End Of The Road
Tomorrow night is the beginning of the end for our assignment at the Y. We will work three nights in a row, and then on Thursday morning, I will walk out of the lobby of the Y for the last time of this assignment, and likely ever. It will be quite the bittersweet experience.
There are reasons that I am happy, perhaps even relieved, to be leaving. Primarily, once I have made up my mind to do something, then the period before it happens feels like a waiting period. The papers have been signed, housing has been found, the job in Wisconsin is secure, and all that waits is for us to make the 1000 mile drive there. This is also our first travel assignment, so there is the relief, and satisfaction, of having completed what seemed like such a hurdle at first.
Along the same thought, I feel like we have really tapped this place out. The only trip that we haven't made is to Montreal through Vermont and New Hampshire (although we passed through a part of NH on our way to Maine). We have been all over New England, and enjoyed it immensely. Somehow, I feel that if we stayed here, we might start to get into a rut, to stagnate, because we have done everything we had planned on doing. Perhaps if we had signed another contract for the fall, we would have ended up less time exploring and more time sitting around. When we arrive in Wisconsin, on the other hand, being in an area of the US that I have very little time in (I'll be visiting five states I have never been to before), there will suddenly be a whole new area to explore. In comparison, for example, we just spent the night in a hostel in NYC, which was my fourth time in the city and Jess's fifth. We have crisscrossed this region several times. So, I don't feel like we're going to leave New England with any regrets about what we might not have done or places we might not have visited. Besides, it's not as though we can't come back to the area for future assignments (which we most likely will).
Also, I can't say that New Haven has been the most terrific place to live. Sure, it's a wonderfully central location, accessible to every point in New England we have wanted to visit. As for a city, it has the ocean access for fishing and so on. It has history and some interesting parts. But there are a lot of dodgy neighborhoods in this city, and there have been several incidents that have occurred in such neighborhoods that seem more likely to happen in Detroit or the Queens than in civilized Connecticut. And don't even get me started on Hartford, that giant ghetto of a city. Not to mention that people drive like maniacs in this state, and that gasoline is more expensive here than in all but seven states in the entire US. (It was the fourth most expensive at its peak average of $4.40 a gallon).
Nonetheless, our experience at the Y has been excellent. I don't think that we could have had much better experiences really. I think that we were very flexible--we both floated as necessary, put up with the assignments we were given without complaint, and so on. This is essential to the travel nurse experience, I think. Our units seemed to appreciate us for having a positive attitude, and that we were willing to fill the needs that they had. Some travel nurses are less inclined to do so, and that certainly causes friction with their relationships on the unit. It wasn't that we were constantly putting up with the worst experiences, either, they were generally kind to us. Jess ended up being floated a lot more than me (sometimes three times in a shift), but she found that actually doing so was to her benefit. After all, what all are you expected to accomplish in a four hour period, besides keeping a warm body next to the patient and of course keeping that patient alive? Certainly no baths or thorough charting.
Of course, our perspectives on nursing in general have seemed to change quite a lot since starting as well. We were much more inclined before traveling to be wrapped up in all the intricacies of the job--the politics, the need to take care of super-sick patients, the "climbing of the clinical ladder," as it was known at the Big D. I won't ever forget, coming back from Africa, despising the unappreciative patients and families that typify Americans, when I was trying to organize some sort of Big D nursing initiative for nurses to go abroad to perhaps Kenya (perhaps just so I could go back myself), and my efforts were being interpreted by the management as climbing that stupid clinical ladder. I didn't bother telling them I was planning on quitting within a year, so much for the ladder.
Since starting to travel, on the other hand, our lives have taken on a different focus. We still strive to be good nurses, no one wants to be a bad nurse who wipes out patients and gets fired, but we don't seem to have any desire to be the "best" nurse, by any stretch of the imagination. More now than even before, I am really interested in work only because it pays really well and it allows me four days a week (oh, believe me, no more overtime in my schedule book) to get out there, explore my world, and play. If I could get by without working, if the money came regardless if I showed up to work or not, I wouldn't be donning my scrubs and heading out to spend another 12-hour shift through the darkness of the night in the depressing company of yet another drunk who is being involuntarily dried out.
Even better is the detachment that we have come to cherish from the establishment of the hospital. No more are we obliged to have any particular emotion towards the management of our units, simply because it is the collective emotion of the unit. No more are we inclined to join committees and spend hours of our precious time off pouring energy into unit projects (ok, that was Jess, I never joined any committee, and I only went to one unit meeting in three years at the Big D, only to regret it later as being an infamously wasted hour of my life). Of course, I've already mocked the notion of working overtime; it's no longer necessary to choose between saving money and having a great time and lifestyle, as we make enough to do both.
In short, our focus has shifted from living to work, as we did at the Big D, to working to live, which we do now. Our focus is what we do on the four days spent outside the hospital, not the three days we spend inside.
That's not a bad way to live. To yet again paraphrase, this traveling gig is pretty sweet.
Until next time, be safe.
