First Week

Well, it has happened, I have finished my first week here in Houston. Boy has it been a crazy one. Sarah and I applied for the waterfront apartment building, and were accepted. We received our keys yesterday and will be spending the next two days moving our things in around our work shifts. We have rented furniture, set up our utilities, and are very excited. I'm very ready to have a place to call "home," as the Studio 6 just doesn't cut it.

We also spent three 8-hour day shifts at the hospital doing our hospital orientation. Most of these hours were spent going over hospital policy, equipment use, and the electronic health record. We were able to spend four hours on our units getting oriented to the layout and workflow. I think the hardest thing to get adapted to will be the EHR. It is very different from the one I am used to at Fletcher Allen, but I am sure in a few weeks it’ll feel normal and will be a breeze. A lot of the equipment the hospital uses is similar to FAHC, so that is very reassuring. Also, nursing is nursing, and I know that I can be a great nurse no matter the facility.

All week Sarah and I have been hanging out with some awesome nurses who are here on travel assignments, also. We have mostly been hanging out with a girl from Indiana, one from Illinois, and a guy who is from the Galveston area and just finished a travel assignment in Vermont. There are four other travel nurses who are just wonderful, also. It is nice to have them as resources, friends, and people to hang out with outside of work. Their travel experience ranges from this being their first assignment, to some that have been traveling for years.

Tonight is my first regular shift, and I am both excited and nervous. Being on the floor for those four hours on Wednesday really helped to take some of the nerves out of the equation. The patient population seems very nice and wonderful, so I am excited about that. I was only able to sleep for about 3 hours this afternoon, and that was mostly because I was too nerved up to sleep. However, I have faith that tonight is going to go very smoothly. We have almost finalized our schedule through to the end of the year. They use self scheduling here, so we basically were able to pick all of our shifts. We are just waiting on final approval from our manager. So all in all I think things are going well. I’ll be excited for next week to be over so I can be settled in the new apartment and also have a week of work under my belt.

Houston, We've Landed!

Yesterday was a relatively easy day in the car: a mere 9 hours across Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and finally into Texas. Louisiana was quite beautiful, and many parts of the interstate drove right through the bayou. Miles and miles of road were elevated on stilts. As we entered Texas and started getting closer to Houston, the sun was going down and it was one of the most beautiful sunsets. Now, was it better than a Lake Champlain sunset? Unlikely. However, because it is so flat here you could just see forever and that made the sunset seem so much larger. As we started entering the Houston area it had become dark and all of the oil refineries were lit up with thousands of lights. They all created the illusion of a mini city lit up at night. Sarah and I arrived to our extended stay hotel, checked in, and crashed. We peeled ourselves out of bed long enough to drive to the grocery store and get some staples. Afterwards we came home and passed out.

After a very necessary morning of sleeping in, Sarah and I decided to go and scope out the area. We first made the drive from our hotel to our new hospital in order to figure out the route and see how long it would take. We are, luckily, only about 10-15 minutes away from the hospital. Once we got there we went and took a walk around the lobby. It is stunning! I’m excited to see what the inpatient units look like. The afternoon was very productive. We drove around to scope out Kemah, which is a little town in the Galveston Bay area that has a boardwalk, amusement rides, and such. After that we went and looked at three apartment complexes. The first was very cheap, but wasn’t the cleanest of places. It also didn’t have the best reviews online. But it had four pools, a fitness center, and was close to a lot of things like grocery stores and pharmacies. It was definitely in suburbia. The second complex was gorgeous! A bit pricier, but there was a pool and fitness center, and it is RIGHT on the water. It was hard to not want to pick it immediately. I knew, though, that we needed to look at least one more place to get a semi-good feel. I mean… I’ve watched enough episodes of House Hunters to know you have to look at a minimum of three. The office of the third place wasn’t open on Sunday, the cops were there, and it seemed a little run down. So we will be applying for the waterfront one after work tomorrow!

Work tomorrow! Crazy! I’m a little more excited than I’ve been. Still nervous, though.

I never want to sit in a car again...

Longest. Day. Ever.

From the beginning, today was already supposed to be a long day – coming in at thirteen and a half hours. That was, of course, before I made a MAJOR error in driving directions near Washington DC. Instead of skirting the city, my GPS rerouted me RIGHT through DC. Traffic wasn’t ideal (it wasn’t rush hour, thankfully) but I ended up driving straight down Constitution Ave. As annoying as it was to add 45 minutes onto an already long day, it was kind of nice to drive through the nation’s capitol. I have always loved DC, and today was no different.

I ended up driving through Delaware, Maryland, DC, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, and finally made it to Alabama. There was a huge traffic jam on the interstate in Tennessee (an RV caught fire). Sarah was about an hour ahead of me and was stuck in that mess. My GPS must have known the traffic was bad because it had me get off the interstate just before the jam. I was then traveling on a side road, which, come to find out, ALSO had a traffic jam. The reports from people on waze were over an hour old and said that traffic was at a standstill and many cars had all turned around. I spoke to a local who said it had been held up for almost three hours. After waiting for almost 20 minutes, and speaking to another lady (who had more teeth than the other guy), I decided I needed to find another route. Thankfully Google maps found me a way around BOTH traffic jams and back onto the interstate… 45 minutes later.  So what should have been 13.5 hours of driving turned into 15.

All I wanted to do was get to the hotel and sleep. That is, until I actually got to the hotel. Now… I have stayed in some terrible places before. But this one takes the cake. It was a Motel 6 in a “not-so-desirable” part of town. The door handle to the room didn’t work, the police paid the hotel a visit while we were in the parking lot, and the real clincher was the review on TripAdvisor from 2011 about a patron who was held up at gunpoint in his room. Needless to say, we promptly asked for a refund, and went on our merry way to a nicer hotel down the street. I didn’t even bother taking my bags out of my truck. I feel safe, clean, and comfortable in our new hotel…. Even if it is three times the price.

Time for bed. Nine and a half hours of driving tomorrow.

Day one on the books

On the Road Again…

After one full day on the road towards Texas, I am feeling better about this whole move. I left Bethel just after 8am today, filled up my tank, and made my way south. The rain was heavy for most of the morning but let up just north of New York City. Traffic was manageable all day, and I only dealt with one small delay. I made it to Delaware in time for Janet to give me a tour of the town as well as the hospital. Lewes is such a cute town, and the beach was absolutely stunning. I have already started thinking about a travel assignment here next summer… as long as I get in my hours at FAHC.

I spent:

$125 in gas

$20 in tolls

$15 in food.

Tomorrow holds 13.5hrs of driving, and close to 900miles. This should put both Sarah and I in Webster in the evening on Saturday.

And I'm off...

I can’t believe today is the day that I am leaving Vermont, my home of 26 years, to start the drive towards Texas. So many emotions are taking over.

First of all, I am nervous. Aside from living in Australia for a semester, I haven’t been outside of Vermont for this long. I am nervous to leave my love-filled nest of a comfort zone. I am nervous to leave my family and friends for an extended period of time. I also am INCREDIBLY nervous to be moving to a new community, moving to a “red” state, and also starting a job at a new hospital. I am also nervous about the recent Ebola fiasco. I know that it is a possibility that Ebola is going to end up all over the US, but it is already in Texas… the state I am moving to. Time for everyone to practice their best hand washing!

As well as nervous, I am excited. Travel nursing is something I have wanted to do since I met a travel nurse, Helen, in Australia. It has always seemed like the best and easiest way to travel, while working at the same time. For the same reasons that I am nervous, I am also excited. I am excited to learn a new area, to reach outside of my comfort zone, and to learn and grow professionally in a new setting.

To top it all off, I am humbled. The outpouring of love that I have received from my friends and family over the last few weeks has been nothing short of amazing. The hugs, laughter, smiles, stories, and gifts have made this transition so perfect and challenging. Every one of you has played an incredibly important role in my life, and I can’t imagine going day to day without seeing you all. Your love, support, and compassion have far exceeded what I ever could have asked for. I am so glad that I was able to say goodbye to (almost) everyone in the past few weeks. I think what makes it easiest for me is that I know it is only “see you later,” and not “Goodbye.”

And so today, it begins. The 30hr, two thousand mile drive, starts this morning. As the rain is settling on the valleys, the trees have provided their last bit of beautiful fall foliage as a send off. I can’t think of a better way to leave Vermont.