, what you're frustrated about, so that we can hopefully work through it together. And most of the time, I would say 99 % of the time that works. And the other probably 1 % of the time, sometimes you have to tap out. Maybe you have a patient, unfortunately, it's more and more common, that's maybe going through active withdrawal. And those patients, in my opinion, are very undermedicated for what they're going through. And it is incredibly hard on them, for them, on the nurses, for the nurses. And so sometimes you do just have to tap out and be like, you know what? I'm no longer my best self in this room. Hey Izzie, can we swap assignments? Because I'm empty. I got nothing left. And I think that's OK. I jokingly use the phrase like I can be anyone's best friend for 12 hours. I'm like, I have the best maid of honor you could ever have. But this is selfish. I often don't want a patient back again. Like I'm like, I gave them my best 12 hours and I'm like, I feel like if I get them back again, I'm just gonna fail them. Like I'm not gonna be the same funny nurse. They already heard all my jokes. I am no good to them. I... stand-up routine. We're done. I don't have anything else. Like I am not, I'm not funny after 12 hours. So yeah, I just, can do it for 12 hours. I can be their best friend. I can wipe their butts. can wipe their baby's butts. I can do all the things, but I intentionally don't like to have patients back the next day and I don't know why, but yeah. Weird. funny because I'm the opposite. Even if they're a quote unquote difficult patient, I have one patient in mind, she fired every single nurse on the floor. Yeah, and went to fire me and I said, I'm so sorry, you can't because there's nobody left that you haven't fired. And that's just the reality of it. Like you were gonna cycle through the same dirty laundry here, but I... I was like, I'm, I worked the next two shifts and I want her again. Like we've gotten into it now. We've, we've established like our relationship and it was a, it was a, this is, it was a very rough three shifts in a row. But it, we made it, you know, we knew where we stood with each other and it was, there was some psychiatric components with this patient. But it was, it was in a weird way, it was good. I feel like when you take that on as a floor and a chair, like, okay, I'll take the difficult, like, cause sometimes you understand, like there's a difficult patient in this room or that room and you take that on for your team. feel like you earn like a, an invisible honor badge for the week or something. Like you do. No, you don't get it, but like, be like, remember that, you know, that tough patient we had. Yeah. And Jen had her for like all week and Jen was like, cool with it. Like you remember that as a coworker. hahahaha who do we volunteer as tribute next time? Who's got it in them today? So yeah. Yeah, that's the other thing got to be careful being you know good with the difficult patients Only because then people then you get a rep everybody you always get a reputation one way or the other So if you end up being good with the difficult patients guess who you're guess what your assignments gonna look like a lot you got you So I guess the piggyback on that is make sure that you are speaking up for yourself, too And say hey, I know that you know does that worked out well last time and I but I can't keep doing that Over and over again like maybe next time can I have the next you know, I don't know whatever else's turn for personal growth at work. Yeah. Ooh! I like it. let's answer one more question for this episode and then we're gonna double back real quick, make a second episode. There's a lot of, man, there's just so many good questions. I'm not gonna name names, but somebody has a hair appointment that they booked after this. And somebody else might have been sleepy because they worked last night. But it's okay! We got together, the miracle happened. And here we are. non-blonde does not have a hair appointment. Just throwing that out there. So that leaves one of two and I don't know my hair is impeccably coiffed so We'll trash on it. In fact, we'll have a third episode after Jen leaves and Izzie and I'll just rag on her It'll be story time. It'll be sleepy story time with Izzie and she's gonna tell us stories all about Jen. Okay, just kidding. All right all my labor and delivery jokes with you, every one I got. I love it. Okay, I love this one here. Are you ready? Am I ready? That's the real question. Where was it? There you go. Was there ever a time in your career that made you question if you still wanted to continue nursing? No, but teaching, yes. Mmm! And for me, no. And it's not, this is an interesting question to ask the three of us. And I'm not saying that like, no, no, I knew, you know, once I was in, that's it. But even, you know, my son, our first son who died, the nurse that took care of him, yeah, yeah, we'll open that. The nurse that took care of him was in the Pete's ICU. And when we first got there, you know, our son was expected to make a full recovery. I've gone through this story. I'm not going to go through it now. You can go back and listen to a different episode. long story short, he was supposed to recover and did not. Never gained consciousness. But the day he was supposed to do a great recovery was the day he got worse. But this nurse who took care of him on the first night left for vacation the next day. And when he came back, that was the final straw for them. And rumor had it that they stopped being a nurse altogether. didn't get out of the PICU, like, stop being a nurse altogether and went into, I don't know, like botany or something, like some, this sounds stupid, like an emotional story, but it was like, went to take care of plants or had a family of florists. I'm not doing it justice, but the point is, yes, it happens to the best of us for sure, but for me personally, no, not once. Not for me leaving nursing, but after my first year of being a clinical instructor, that one was a tough year, got a tough cohort of students and just was like, I don't know if I want to teach this generation. Give it a few years, let the pandemic go on and I'm back teaching and stayed at the bedside. Your passions will never, like you can't, you can't escape your passions. Maybe you'll have that moment that totally breaks you and you finally are done, but you can't otherwise, yeah, take a break. Go do something else, go whatever, but you'll be back, you'll be back. Okay, we'll close this episode here on that really uplifting note. And we're gonna. always beautiful when you talk about that. that was such, it's every time you talk about it, it's beautiful. Thank you, thank you. All right, well, look for more beautiful moments and some really good questions coming up here in episode two. Catch you guys on the flip side.