What's Wrong With our Country

Hey look at me go, two posts in one week! Woot!

Anyway, this topic sprouted into my mind a couple days ago. Let me give you a small back story. Lately, my boyfriend and I have come to the inevitable conclusion that its seriously time to lose weight. Neither of us are significantly overweight, but we're both at the point where it definitely couldn't hurt to lose, either. Those happy blissful first years of dating make for a lot of restaurant frequenting and alcohol, neither of which are good for you! :( So we decided to do this together, the whole diet and exercise thing.

Now I overall thought I ate pretty healthy to begin with. As some of you know, I decided about 6 years ago that I was never going to eat or support any fast food franchise ever again. By support I mean I refuse to even take my kids there and give the franchise money even if its not actually being eaten by me. Will that change when I have ten minutes to feed the kids en route from soccer to dance practice? I hope not! Time will tell, but I hope that I can stick true to my beliefs.

So being that I never eat fast food (except for Subway and Panera if you want to count them), I also never drink Soda, never eat Chocolate and don't typically indulge in a lot of sweets, I eat a LOT of fruit and a fair amount of veggies....My only understandable downfall is my love for restaurants and that I probably don't drink enough water. I also have a bad habit of eating late at night.  Also, working night shift doesn't help at all. So based on all that, it didn't seem fair or right to me that I was still seemingly gaining weight at a rapid pace. So I had to put a stop to it before it got any harder to lose, and my boyfriend was on board. We thought about a couple programs, including Weight Watchers (a personal favorite of mine) or perhaps trying it on our own, or going to see a nutritionist, or a freelance dieting company, or one of those marketed weight loss pills/shakes or whatever.

But instead of spending money right away, we decided to do it on our own with the help of the program "my fitness pal". It's available online and via apps on a lot of phone carriers. Via phone, you can literally scan bar codes of what you are eating and it calculates everything for you. It's futuristic and awesomely awesome. It sets up a profile for you and makes goals and predicts progress for you based on how your day went. At the end of the day it even gives you pie charts of the breakdown of carbs, protein and fat you ate. It's pretty cool, and all for free. It focuses on calories mostly, but also tracks the remainder of nutrition for each product. Like Weight Watchers, It really teaches you what you were doing wrong and opens your eyes to how much you actually eat during the day and where you can cut back. Just from using the app for three days now I've realized a couple of my hinders to weight loss, some being: Starbucks Green tea frapps with soymilk/no whip (still unhealthy), Thai tea with bubbles, RITAS (I'm a ritaholic), my soy ice cream, and wineeeee. All of those said things I knew to not be extremely healthy per say but I didn't consider them to be *the* reason I wasn't losing weight. Now I treat myself to one of those said things when I have a couple calories to spare.

Anyway, the point of this post- what's wrong with this country?

The other night for dinner, my boyfriend and I picked Saladworks for dinner. For those of you unfamiliar with the franchise, its a lot like a Panera Bread- you can pick soups to eat, salads, sandwiches. What I found to be cool is you can create your own salad. My boyfriend got a Chicken Cesar premade salad, dressing on the side- And I made my own. I got romaine lettuce and added chick peas, carrots, egg whites, wheat noodles, croutons and lite raspberry vinaigrette dressing on the side, and it came with a whole wheat roll. For me, that's 509 calories. Not too bad for what I got (a lot) and the roll is to blame for a lot of that. My boyfriends was 441.

Now before I make my point here, lets think about a meal at McDonalds. Now I went to their dollar menu choices and picked out a theoretical/fake meal for my boyfriend and I.

Two McDouble Cheeseburgers, two medium fries and two sweet teas. This led to 1,840 calories, being 920 each.

So Saladworks: 950 calories for BOTH of us, cost me $19.58.
Mcdonalds: 1,840 calories, would cost me about $6.

Yeah.


I had to pause there for a second because it makes me so angry. So lets think about this. The country of America has a raging epidemic of obesity. We have ads everywhere to lose weight. Take this pill, drink this, eat this, join our program, be high school skinny again! Yet we have endless ads for fast food, too. So Okay lets say someone wants to lose weight but they are on a budget, like 89% of the country is. Lets face it the majority of us aren't swimming in cash.  So someone wants to go lose weight so they think, oh hey! Saladworks! I like salad! It's healthy! I'll lose weight! But oh, how much? That's $20!? When I used to spend about $6 dollars on my dinner? I can't afford to lose weight!  So they go back to McDonald's, spend less but also eat less matter, but eat more calories, gain more weight. See where I'm headed here? What incentive does the majority of America have to lose weight when it's obviously dramatically more expensive to lose weight. Joining Weight watchers alone will cost an individual about $52/month alone. People go to the fast food because its cheap, its fast and it tastes good. Places like Panera and Saladworks are dramatically more expensive and it takes longer. This.Is.Why.America.is.Overweight.

In an ideal utopian world, well- my utopia- people would have incentive to buy healthier things because its a lot less expensive. Popular fast food chains would become sky rocket prices-the dollar menu would cease to exist and "Value" meals would now cost $20. People on severe budgets would be drawn to healthier food because its cheaper. Think about it, we are digging ourselves a hole right into health care itself.

Someone on severe budget---> Eats fast food----> Becomes severely overweight----> A lot of health problems arise (diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, muscle/bone issues, etc)----->they don't go to the doctor because they don't have the money----->they wait and wait and those problems now become---->Strokes, heart attacks, knee replacements, gastric bypass, lifelong rehab, or even death.----they can't pay for that either.

Those second problems are so much more hard to take care of, not only on the demand to healthcare workers but to our economy! Treating someone for a FIRST heart attack that they can't pay for could cost the economy tens of thousands of dollars- and that's if its remotely uncomplicated!


It just gets me so angry. I am blessed enough to be able to afford the higher prices that come with losing weight. But a single mom with 3 kids trying to feed herself and her kids? Perhaps not so much. Yes I over exaggerated, yes I picked out dollar menu items as an example from McDonald's to make my point. Perhaps a more in depth meal at McDonald's would cost up to $15, but can you imagine how many calories that could be? Not only that, but my boyfriend and I were very full after our meal at Saladworks, and we felt great. If I ate $10 worth of food at McDonald's- Not only would I probably feel like complete crap, but it wouldn't be able to keep me full. I'd be craving more fat and sweets within an hour or two and then the cycle repeats.


Okay so I'm done now. I could probably talk for hours and hours about the Nutrition problems with our country, but I can't keep my audience forever. You're probably hungry by now. Just kidding. No I'm actually pretty hungry, I shall make myself some strawberries perhaps....yumm.

I'm sure some people won't agree with me, and that's totally cool- that's ALSO what America is all about- freedom of speech. Amen to that!


With love,


~WNB



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That Defining Moment

As your nurse, there are a lot of things we know about you that you may not even realize we know about you. But we do. And that's just your history.

Sometimes (actually a lot of times) we also know your future.

We're just not legally allowed to tell you.

For example, last night at work I had admitted this really nice guy. Middle aged guy. No significant past medical history. Admitted for a UTI (Urinary Tract infection). In the ER he was complaining of some constant pain in the abdomen, they ran a CT scan to find out why, pretty common practice when someone complains of pain.

So I got to know this guy when he came to my floor. Nice, retired, family at home, typical.

Then in the midst of running around at my nurses station, I saw his CT scan report come up.

Now, 92% of the time, I'd say thE CT reports I see are all normal with minor anatomical differences. Doctors just order the scan to cover their license, pretty much. So I wasn't expecting much from the report.

But I found the worst, what we hate to find. Bad, bad news. Not definite bit probable malignant cancer, aggressive. I stood there reading the report, just steps away from this patients room, processing this information. The patient doesn't even know yet, that kept running through my head.

How could I go back in the room and keep my same happy face? I thought back to what I had said earlier, he told me about his abdominal pain and I said "well hopefully the CT scan will give us some answers".... I guess there's just no way to prepare patients for the worst answers.

He never asked me what the CT scan said, and even If he did, we're supposed to play dumb and act like we haven't seen any results yet.


The ridiculous part is that this guys admitting diagnosis is a urinary tract infection, something we can easily fix with an antibiotic, and he will be leaving with cancer. What if we had never run the CT? What if he never came to the hospital?

The sad part is, I have off for a couple days and most likely won't get to see the clinical progression of this patients journey, emotionally and physically, but we as nurses, know what's in store for you depending on what road you choose and its never a pretty road with cancer.

So, it's hard. It's hard to pretend like you don't know information that will soon change your patients life. I think that has got to be one of the hardest parts of being a doctor, telling people they have cancer. I can't even imagine.

:-(


Anyway, sorry for the extreme lack of posts. I have a lot stored in my head, life has just been over the top busy...


I'll write soon, with love---


-WNB




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A Satan kind of Business

Yesterday I went to a hospital-sponsored "Birthday" breakfast, where employees get to sit at a breakfast table with the hospital CEO/CFO and some other important big-wigs. I have been employed at this hospital for what will be 6 years this August, and this is the first birthday that I've actually went.

We just hired a new CEO, and there have been mixed feelings about him. Normal, I suppose,when a new big wig comes to play, as this instantly makes people fear they will lose their job. A CEO has to really work in order to gain the trust from its employees.

So I wasn't sure what to expect from this "birthday breakfast" with the CEO....how many people would go? Would it be 1:1 time with the CEO? What would we talk about? Cupcakes? Breakfast? The weather? Monkeys? History? Rules? Africa? Eggs? Pancakes? Opinions?

We started off the breakfast with one of those "icebreakers" where we all had to share our name, how long we've been employed, what we do.....squishsquash like that.

Then we got into the real mishmosh, the nittygritty of things we've been wanting to hear about. When are we getting our raises back? Whats going to happen to the hospital? Are we going to remodel? Are our jobs secure? Everyone sits tensely in their seats, politely yet rebellious as a lion inside, ready to pounce, yet trying to behave. People get very tense when it comes to money and their jobs.


Lately our hospital census has been in the toilet, meaning we have not very many patients. This raises a lot of concern, being that without enough patients , we won't have enough money to sustain the business or pay our employees. So everyone has been nervous, so of course this issue was brought up with the CEO. His response is what really got me thinking.

He jokingly said, "I guess we gave out too many flu shots this year." People laughed quietly.


But what he said.....it's absolutely true, and yet it isn't true. True, we did give out a lot and they were effective. But we didn't give out "too many". We prevented a lot of people from getting sick this year, and it may have impacted our census, maybe it didn't.

But it got me thinking....running a hospital is like running a Satan business. We thrive, we depend on people getting sick or injured. When less people get sick or injured, our business suffers. We market our business just like any other type of business out there- We billboard and advertise on TV to get people to think of and choose us when they are sick or injured and need to choose an ER.

I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that, an ideal world would be if a hospital could support itself and its employees without depending on others suffering. It can't happen, I suppose, considering money doesn't just magically appear and fund organizations.

In my schooling, we learned about the growing concept that hospital patients were changing. In this present day and in the coming future, a typical hospital patient is a lot sicker than in the past. More and more illnesses and conditions are treated in the outpatient, long term care, clinic or home care setting. This is great for public health care but it could be why we are seeing a lower census as of late. Some of these sicker, long term hospital required care patients don't have insurance or insurance that is going to pay. Also, these patients aren't turning over the beds and are taking up space, draining the staff, etc. So its like the hospital administrations depend on the misfortune of the community to sustain itself, but we need you to get better quickly, so you can be a patient of ours, pay us and then leave so we can give your bed to the next paying patient.  Like I said, its a Satan Kind of Business....


It's similar to the concept of warfare health care. Back in the days of surviving WWI and WWII, we learned and advanced so much in health care because of all the emergent practice we had on suffering soldiers. Suddenly we had patients that were going to die anyway if we didn't try something, so it gave surgeons and doctors of the age to experiment and practice....and sometimes save lives resultingly, sometimes not. But it taught and revolutionized health care. It's the concept of trial and error.  It's yet another example of how health care thrives off the mass suffering off its population.

Yet this concept turns on itself. The more people that suffer and come in to the hospital, the more money the hospital makes. For non-profit organizations, such as mine- this allows us to then put the money back into the hospital, better machines, more nurses, better doctors, new units, more services, which all lead to safer, and better patient outcomes and satisfaction, which then leads to word of mouth in the community to others, which therefore leads to more money back into the hospital from others that are suffering. It's a cycle. A Satan cycle. A necessary cycle in the health care industry. A sad cycle.


I've had this post, this thought, stemming in my head for a long time, since June. I even had half of it written out but decided to halt the writing on it because I felt it was getting too political. I really know nothing about politics or finances. Nothing. I know that. All I know is nursing, nothing administration. All I know is what nurses see and how nurses are affected. So what prompted me to finally go through with this post? My unit, the smallest unit in the hospital, recently shut down last Friday along with the second smallest unit. At first we all thought it would just be the weekend. Tomorrow we will hit one week. All of us are on our toes. This is where a low hospital census hits home. My entire staff team is now orphaned, being sent out around the whole hospital, floated. It's miserable. We all want to be back on the unit we were hired too, the unit we have raised and grown to love throughout the past year.

The only, and I mean only, good thing about this sad misfortune, is that I am at least gaining experience on other units in my hospital. But I miss the familiarity.



Thats all for now folks,

~WNB.




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