My prophesy was true!

It has been a much better week! While I have worked a total of 7 hours overtime and my week is only half over, I have also received many compliments!!! I love when the tides turn! Today I got a call from an 83 year old woman who just wanted to tell me what a wonderful job I did with getting her husband into a good hospital when he needed it. She is just the cutest little thing. I spent 4 hours after my shift on Tuesday trying to get this guy a placement and it was very challenging, but she was such a joy to talk to - even when I needed to comfort her because he will likely not come home, that I really wanted to do the best that I could. She took my name down and had me spell it out for her, and then said she'd contact my boss to make sure the praises get to the right place!

Later, I was on the phone with the owner of a nursing home and she wanted one of the residents to get a respite bed because the lady was becoming quite aggressive at the home. Well, that doesn't exactly sound like a respite admit to me, but if it really was only that there have been a lot of environmental changes lately, it could work. Still, I wanted to make sure that she got the lady checked out medically, to rule out a UTI - UTI's are one of the main causes for changes in mental status in elderly people - before we go ahead and do a crisis evaluation. Really it's just being thorough (and making sure we don't admit someone psychiatrically when it is really a medical problem), but she called later and left a very long message with a co-worker about what a thorough job I did in making sure that this woman got the right care.

And finally, when I was at the ER tonight at 9pm, after a very long day in trying to find a placement for a woman who'd been there since 11am, I mentioned that I was supposed to have gone home 3 hours ago. So one of the nurses says to me, "you deserve to be paid more!" And I said, "Well, yes, I certainly do!" And then she takes out a Chucks (it's like a diaper except it lays flat on the bed below the person) and writes on it: "Dear J-'s Boss, J- deserves to be paid much more because she works her butt off for us nut-cases in the ER all the time! Much Love, C-- ox" Yeah!!