Thanksgiving

Instead of listing my usual public litany of "things I'm thankful for," I ask that you use the time you usually spend reading blogs and reflect upon your own list of things for which you're thankful.

They say that grateful people are happy people. Be thankful.

Find a Clichee

Point taken. When I re-read my old posts, I feel like telling myself to take a chill pill.

To avoid putting off til tomorrow what I could do today, I worked all freaking weekend. When it rains, it pours. I am not proud of this because I robbed myself of the opportunity to relax and I'm going into the week raw. Literally. From Jack having jammed his elbow into my back knots when my right arm started to go numb. Actually, he was trying to untie the knot.

[That was bad. Wow. Sorry.]

The only time I wasn't working was when we did church, grocery shopping, Christmas shopping, Christmas wrapping, and the writing of Christmas cards. Did I mention my temptation to put our tree up? There's no time like the present, to burn that proverbial midnight oil. I have this ambitious goal of writing each of my employees a Christmas card...I feel it's a nice touch, but didn't realize how many pounds of glitter this entails. Have you ever signed 150 glitter-covered Christmas cards in your living room? Yeah, me neither. We'll have glitter on our feet for years and I'm already tiring of picking solitary flects of glitter off of Jack's forehead.

Yes, I'm drinking the Christmas koolaid a little early this year. It's not because I buy into the overly-commercial representation of a holy feast, but because I have this wacky desire to have everything done by Thanksgiving. I'm not celebrating Christmas yet; that doesn't start until December 24. I'm just preparing for it so I can get the yearly pleasentries accomplished and foster some internal quiet before the holiday rolls in.

Christmas is my 800 lb gorilla. While I feel I have to perfectly coordinate gifts and cards and trees and holiday parties and employee dinners while *UGH* still trying to sleep and stay healthy, I thought it would help to knock out as much as possible before December so I could have a nice, restful, peaceful December.

Which, y'know, has made my November hell.

Jack pointed out that I might have gone a wee bit overboard. Me? Try and schedule too much? NAAAAH. That never happens. Since it was raining cats and dogs, I realized I need to better dance in the rain and let go of the rigid self-imposed deadlines. All right, fine, just take away all my fun. LOL

[Deep breath.]

Life's moving so quickly lately that I need to keep my nose to the grindstone and put one foot in front of the other. Everything will be done. The four road trips I have coming up in the next 2.5 weeks will be safe and I won't completely lose my productivity. My staff and manager evals will be completed. No more terms or legal cases will emerge. I'll sweeten the pot with my sweat equity and take one for the team.

Without going back to count, how many clichees did you find in this post?

Thought for the week...When you love someone, you're making a choice to love them. Same thing with happiness. You can choose to be happy. I know that's pretty After School Special from the Dorrie vaults, but that's what's going to get me through the next four weeks. Heck, the next four hours!

Have a great pre-Thanksgiving week. Tomorrow is already "Wednesday" in the work week!

You Just Have to Laugh...

Sometimes you just have to laugh. If nothing's funny, fake it.

I have been struggling SO much with my boss lately, in making her see that I am, indeed, a decent human being. She's a busy lady, I get that, but I think she thinks I'm trying to make her look bad. I'm not. I'm just trying to do my job the best I can. But she's randomly throwing speed bumps in my way lately with little more purpose than slowing me down. I'm always inclined to look at the other side of the coin; maybe it's to make me prove myself and push through inertia.

Maybe not. But regardless, it's taking a lot of energy. What little energy I have left after the time change because my body is STILL jet-lagged!

Anyway, I asked one of my Diabetes dietitians to put on a lunch lecture for my Wound Clinic staff. Many patients overlap and the wound nurses wanted to know more about Diabetes. So they did their thing and a generous, anxious-to-prove-himself rep brought enough food for the country of Ireland to the lunch. As a follow up, I asked the dietitian how the "wound luncheon" went. he wrote back, "You know, that's not a very appetizing way to put that. You're implying that we ate oozing dead skin or scabs for lunch." I wrote back, "Great, now I feel faint." He wrote back, "Touche!"

In other news, my red pumps (as Sister Lourdes calls them my 'ruby shiners') are becoming quite the conversation piece around the hospital. I've started wearing them when I need to put on a little bitchiness in the mornings....usually coinciding when I know I have a nasty termination to do that day. People are catching on- the red shoes accompany a firing. So yesterday, I stopped by two of my departments' staff meetings to give them administrative updates and in BOTH meetings, someone asked if I had a termination that day!

What's funnier is that my friend Mary bought me this ornament:



And yes, I had a bad term this week. One of the gentleman paramedics thought it ethical and safe to fabricate a patient record. Not just falsify, but FABRICATE. Completely pull from thin air. I'm sorry, but if that were your mom, would you want faked vitals and meds on the record? I think not. He left me no choice but to fire him. It wasn't just unethical or against safety, it was illegal.

It did not go well. Granted, I was probably too hard on him (but a neighboring hospital is on the line for $23M for a bad case where a patient died in an ambulance), but I literally thought he was having a heart attack. He went all white and pasty and sweat was pouring off his head. He was shaking too badly to sign the termination notice. I asked the manager to walk the firee out to his car, listening for a Code Blue to be paged overhead the entire time he was gone. Ugh. THAT was a first.

Later in the week, two of my nurses came to me with what they called a "bad feeling in their stomachs." Something wasn't adding up and they asked me to look into it. I've been working with this department a lot lately, helping them look at their own processes and to stop hating each other. So this was big- they were working TOGETHER on something they agreed wasn't right.

Jump to me, swimming through stacks of stuff to better understand the problem. And the legal case is already progressing; we spent hours yesterday, meeting with the lawyers. I can't say anything more but I can't even believe the time that goes into these sorts of things.

So between the investigation needed for the almost-Code-Blue-termination, this new legal situation, and the usual gamut of meetings, I didn't get much work done this week. Except that I am pushing on a thorough reorganization of the patient safety, quality, and ethics departments of the hospital. My ethics mentor, Dr. Nelson, actually offered to help me operationalize some of the ethical theories he published, in regard to preventative ethics. So I guess you find time for what you WANT to do!

Today has been evaluations, evaluations, evaluations. Seven of my managers (and eight front-line staff whose evaluations I have to help the manager complete) have their evaluations due this quarter. Each eval takes me about two hours...so that adds up, too. Oh well, at least I can work on those in front of the tube while watching college football!

Score!

Quote Journal: Bad

Joke Journal: Notre Dame

After Quasimodo's death, the bishop of the Cathedral of Notre Dame sent word through the streets of Paris that a new bell ringer was needed.

The bishop decided that he would conduct the interviews personally and went up into the belfry to begin the screening process.

After observing several applicants demonstrate their skills, he had decided to call it a day.
Just then, an armless man approached him and announced that he was there to apply for the bell ringer's job.

The bishop was incredulous.

"You have no arms!"

"No matter," said the man. 'Observe!' and he began striking the bells with his face, producing a beautiful melody on the carillon.

The bishop listened in astonishment; convinced he had finally found a replacement for Quasimodo.
But suddenly, as he rushed forward to strike the bell, the armless man tripped and plunged headlong out of the belfry window to his death in the street below.

The stunned bishop rushed down two hundred and ninety five church steps, when he reached the street, a crowd had gathered around the fallen figure, drawn by the beautiful music they had heard only moment before.

As they silently parted to let the bishop through, one of them asked, "Bishop, who was this man?"

"I don't know his name," the bishop sadly replied, "but his face rings a bell!"



WAIT! WAIT! There's more...




The following day, despite the sadness that weighed heavily on his heart due to the unfortunate death of the armless campanologist, the Bishop continued his interviews for the bell ringer of Notre Dame.

The first man to approach him said, "Your Excellency, I am the brother of the poor armless wretch that fell to his death from this very belfry yesterday. I pray that you honor his life by allowing me to replace him in this duty."

The bishop agreed to give the man an audition.

As the armless man's brother stooped to pick up a mallet to strike the first bell, he groaned, gazed down at his chest, twirled around, and died on the spot.

Two monks, hearing the bishop's cries of grief at this second tragedy, rushed up the stairs to his side.

"What has happened? Who is this man?" the first monk asked breathlessly.

"I don't know his name," sighed the distraught bishop, "but ...he's a dead ringer for his brother!"

Boca Burgers

While in Boca Raton last week, we learned that Boca burgers are from Boca Raton. Silly fact, but we didn't know this!

It was a tremendous experience and I had a great opportunity to attend a Medical Executive Committee Institute last week. It was a gift. A blessing. A darn good blessing.

We landed in sunny Florida and were picked up in a black Lincoln Towncar with one of those gentlemen in a black suit holding our names on a card by the airport's baggage claim. How cool is that?! He whisked us off to the Boca Raton resort, where we somehow scored a corner suite, overlooking the intracoastal waterway and the Atlantic. I could lay in bed, open my eyes, and see the Atlantic, since we were on the 15th floor.



The resort, itself, was beautiful. Reminding us of a colorful monastery, we were touched by the gourmet food, flowing champagne and superb Chardonnay, and complimentary boat trips.





Did I mention the gourmet food? I'm not sure how we managed to not gain 10 lbs while in Boca. We ate SO well. Besides Chilean Seabass at Truluck's and filet at Cielo, we needed something healthy.

So we ate at Morimoto's THREE times in the span of four days.



Morimoto's sets a new bar for us for sushi. Unfortunately, there will be no more supermarket sushi; we had the honor of trying unagi, lobster, raw scallops, hamachi, baby hamachi, and snapper. I cannot remember ever spending $100 on sushi, but this was completely, totally, utterly worth it:



This was our sushi chef making my lobster maki. We named him "Bob." As in, "Sponge Bob."

Aside from the food and drink, the conference itself was amazing. I came away with 6 pages of ideas on how to improve processes and departments in the hospital. I sent Elvis a quick email telling him which departments I want to blow up and reformulate. We'll see how that goes!

I keep having this managerial struggle of trying to find the middle ground (is there a middle ground?) between being a tough, assertive woman in the boardroom and cultivating the spirituality of servant leadership. They are at odds...and because I respect rules so much, I decided that my fourth quarter goal for myself is to get in trouble at work. So I'm going to push some of these reorganizations until I actually get in trouble.

Fun, eh? Why not?

I love conferences like that, where you're continually challenged and you can revisit those notes repeatedly and glean something new. So that's what I plan to do. I'll let you know how well this works and please, oh please, bail me out of jail when I get in trouble at work!

And with that, I am returning to my Christmas-card-writing (I bought seven boxes of cards and have this wickedly ambitious plan to write each of my employees a handwritten card with a small token of my appreciation). But I need to get a move-on; it's already mid-November and I swore I would have all my Christmas shopping, wrapping, and Christmas cards done by December 1!

[Hmm. Maybe *that's* how I'm getting myself in trouble this quarter!]

iPad Baby

Jack shared this with me and it's cute!

Masochist

I can publicly communicate that I passed up one phat job offer that I tossed around in my head over the last few months. It was a senior exec position and I can't really explain why I had to pass it up except that it just wasn't time yet.

I knew I could do okay and that things would work, but it was like trying to eat a very unripe banana. Nutrients and everything are there, but things need to percolate a bit longer to make things a bit sweeter.

There's still too much to do at St. Fozzie's. I have a large department change coming up, my big consolidation project, and one of my other projects finally came to fruition (I think I called it the Craziness Project here in blogville), where we relocated several ancillary services and Endoscopy from one campus to another. I'm getting some serious operations experience here at Fozzie's and aside from not wanting to leave my current employees, I wasn't ready to transition from being a medium fish in a huge pond to a large fish in a small pond.

Anyway, the reason this post is titled "Masochist" is because I was accepted into grad school. Again. I opted to finally complete my M.A. in Theology with a concentration in Catholic Bioethics. Even though Jack thinks I'm crazy for wanting another master's, it's an open chapter I feel compelled to finish. Technically, I started the Theology degree in 2001 at Notre Dame. And, this school is letting me transfer over all my ethics credits so I will be able to complete the M.A. relatively quickly.

One door closed. Another door open. And I will just keep swimming like I always do....metaphorically AND theologically now!

This Soup's For You

Travel season is over! I'll write about that later- I am still percolating the knowledge and experiences I acquired in Boca Raton, trying to let my soul catch up and the muddy waters settle to make sense out of the week.

But since Daylight Savings Time ended last night, my seasonal affect disorder is in full effect today. I glanced up from my laptop, noticed the shadows of dusk in the living room and my body thought it was 6:30. It was 4 p.m. Ugh!

We landed last night at 8pm from Fort Lauderdale (in shorts and sandals, I might add) and immediately turned all our clocks back an hour...watches, car clocks, clocks at home, etc. In our extra hour of relaxation, we ordered a pizza.

Boca is a five-star, old money, wonderful place. But they don't have Chicagoan pizza.

I quickly went unconscious on the couch and awoke to Jack trying to walk me, zombie style, to bed. I slept 12 hours without moving. I had not had a good night's sleep in at least two weeks and wouldn't have cared if a mouse ran across my face.

WAIT, I take that back. Please don't let mice free in my house! Or spiders. EEEK! One of my friends gave her son a dropper full of medicine today, for his ear infection. As her son took the dropper's liquid, she saw a little spider, trying to force its way out of the dropper to save its life. Um, yeah. I guess we *do* eat eight spiders in our sleep. That toddler almost ate a spider while he was AWAKE!

Anyway, Jack and I worked all day today, trying to dig out from the piles of work. While we toiled, Jack brewed a tremendous vat of beef barley soup (secret ingredient- cloves). On the plane last night, we shared recipes with the woman next to me who works at a competitor hospital. She looked like an ICU nurse. I asked her what she does for a living and she answered, "I'm an ICU nurse."

BINGO.

That was her secret ingredient, not ours. Intrigued, we tried it and it's fabulous.

We always make soup on Sunday's. It's our tradition. So far this soup season, we've made chicken soup, ham and bean soup, chili, beef barley, and ham and potato. Next week is creamy red pepper soup, courtesy of my competitor ICU nurse!

Here's to an impending winter, lots of soup, and a quickly-fading tan. And please pray for me around 1pm Eastern on Wednesday!

Be Careful What You WIsh For...

...Cuz you might just get it.

I had another one of those "gee, I feel like an administrator" type of days and the cupboard is empty! In the span of 13 hours, I...

-Attended two meetings and finalized the recruitment of an endocrinologist.

-Attended mass with the Cardinal celebrating. I shook his hand and did NOT kiss his ring. It's always kind of cool to attend mass with the leadership team. And they used so much incense I thought my nostrils were going to burn. In a holy way, of course!

-Talked to approximately 43 nuns.

-Suspended an employee for dressing as a "slutty nurse" for Halloween yesterday. Seriously?

-Counseled a manager on how to confront conflict. She's a doormat. We're working on it. I encouraged her to start a fight, just to see if she could do it.

-Decided I loved a nurse practitioner enough to offer her a third interview. Hurray!

-Decided to relocate a clinic to another side of the hospital. If the space fits, grab it!

-Was asked to speak at our corporate leadership retreat next week...only to 600 of the system's top tier. All the presidents, VP's, directors, and managers come together once a year for a leadership retreat. I was asked to speak about one of my endeavors. On some level, this was a dream of mine...but I was kind of hoping it would have been more of an Oscar thank you speech, relaying my gratitude to God, my husband, and my orthodontist for helping me obtain my smile. My talk is 5-8 minutes. I think I'm still in shock.

-Was paged by Elvis to attend to an irate family on our hospice floor. Technically, I'm over that floor and the family, after screaming at me for 25 minutes, decided they needed to talk to the CEO or else they were going to the press. I spent two exhausting hours with the family, trying to calm them down enough to avoid a PR nightmare. I think it worked, but I had to call in a few political favors. Plus, I spent two hours in a contact isolation room and didn't gown properly. Ugh.

By the time I dragged myself out of the hospital at 7:15, I still had to get my nails done (shut up! Priorities!) and pack for another conference. I'm on the cusp of being overwhelmed and know that a good night's sleep is what I need most. I guess the upshot is that I finally learned how to sleep on planes! I have a little satin mask that says "Zombie" on it!