The centerpiece of yesterday's event honored a nurse who came to the profession late in life. She was 29 when her husband died and a random bit of kindness from the visiting nurse changed the trajectory of her life.
She had no family within thousands of miles after her husband passed and no close friends at work. She felt adrift. She entered a nursing program for lack of any other path.
The visiting nurse, whether he knew it or not, was an agent of God, or an "angel" if you prefer. Nursing is what the new widow had been born to do.
Near the end of her speech, the nurse chided the audience. "I have been asked why I am retiring. Everybody can see that I love caring for people and they ask 'What will you DO?' "
"I am going to teach people how to cook. I am going to teach you (nurses) how to cook food that is good and that is good for you."
"Too many nurses think that OK to use every minute to take care of patients and your family. You are always rushed for time. And I watch you eat two chocolate-peanut butter brownies and a piece of carrot-cake for lunch every day while you catch up on paperwork. That is not OK."
"I am going to go into your homes and teach you how to take fresh vegetables and fresh meat and how to turn it into meals."
So there you have it. Nurses are not supposed to diagnose but this one did. Generalizing, the most productive people in our society are killing themselves by eating foods designed to have long shelf-life and to be eaten by distracted people. And it isn't just once-in-a-while. For some of us it is every darned day.
We have five senses. Food that is good for us excites all of those senses. Not only does it taste good, it looks good. It smells good. It feels good. It pairs very well with human conversation (sense of hearing). Oh, and it nourishes your body.
The simple correlation that massive changes in our diet over the last ~60 years has coincided with massive increases in diseases and cancers is not to be observed.
ReplyDeleteLikewise the fact that kajillions of dollars has been spent on researching pharmaceutical answers to this problem (and haven't found it yet), and zero dollars have been spent on natural remedies is another tell; but I'd digress, I'm preaching to the choir here. It's the unwashed masses that need to learn this.
As the awards ceremony unfolded, there were two administrators speaking for each person who received an award.
DeleteIt was clear that the administrators were in terrible shape. All but one of them had started out on the floor as nurses but now had additional administrative duties.
Several of the administrators were two-times their healthy body-weight. If they would have been healthy at 150 pounds they were an honest 300 pounds. They know better but allowed events and external responsibilities to erode their good sense.
Most of the administrators were probably 50% over their healthy body-weight (based on frame-size).
What a brave nurse to make such a statement, especially in a medical setting like that.
ReplyDeleteWhile not 100% true, I will say as a general observation having been to three different countries in the last 12 months (Greece, Japan, Turkey) the population in general is far less obese. If you saw overweight or obese people, they were probably from the West but most likely from the United States. And sadly, we no life in an age that glorifies obesity even while quietly forgetting that as short a period as four years ago, we were having a national emergency about childhood obesity.
The old saw applies to nursing, just like the mechanic who's car is broken, the painter who's house needs paint, etc.
ReplyDeleteThe calories don't go in, the weight don't go on. Easy peasy.
ReplyDeleteSo few things I find that give me comfort. That was good stuff to read. I told my daughter yesterday about Taking care of You, so you Can help others, because I read this blog every day..
ReplyDeleteThanks
when i was in the military and not in the field i ran several miles a day, lifted weights every morning, did pt, etc . then went to mcdonalds for breakfast and lunch and had chips and beer for dinner . real smart.
ReplyDeleteI have spent quite a bit of time at medical offices and hospitals the last two months. I was shocked at the large percentage of nurses and office workers who were seriously overweight. Probably at least 75% of them.
ReplyDeleteThe weight can be controlled. When I was 21 I weighed 450 pounds. I now weigh 160 pounds at age 69.
To be the devil's advocate: Nursing is very stressful because it is a rock of results-oriented people jutting out of the shoals of process-oriented administration.
DeleteNobody is going to give a nurse a gold-star for failing to intubate a patient but still being able to use great communication skills to explain why. There is no "try"; there is only "do".
Nurses often have 12 hour shifts with very little overlap with the next shift and somehow it is all supposed to be captured in the computer-charts.
If the replacement for the next shift does not show up you have a moral and professional and legal obligation to stay until relieved...which could be another 12 hours.
The flow of new nurses into the field are strangled by the education process which is trying to establish status parity with doctors.
Medicine is straight command-and-control like the military. There is very little "bandwidth" for pushback.
As the last node in the delivery of the medical practice you are responsible for catching everybody else's mistakes, oversights and stupid moments. As the last node you are still expected to be able to move large, inert people and to get smeared with excrement and get blamed and yelled at.
Stress eating is a real thing. Not yelling at you, here. I am just having a little bit of compassion for nurses...and fleshing out why hospitals are in a death-spiral for staffing.
Hospital death spiral is due to the insurance / medical industrial complex racket. Yes. RICO.
DeleteI've made the same observation. And watched the wife get bigger and bigger. Respiratory therapy is not nursing, but the things they face,trying to provide services with fewer people on staff,I heard her say things that your compassionate attempt to understand how they got to where they are acknowledged. I'm just glad I never gave her grief over it..
ReplyDeleteThe answer lies in the Copperhead Cove saga. When stripped bare of choice, and survival comes to the front, priorities change quickly Joe.
ReplyDeleteYou know this.
“Taking care” is but a luxury in 5-10yrs…