Getting Really Off-Track

This is the third week that I haven’t started off at the gym.  This is very, very bad.  The entire point of this blog was to write about the gym and it’s at the point where I write once a week about excuses why I’m not going.

I prefer working earlier in the day, we now have staff meetings at 9:00 AM on Tuesdays, and while I planned to go yesterday afternoon, I picked up an extra shift in Falmouth last night for a couple hundred bucks worth of bonus time, something I’ll do again today if they ask me.  I’ve got birthday presents and a plane ticket to New Orleans to buy, not to mention $3.59/gallon gas, so it’s best that I make up that money.

My eating isn’t terrible, but lately I’ve been having a couple of big meals during the day instead of a few smaller ones.  I even skipped breakfast yesterday (a big no-no) and had a little 3-pack of those chocolate cookies my mom buys me even though I say I don’t eat them anymore.  It’s only Tuesday, too!

I don’t feel the wheels falling off quite yet but my focus is definitely elsewhere still.

Financially I’ve been throwing around a little too much money lately.  I upgraded some clothes for the spring/summer, I’ve been buying a little too much coffee including another one yesterday, so between that and not working out this week is not off according to plan.  My money goals are to not spend a dime on anything other than regular bills Monday through Thursday, then I buy a protein bar/coffee for lunch on Fridays (about $5 total) and then something reasonable on dates on Friday/Saturday nights.  I consider it a failure if I buy anything during the week.

I haven’t been reading a damn thing other than a few pages of Back Bay every now and then, which hasn’t exactly grabbed me.  I’ve got 4 books with bookmarks in them on my desk in my makeshift office that sit unread for over 2 weeks.

Work has been a little better, though the end of last week didn’t feel so good.  Learning about real “industry” of long-term care changes perspective a little bit.  We aren’t getting many admissions right now with none on the horizon.  We’ve got some big changes at the top coming in the next couple of weeks so there is hope.  I’ve resorted to trying to drum up business with some of the Med B patients in the meantime.  At least that should boost my productivity a little.  I don’t want anything to affect whether or not I get my bonus money.

April has just been a lousy goal month.

Tuesday

I went to a weekend seminar this Saturday and Sunday in Natick called Dysphagia Practice: Taking Services to the Next Level of Evidence-Based Practice, which was about the current and future treatment of swallowing disorders in hospitals and nursing homes.  It was my first continuing education class since I’ve graduated, and even though I didn’t enjoy spending 12 hours inside on the first nice weekend of the year, I thought it was a fantastic seminar and I’ve already tried implementing some ideas into my current practice, including how medications affect swallowing, esophageal concerns, and an overall different view of aspiration pneumonia.  Even if I wasn’t reimbursed the $315 registration fee, I think it would be worth it.  I’m going to take advantage of as much continuing education as I can.

A lot of the information given would be great for hospitals because of the nature of the patients.  So far from my experience, nursing home residents appear to be hospital patients in first gear.  While I do get some interesting ones every once and a while, most of them are just standard nectar-liquids-chin-tuck-alternating-liquids-and-solids dysphagia patients and we either make progress or we don’t.  Nursing homes aren’t as exciting as hospitals (and maybe over time I’ll look at that more closely when I decide where I want my career to go).  One of the things I loved about New Bedford Rehab was the teamwork involved.  Every week we had IDC meetings with the doctor, therapists, and other important members of the rehab team and talked about patient progress.  Everyone clearly cared about getting the patients home.  In the nursing home setting it just doesn’t feel that way, at least not where I am.  I brought up something with one of the unit managers yesterday about looking at the oral care protocols because I felt I could help improve it (I’m on an oral care jihad after the seminar) and she snapped “well we brush their teeth, what else do you want us to do?”  Those kinds of reactions don’t feel very good, nor to they do much for the “team.”  I went to the Director of Nursing (whose daughter is an SLP, luckily) and asked her for a written copy of the protocols, so hopefully I can get something done by going to the higher-ups.  I feel like the culture of the building needs to be changed in many, many ways.

We also have the corporate ring wraiths coming in to do chart audits and make sure everything (written orders, evals, progress notes, etc.) is in its right place.  Based on a few reviews yesterday, they are not.  I know in my first couple of weeks of work I made some mistakes with that stuff, so I’m sure it will be brought up today.  Of course I was going to make mistakes my first few weeks, all I can do is make sure I do it better in the future.  I don’t really expect to be ripped for it because other people who have worked for years have made the same mistakes, but it will hopefully shock me out of my comfort zone.  After a month or so of work, I decided it was okay to leave some paperwork for the next day if I worked my 8 hours.  Then after a few weeks of that, I decided it was MANDATORY to leave some paperwork for the next day.  These chart reviews are sort of a wake-up call that people actually DO look at my work and I can’t afford to be too lazy.  Maybe I will actually stay past 8 hours some days to make sure it’s all where it needs to be.

So that’s work.  It’s looking like another gym-less week, which I don’t feel too good about.  I’m still sleeping 8+ hours every night and really not wanting to get out of bed.  Not waking up early means I haven’t been plugging my financial stuff into the computer or reading any books, which is straying from a couple of my other big goals for the year.  These are all casualties of focusing more on my career, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing in the short term.  As long as I get back on it soon, there won’t be any problems.\

Off to hopefully fight the good fight at work.

Nobody on the road, nobody on the beach

I haven’t been writing very much in this blog lately.  It’s partly broken-laptop-related, it’s partly writing-about-the-same-thing-all-the-time-related, but in any case, not much to write about.

I’m down to 191 pounds, even though I haven’t been working out very hard.  I went to the gym three times last week but haven’t been able to get there this round.  For whatever reason I’ve had the hardest time waking up lately, even though I’m getting 8-9 hours of sleep a night.  I struggled with this when I started work.  My diet has by and large been pretty good, I’m back to eating baked chicken breast every night, so that’s something filling with a ton of protein.  Not going to get to 185 in two weeks for May 1, though maybe by Memorial Day.

I’m somewhat bothered by the fact that in my gut (though there’s much less of one now), I know I’ll never be fully engulfed in fitness again.  I’ve got a decent balance where I eat healthy most of the time, I work out hard 2-3 times a week, I stay active at work, and I enjoy myself on the weekends.   As I get older that might be all I’ll be interested in doing.

Work has been pretty good for the most part.  The caseload has been so slow for all of us in rehab, I’m seeing about 3-4 hours worth of patients per day, just because there is no demand for therapy right now.  I’ve been splitting up some of my days by going to the other homes in the area.  The two in Falmouth called the Royals are palaces.  I drove home today listening to “Boys of Summer” by The Ataris on repeat, and I’m really looking forward to picking up more hours in Falmouth.  The Cape is just a beautiful, beautiful place.

American Screw Job

America, you really screwed the pooch on this one.  Michael Johns is a star.  He was robbed on Thursday night.

Your king will be crowned soon, America, but he will sit on a throne of lies.  It is clear that the Archuleta Juggernaut cannot be stopped. While he can sing reasonably well, if you look away from the TV during his songs he sounds like a mediocre Usher without any personality.  The real entertainment world will eat him alive.  He has that weird home-school-Scientology vibe to him, and I pray and pray for his downfall.

Not to mention having to suffer another week of the Kristy Lee Cook Era.  That nightmare should have ended weeks ago.

For shame, America.

We Fly High

Tuesday morning, April Fool’s Day.  I only have to work for 2 hours in Bourne before driving to Andover for a mentee seminar from 12:30.  Always good to have something like this to break up the montony of work (and great to get reimbursed for gas mileage).

I did really enjoy my job yesterday, though.  I met my productivity and was pretty busy all day, but with fewer patients I got to see some of them for a longer amount of time.  Usually I see each one for 30 minutes, whether all at once or broken up over a couple times throughout the day, but I saw a few for 45 and one for 75.  I’m officially caught up on all paperwork and I felt pretty good about being there overall.  The week is off to a good start.

Also off to a good start this week is the gym.  I worked really hard yesterday morning both with the weights and on the treadmill for a total of 45 minutes and it really jump-started my mood for the day.  I haven’t weighed myself, but this is definitely the leanest I’ve felt in a very long time.  I’m down to the 6th hole on my belt.  I would guess 191-192 pounds.  I’ll keep this up for the week and then weigh myself on Saturday.

I will be picking up extra hours at a home in Falmouth starting Thursday, and I’ve committed to 3-4 hours on those evenings and then whatever weekends I am interested in getting.  Depending on what I have planned from weekend to weekend, I’ll probably try for a couple Saturdays/Sundays a month for a few hours.  My last couple paychecks have been pretty awesome and it’s hard to pass up this kind of money when it’s being offered so readily.  After doing the math about how much just 4-6 extra hours of work per week would do to my yearly salary, it’s pretty amazing.  Considering Jaylynn and I are getting married, looking at apartments, planning on a buying a house within a year of getting married, looking around at more practical cars, and just generally enjoying improving our quality of life, it really helps to put as much money away as possible.  I hate to look materialistic, but it’s a nice self-esteem boost, too.  Time to make it rain.

I’m reading two new books that came from Amazon yesterday: William Martin’s Back Bay and an Ernst & Young financial planning guide.  I really enjoyed The Lost Constitution and I finished the Kiplinger book I got for Christmas, I anticipate these being good time-fillers.

Off to work, then Andover.