In just two short days it will be FIVE years since I started in endoscopy. Say what? I vividly remember thinking what in Sam Hill are they going to talk about for a week in RNO (RN Orientation). I’m so happy this was pre Covid and all the classes were in person. Now days you sit at home behind your computer and it’s done via zoom. Anyway the entire week was like a review of everything I had learned over the past thirty years of my nursing career. I found it very interesting and learned a lot. After that week, I started the actual job.

The first year was total hell. For starters I left the floor I had worked on for eighteen years. I knew everyone, I could do the job blindfolded, and I had the most seniority. I found myself in a foreign country not knowing anyone or the language. I came home every night mentally spent because I had to think about what I was doing every second I was there. Then Covid hit and I felt called to go help in ICU and so I did. It was better for my mental health to know I was doing that every day then be sent to other areas of the hospital to help or screen people as they came in. This also greatly improved my self confidence.

As I reflect over the past five years, all of my original co-workers have left except for Chris who is now semi-retired and works on Mondays only. Somehow I now have the most endoscopy experience which is both comical and scary. Because I only work part time, I am not at work enough to fill the role of the highest seniority. Luckily Sarah and Kelly fulfill this role perfectly and I often go to them when I have no idea how to fix something or do some random rarely done procedure. They are both amazing and if they leave to further pursue their careers I will be screwed.

The current group of girls I have worked with for over a year now are so much fun. It’s like working every day with my own daughters. Halloween the past two years have been a lot of fun in endo. I was off last year when they decided to dress up like the doctors as a surprise. They sent me photos and it was amazing.

This next photo cracks me up every time I look at it. No, it is not a real patient on the stretcher. I think it might have been Sarah pretending. But anyway Clare has Dr. Heavey down perfectly and Dr. Heavey has us down perfectly. Although we don’t have ear buds in when working in the room but if it is a boring colon we may be messing around on our phone. Dr. Heavey never wears scrubs so seeing him in our scrubs is a hoot.

This year Dr. Aymerich decided we should dress up as Pirates for Pirate Booty since we deal with butts all day. Everyone was sure that he would get up late and not participate but he did as well as everyone. We had quite a good time. For the first time ever Dr. Aymerich was actually hot and had the endo room set at 65 instead of 75. He needs to wear his costume every day. Here was our set up outside the room. The treasure chest had pirates booty snacks inside it. Now that has always been a hot commodity in the snack bags for Big Stuf camp. It also worked perfectly with our theme.

Because of the day and how our cases fell we all couldn’t be in the same picture at once. Also the weight loss doctor decided to add an out patient case to our schedule on his non block time so we made him participate as well. Of course I snuck and took his picture while he was busy scoping so he looks super serious.

We are still waiting to hear if we won the Halloween costume contest. I mean I know we should have. However even if we didn’t, we are the most fun unit at St. Clare. We certainly had a great day and I am not going to lie when I came to get the patients for their procedures the looks on their faces when they saw me was priceless. When I sent these to our family group chat my husband immediately responded Big Red (that’s me) looks like Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite.

I took one look at this and absolutely could not stop laughing. My husband can be quite funny.

Mole Moral ~ If you don’t have fun at your job, perhaps it’s time to find a new one. Hopefully these girls will stick around until I retire because it will be the best time ever.