Category: General Interest

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Passing Trays

A day in the life!
Thanks Karen Hardy and Whitney Koenig!

Yesterday I overheard a nursing student snark, “Yeah, this is why I’m in nursing school – so I can pass trays.”

And if I hadn’t been up to my eyeballs in other things to do for my patients, I would have stopped and said: You’ve already missed the point entirely. I’m not sure why you DO think you’re here. If you hope to be a good nurse (or coworker, or person with a heart), you’re going to spend the majority of your working life doing things you SO mistakenly think are beneath you. You are going to pass trays with a smile – excitement even, when your patient finally gets to try clear liquids. You will even open the milk and butter the toast and cut the meat. You will feed full-grown adults from those trays, bite by tedious, hard-to-swallow bite. You will, at times, get your own vital signs or glucoscans, empty Foley bags and bedside commodes without thinking twice. You will reposition the same person, move the same three pillows, 27 times in one shift because they can’t get comfortable. You will not only help bathe patients, but wash and dry between the toes they can’t reach. Lotion and apply deodorant. Scratch backs. Nystatin powder skin folds. Comb hair. Carefully brush teeth and dentures. Shave an old man’s wrinkled face.

Because these things make them feel more human again. You will NOT delegate every “code brown,” and you will handle them with a mix of grace and humor so as not to humiliate someone who already feels quite small. You will change ostomy appliances and redress infected and necrotic wounds and smell smells that stay with you, and you will work hard not to show how disgusted you may feel because you will remember that this person can’t walk away from what you have only to face for a few moments. You will fetch ice and tissues and an extra blanket and hunt down an applesauce when you know you don’t have time to. You will listen sincerely to your patient vent when you know you don’t have time to. You will hug a family member, hear them out, encourage them, bring them coffee the way they like it, answer what you may feel are “stupid” questions – twice even – when you don’t have time to.

You won’t always eat when you’re hungry or pee when you need to because there’s usually something more important to do. You’ll be aggravated by Q2 narcotic pushes, but keenly aware that the person who requires them is far more put upon. You will navigate unbelievably messy family dramas, and you will be griped at for things you have no control over, and be talked down to, and you will remain calm and respectful (even though you’ll surely say what you really felt to your coworkers later), because you will try your best to stay mindful of the fact that while this is your everyday, it’s this patient or family’s high-stress situation, a potential tragedy in the making.

Many days you won’t feel like doing any of these things, but you’ll shelve your own feelings and do them the best you can anyway.

HIPAA will prevent you from telling friends, family, and Facebook what your work is really like. They’ll guess based off what ridiculousness Gray’s Anatomy and the like make of it, and you’ll just have to haha at the poop and puke jokes. But your coworkers will get it, the way this work of nursing fills and breaks, fills and breaks your heart. Fellow nurses, doctors, NPs and PAs, CNAs and PCAs, unit clerks, phlebotomists, respiratory therapists, physical and occupational therapists, speech therapists, transport, radiology, telemetry, pharmacy techs, lab, even dietary and housekeeping — it’s a team sport.

And you’re not set above the rest as captain. You will see you need each other, not just to complete the obvious tasks but to laugh and cry and laugh again about these things only someone else who’s really been there can understand. You will see clearly that critical thinking about and careful delivery of medications are only part of the very necessary care you must provide. Blood gushing adrenaline-pumping code blue ribs breaking beneath your CPR hands moments are also part, but they’re not what it’s all about.

The “little” stuff is rarely small. It’s heavy and you can’t carry it by yourself.

So yes, little nursling, you are here to pass trays.

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Foot Fungus

A renowned professor at The Department of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases has confirmed that foot fungus is actually growing faster thanks to tea tree oil and even coconut oil.

I have heard good reports about Sodium Bicarb and Melaleuca Honey.

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Asprin and Enzymes

  • There was a massive discrediting propaganda campaign hurled at aspirin by Big Pharma fifty years ago when it came out with expensive and dangerous non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs)
  • Aspirin is a staple medicine that is frequently recommended as a remedy to control inflammation and prevent blood clots. It could have helped limit the pandemic death toll, had it not been downplayed and ignored
  • According to research published in April 2021, aspirin reduced COVID-19 patients’ need for mechanical ventilation by 44%, ICU admission by 43% and mortality by 47%
  • Proteolytic enzymes like lumbrokinase, serrapeptase and nattokinase are safer and perhaps even superior choices to aspirin for its anticlot properties. These enzymes, when taken on an empty stomach, act as natural anticoagulants by breaking down fibrin
  • Proteolytic enzymes may also be helpful for long-COVID. Researchers have found that people who die from COVID have extensive lung damage caused by persistent virus-infected cells that cause scar formation. Proteolytic enzymes can help dissolve this scar tissue, as fibrin is a primary component

https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/05/15/aspirin-for-covid.aspx

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Eating late can alter how you burn calories and store fat

Eating Cake

A recent study suggests eating later in the day can directly impact our biological weight regulation in three key ways: through the number of calories that we burn; our hunger levels; and the way our bodies store fat.

With obesity now affecting hundreds of millions of people worldwide, this is a valuable insight into how the risk of becoming obese could be lowered in a relatively simple way – just by eating our meals a few hours earlier.

Earlier studies had already identified a link between the timing of meals and weight gain, but here the researchers wanted to look at that link more closely, as well as teasing out the biological reasons behind it.

“We wanted to test the mechanisms that may explain why late eating increases obesity risk,” said neuroscientist Frank Scheer, from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston back in October when the study was published.

“Previous research by us and others had shown that late eating is associated with increased obesity risk, increased body fat, and impaired weight loss success. We wanted to understand why.”

The research was tightly controlled, and involved 16 participants with a body mass index (BMI) in the overweight or obese range.

Each volunteer went through two different experiments lasting six days, with their sleeping and eating tightly controlled beforehand, and several weeks between each test.

In one experiment, the participants kept to a strict schedule of three meals a day around the normal times – breakfast at 9am, lunch at 1pm and dinner around 6pm.

In the other, the three meals were shifted back (the first around 1pm and the last around 9pm) – so lunch, dinner and supper.

Through blood samples, survey questions and other measurements, the team was able to make a number of observations.

When eating later, levels of the hormone leptin – which tells us when we’re full – were lower across 24 hours, indicating participants may have felt hungrier. What’s more, calories were being burned at a slower rate.

The tests also showed that adipose tissue gene expression – which affects how the body stores fat – increased the adipogenesis process that builds fat tissues, and decreased the lipolysis process that breaks fat down.

Here, we’re looking at a combination of physiological and molecular mechanisms pushing up the obesity risk.

“We isolated these effects by controlling for confounding variables like caloric intake, physical activity, sleep, and light exposure, but in real life, many of these factors may themselves be influenced by meal timing,” said Scheer.

Of course obesity can lead to other health issues, including diabetes and cancer, and so finding ways to stop it from developing in the first place would make a huge difference to the health of the global population.

What this study shows is that eating earlier in the day can impact three key drivers of the way our bodies balance energy and the subsequent obesity risk – and it’s a change that’s perhaps simpler for some people to manage than sticking to a diet or exercise regime.

https://nexusnewsfeed.com/article/home-family-pets/eating-late-can-alter-how-you-burn-calories-and-store-fat-depressing-study-finds/