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#207 Victoria Warren: A Nurse's Journey through the pandemic
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be on the front lines of a global pandemic? Join us as we sit down with Victoria Warren, who began her nursing career just before the COVID-19 pandemic erupted. She walks us through her harrowing experiences as an ICU nurse at one of the largest hospitals in the South. Victoria paints a vivid picture of the differences between ICU and med-surge nursing and shares the extraordinary measures she took to keep her loved ones safe. Listen to her recount the fear and uncertainty that medical professionals grappled with during those early chaotic days, highlighting the resilience and dedication that defined their efforts.
Balancing work and family life during a crisis is no easy feat, and Victoria’s story is a powerful testament to that struggle. We delve into the emotional and physical toll that her demanding job exacted, especially while homeschooling her children. From long, grueling shifts to the psychological strain of constant life-and-death situations, Victoria’s account underscores the immense pressure faced by healthcare workers. The ripple effects on her children’s education and mental health reveal the broader impacts of the pandemic on families, emphasizing the urgent need for supportive systems for those on the front lines.
In the final segment, we explore the transformative power of therapy, humor, and a strong support network. Victoria discusses how therapy helped her manage the emotional turmoil and how finding a fulfilling job brought renewed purpose. Discover the critical role of humor as a coping mechanism and the importance of self-care in sustaining mental health. We also highlight the upcoming Crew Classic golf tournament, which aims to raise funds for veteran suicide prevention and other vital causes, reminding us of the importance of supporting those who care for us. Join us in celebrating the resilience of healthcare professionals and the crucial role of kindness and support in our communities.
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Okay, dispose of enemy personnel to kill period with my attrition okay, victoria warren, it's a pleasure to have you here today.
Speaker 1:Um, you're our first nurse, oh, first you've had any nurses?
Speaker 1:before no nurses, nope, no well, thank you which is perfect, because that's often, uh, a career field and dedicated providers that we don't talk about. And the last few years, certainly, when we were dealing with the pandemic, nurses were in the front line. They were on the front line and I think it's important to be able to reflect back on that experience, because you were right there in it, you were in the thick of it and there's a lot of things to explore the impact it had on your health, your mental health. What was it like when you're all of a sudden thrown into the spotlight Because while the world stopped for all of us, it didn't stop for you guys.
Speaker 2:Not us. You were there, definitely not us.
Speaker 1:You're welcome, we're still going. Yeah, so, and how long had you been a nurse at that point?
Speaker 2:How long had you been a nurse at that point? I graduated in May of 19. So I had been a nurse for about half a second and I went straight from school into ICU and they tell I don't know if you know, but they often tell nurses, when you graduate, go to med surge, go to med surge. I am not a med surge nurse. It doesn't match my personality, it doesn't match the way that my brain works. It was not ever going to be somewhere that was the right fit for me. So I went straight to ICU.
Speaker 1:What's a med surge? What's a what's?
Speaker 2:a medical surgical.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Um, it's, we call them like people who can walk and talk. So like if you go into the ER for I don't know you're throwing up, they can't figure out why, they've done some scans and they still can't figure out why, but you're not actively getting close to coding or actively needing surgery or needing vasopressors or a ventilator, so like a breathing machine. If you don't need any of that stuff, you can walk and talk and you need medication and monitoring, they put you on a med surge floor.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay.
Speaker 2:So it's a bit different. It's a very different skillset and it is a skillset it's very much time management. It's, um, they give a lot of medications. They have more patients per nurse Usually it's somewhere between five and eight, I think Um, whereas I have two Nice, I have two very, very sick patients, but I have two. So it's a very different skill set. But I had been a nurse for about literally I graduated in May. I just got off of orientation that fall and then it really hit hard, the spring of 20. That fall, and then it really hit hard the spring of 20.
Speaker 1:And you're? You're one of the busiest um hospitals up here in the South right.
Speaker 2:Yes, we, I'm at the seventh largest hospital in the nation, alabama's only level one um trauma, and actually I traveled during that time.
Speaker 1:You were a travel nurse as well.
Speaker 2:Yes, I traveled during that time I figured they could either pay me like crap or treat me like crap, but we weren't going to do both. So, especially if I'm putting my family's health at risk, if I'm going to go into this every single day and I'm going to deal with and I knew going in, I knew as soon as it started getting what kind of impact this was going to have on all of us. When I had to park outside and have a change of clothes and a towel outside, because I would not even wear my clothes in the house in the beginning, we didn't know, we didn't know. We didn't know how that was going to be. I've got kids, I've got a husband that is super predisposed to cardiac issues and it wasn't something I was willing to risk. So I um, I was changing like completely stripping down, disinfecting outside, coming in, going straight to the shower, and then my husband would literally like bleach the floor behind me as I'm walking in because we had no idea how bad it was going to be.
Speaker 2:I mean, I don't know if in the beginning, if all of that was actually necessary looking back, but because we didn't know, we were scared, we were, you know, doing all the things.
Speaker 1:So none of us knew, nobody knew, and that's that's something that is important to reflect back and understand. Like you can have fear, you can be, and there was a lot of that. There was a lot of fear mongering. There was was a lot. But what do you do in the absence of knowledge, when there is no medical provider that's truly giving you and have to be careful because q-tube algorithm and the ai it's gonna fucking scan through this? But it was a lot of unknown and for us at home, for everybody, that was like hey, everybody, stay at home. We were, we're in a cocoon, we were in a bubble for most part, and you could just blissfully just turn on Netflix. You couldn't fucking do that.
Speaker 2:Tiger King was all I heard about and I was like I don't know what this is. I mean I don't know what this is and they were like well, she killed the husband. I'm like I still don't know what this is. I still have no idea what this is, because I never watched it, because, but I'm trying to eat.
Speaker 2:I don't know. What do you think about that? And I was like I have no idea it was. You know it was different, it was. I think it's important to realize that we were all doing our best, but we practice medicine. You know, that's what, what we say. We are practicing nurses, we are practicing clinicians, we're doing our best. Everybody was, I feel like, but we didn't know. I think everybody wanted to keep everyone as safe as we could.
Speaker 2:Um, and there was a lot of fear mongering. I'm it was frustrating being on the front lines like that and seeing how a very scary situation was being manipulated for everyone else's end game. There was no and it wasn't you know, this group of people or that group of people, it was everyone. Everyone was picking the entire situation apart, picking out like cherry, picking the pieces that made the most sense for whatever their particular end game was or their particular message, and taking that and it was just very manipulated. And it was really difficult to see that and see that being portrayed publicly in the media, in social media, and then also get up every morning and go to work and that's just not. It wasn't the same. The same. They weren't. As the young kids say, the math wasn't mathing, there were things missing somewhere and that was hard to see, it was hard to experience and hard to kind of combat and, being the only nurse in my family, everybody was like, hey, what do you think? Hey, what is this?
Speaker 1:and I was like I look, dude, we don't know yeah there's a lot of parallels between that and and and being in a combat zone, and some people are like, well, you're being overly dramatic. No, think about it, dude. Like you are going into a hazardous environment and you have to put on blinders or get in tunnel vision and focus on what's immediately in front. And as soon as you get done, everybody wants to bombard you with questions. Is like, fuck, dude, I am trying to keep it together and take care. I'm there are so many unknowns and I can't even imagine what it was like going in into the in your work environment and seeing the new cases the new, I mean, how packed was that hospital? Like, how did you manage each day going from like focusing in on the mission?
Speaker 2:So I was at several different hospitals during the span of COVID and every single one of them had ICU overflow and they were holding them in the ERs. So there were lots of times that as an ICU nurse, I would be pulled to go manage the ICU patients in the ER. Because, again, er nurses, total badasses. Completely different skill set. They are used to like stabilizing and out I don't know if you've ever heard that term like we treat them and eat them, literally like destabilize and then go because they've got so many people. They are turning those beds over so quickly. So, managing vasopressors, managing ventilators, that kind of stuff they can stabilize but they're not super accustomed to managing that level of acuity while also managing everything else they've got going on down there so they would pull us. So almost every facility I was in had ICU overflow because there were no more beds.
Speaker 2:At one point we were looking at two different options. There was a group of people working on figuring out how to split a ventilator, one machine that it's a tube that goes down your throat and breathes for you into four patients. They were literally changing the mechanisms inside, adding add-ons, basically what they do in the space station, like here's what we've got. This is what we need. Here are your materials. Make it work. They were trying to back engineer it to split that one ventilator into four patients because we were running out of ventilators.
Speaker 2:And then there were other scenarios where our social workers were actually being trained on how to go in and tell a patient that we knew wasn't going to survive the disease process that we needed their ventilator to give it to somebody who may survive the disease process, and having to tell those people's families like we need their vent because they're not going to make it and they are so. Luckily it never got to any of that scenario, but it was. I mean we had, you never had an open bed and even if you had an open bed, you may not have the nurses for it. That's a big misconception about nursing right now is everybody thinks we don't have enough nurses. We don't have it. We have plenty of nurses and in many times there's just not enough nurses who are, who are willing to be at bedside. Right now it's been rough. Last year there was a study out by the was it the American Nursing Association that said that 85% of bedside nurses were looking to leave within the next 12 months.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:Yeah, being bedside is hard. It's tough on your body, it's tough mentally and kind of like you guys walking into a battlefield. It really was a battlefield. I mean, we put on our PPE, we walked of your humanity. Because I don't cry when I'm supposed to like people die, you're supposed to cry, I don't. I cut it off and I can't because I don't have time.
Speaker 1:You don't have time to process, which is something that that's another thing that we talk about it a lot, uh, on this show, the. You experience a moment in time and if you don't process it, that stays with you. You know we again for again sound like a broken record, vessel vanderkulke. The body keeps the score. You don't process that trauma, it stays with you and it goes. And our first responders, our doctors, nurses, like these are individuals in in the the worst moments of your life. They're there with you, they're there in that room, they're watching you, they're, they're working their asses off trying to make sure you can make it through. But and sadly, when you don't, when you expire, that stays with that person. And if you're working non-stop through, through an unprecedented event, you don't got time to go home and process this. So of course, these individuals are getting burnt out.
Speaker 2:No, especially when you know, like my worst, I still remember my very worst shift. It was Christmas Eve of 22. Or is it 21? It was a Christmas Eve. It was bad, it was bad, bad and we lost six patients that day. We knew we were going to lose four. We did not think the other two were going to go and we lost six patients that day. And we also intubated one.
Speaker 2:Literally, I stayed late to intubate this patient. I took my personal cell phone into his room because we didn't have any more iPads. We didn't have anything and I don't even know if it was appropriate to take my personal cell phone, but I double bagged it in bio bags. But this particular patient was a foreign national. He wasn't from here, he had no family here with him and he had young children back in his home country that he wasn't even going to get to speak to. He had all of the markers that I knew.
Speaker 2:Once we intubated him, the chances of him making it through that disease process were next to none and I wanted him to be able to talk to his family. So I took my phone in there, I let him FaceTime his family on my phone, him FaceTime his family on my phone and we intubated him at eight o'clock on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day is my oldest son's birthday, so I had to come home and be mommy. I had to come home and, after losing six people and coding and working hard all day long and then knowing that that man was probably not going to make it through, I had to come home and like snap out of it, put on my happy face and be mom and do the Christmas thing and some of that stuff. Just you know, then I'll drop a pin on the floor in the kitchen and completely lose my mind and like break down into tears.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:My family's like you. Okay, I'm like sure I'm fine. I mean, what do you say?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm like, sure I'm fine. I mean, what do you say? Yeah, no, most people don't understand that. It's a absolute fucking mindfuck having to be two people when we're amassed. Yeah for sure, that's. No human being can keep that up for too long. And yeah, like the military, we're, we're, we're fortunate. Our battlefield is. Hopefully it remains this way. But it stays miles and miles away from home and if you do the right thing, if you're cognizant enough, you're aware of what you experience, you can come back and you can speak with professionals, get help, eventually process that stuff and be the best version of yourself at home and not deal with the repercussions of putting all that stuff in the back burner. Our first responders, our nurses, our doctors here in the states every day you're going into your battlefield, every day you're engaging with this, like at any moment that you have that understanding of like fuck, like this, is getting deep and I need, I need some sort of outlet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there were many times, but I didn't have time at the time. You know we didn't. Everybody was short staffed, we were working and there were days. There was I took one contract. It was a 21 day crisis contract, so I worked 21 days straight. I took one contract that was a 21 day crisis contract, so I worked 21 days straight, 21 days of 12 hour shifts. And those 12 hours are under the best of circumstances when you're not bogged down with paperwork, because what did not relax during that time were our charting demands and our documentation.
Speaker 1:Oh, fuck, yeah, yeah, I don't even think about all that stuff.
Speaker 2:And every time you give a medication, every time you walk into a room, you have to document all of that because we also can face lots of legal backlash in our profession. I mean a ton of legal backlash in our profession and we don't have the hospitals do take care of us. I mean they obviously they have insurance on us, but also we're kind of a dime a dozen a lot of times and so if they have to make a choice there, in my opinion I've never been presented with this situation, but I feel like we would kind of be the lowest on the totem pole as far as who they're going to protect. So all of that still remained. We still had all of that documentation to do all of those things.
Speaker 2:So saying 12 hours is literally under the best case scenarios. I mean, most of those days were easily 13, 14 hour days for us, and I did 21 of them straight, so I didn't have time to to do anything. And then you have to think about the ones of us who had children, who schools shut down so I pulled my kids out of school and we started homeschooling. So on top of what I was going through professionally, I was trying to figure out how to homeschool my children and how to navigate their isolation. Because one thing we did know very quickly is the impact that the masks and all the social isolation we're having on our youth. We knew that fast.
Speaker 1:And we're still seeing the effects right now.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, it's crazy yeah.
Speaker 1:Shout out to Perri-Ann Parkman, who's running for Manatee County School, district 3. She's running because she's seen the effects of what's happened. Kids went back to school but they never were held to a standard while they were out. And now you got kids and I think she was saying fourth, fifth grade, they can't read, can't read.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's insane.
Speaker 2:But moms don't teach as a general rule. I mean, most of us don't wake up and go. You know what we're going to? Homeschool. Now I will say that movement is growing, a large part in part, you know, due to COVID, due to all of these schools closing down.
Speaker 2:But also those teachers had no idea. I mean, they have never been thrown into a situation where they're like okay, you take everything that you have learned, all of your curriculum, all of your plans, flip that around, do it online and through worksheets. They didn't know how to do that either. It was before. You know all of the process. Necessity is the mother of invention. So now they have Google classrooms and they have all these zoom things, but prior to this they didn't, they weren't prepared either and they were doing the best they could to teach with what they had. But also depending on parents, who, a lot of us, were still working, like it wasn't a lot of things didn't shut down the industry that my husband is in. He was still working, so he was still out of town a couple of days a week.
Speaker 2:I was working only weekends, so we basically were like high-fiving on Thursday nights. Here's what's going on with the house. Here's what's going on with the kids. Love you so much, see you later. I mean, it's made for a very rough few years, for sure, and I can see several families around me that have experienced that. I mean, obviously most of my friends are nurses and healthcare professionals, so I see a little bit different perspective of it. But even people in our neighborhood were like my kids don't know how to make friends anymore and we saw the psych part of pediatrics requiring a lot more beds. There were a lot of um suicide attempts, a lot of depression, higher levels of anxiety Within the youth Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, I know. They closed an entire med-surg floor on one of the big hospitals one of the big children's hospitals and turned it into a psych floor because they had so much overflow. They had to find somewhere to put these kids so that they could get treatment and get help before they made a decision that couldn't be undone.
Speaker 1:I had no, no understanding. That was a, that was a critical issue it was a lot.
Speaker 2:It's been a lot and these kids are. You know, kids are resilient and they're bouncing back. But I can tell you to be very upfront and honest, I put my children back in public school this year and we have found some marked deficits, and that reflects directly on me. I don't like math. I think math is the devil. I don't know why you have to put the letters and the alphabet. All in together, I don't. I don't know who put one through ten and abc all together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, shout out to college algebra, fuck you uh so much deeply have a bone to pick with you uh but me trying to teach my kids that, like I understand it just enough to be able to do what I need to do with it for my job and to get through it. But I can't explain to them why they're there, because I don't know why they're there. I'm like my middle son's, like Mom, why are there letters? And I'm like dude, I don't know. Retweet. I have no idea why there are letters there. There just are.
Speaker 2:So we found some huge math deficits and now we're like bust and tell to make up for it. But we didn't have an option of a tutor. We didn't have Sylvan, we didn't have Mathnasian, because all of that stuff shut down too. So if you weren't particularly gifted in math or I mean a lot of times these kids have learning deficits. They're dyslexic. It's very difficult to teach a dyslexic baby how to read because they see things differently. Their brains see in 3D and so the D's and the B's and the P's and the G's all get mixed up and it doesn't make sense to them. And if you're not trained in that and trained with resources, how to get through that? As a mom, what do you do? Like you pick a struggle, you're trying to survive, you feed your kid. You love your kid, but maybe your kid doesn't know how to read. I get it it's. I think it's shocking, but coming from this side of it, I get it.
Speaker 1:It's hard. Yeah, parents, uh, parents, parents, that with a lot during the pandemic, and like we see it in the kids, now we see it and now I don't know like coming into it, now understanding like the, the importance of being able to. Like homeschooling sounds amazing, but what if you can't devote full-time to it? It's a full-time job, and when you're nursing and when you're traveling and saving other people's family members, like what time do you have for yourself? What time do you have for your family? Like it's incredibly difficult, like I would imagine that that even bleeds into right now, even though there's no, no, knock on wood, there's nothing crazy going on. I did hear there's a new outbreak of monkey pox, but I didn't hear that even now. Like, how do you make time for your family? How do you make time for yourself?
Speaker 2:um, so my particular family has gone through some big changes. Like I said, I've only worked weekends for the past seven years. Kids have been homeschooled, um, and usually I need at least one day a week, which my husband hates it when I say this, but I call it my rot day because I just need to sit and rot. I make so many decisions, so many micro decisions at work and all I don't care what we eat for dinner, like I don't care if you eat, great, if the dog, the kids want to eat dog food, like at this point, groovy, go for it.
Speaker 1:You're sounding a lot like a green beret.
Speaker 2:It's just we do what we do, but micro decisions and all of the decisions and all of like the need that so many people need me during the day, that call bell never stops. Clinicians, providers need me, Other nurses need me. By the time I get home I'm like, okay, I'm so overstimulated. I'm so my brain is done, it's just fried.
Speaker 2:And so I needed a rot day. He hates it, so I've changed it to my 1% day. Like you get 1% of me today, that's all you get. I might say hello, I might get up to eat, maybe we'll see, but that's not really effective for a family. I mean. I've got teenage kids that need attention, they need presence, they need interactive conversation to make sure that they're going on the right direction in their life. So we did put them back in public school in an effort to take some responsibility and weight off of my shoulders. I did change my work status. I found a hospital that I love. I am staying at it and got off of weekends only, so doing some different things. I've gotten into Pilates. I practice mindfulness with my therapist. I have a therapist that somewhere that woman's got some golden wings and a throne waiting for her.
Speaker 1:She is a life saver. So you found a therapist. Now did you find a therapist after everything quieted down? Is it recent?
Speaker 2:No, actually I had a pretty traumatic first marriage, pretty traumatic divorce and custody battle, and she was basically thrown at me from the universe or God or whatever higher power you believe in, it was more of like here she is, this is for you, she is your person. Go, and I did, and I have never been more grateful. I don't think to one individual in my life. She's just awesome and I can still, even now, like now, I do maintenance visits. I'm in a good, a better yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, we talk about that all the time, like therapy doesn't have to be the scary thing. They're like, oh, I'm going to go to the therapist and then you're begging for begging for it to end. And then, or the opposite, where you just constantly for, like your entire life. It's like no, it's a journey. When you get to a place where you can go off on your own, like, okay, you go off on your own, but then you hit a pit stop or you hit a flat tire and need help again, go right back in like that's amazing, yes, that's awesome everything.
Speaker 2:And I'm I'm very blessed with her that I can text her and be like, hey, this is what's going on. Am I overreacting? Am I? I've tried all the things, I don't know? And she'll be like, okay, maybe think about X, y and Z and let me know if that helps. And if it helps, great. And if not, I text her the next day and I'm like, how about, let's schedule something? And she's like, okay, cool. So I have developed that relationship and I'm so grateful for her. But she has been, you know, obviously huge impact and she teaches a lot of mindfulness, a lot of waiting to feel where the fear is coming from in your body, like, is it tight in your chest, is it?
Speaker 2:your shoulders, is it in your jaw. So when that stuff starts, when I start feeling those feelings, I can try to figure out where the emotion is connecting and start unraveling it before it unravels me, kind of. Yeah, and I am actually really lucky. I've got a lot of great family, a lot of great support, and my poor children even know now like they stop at the door and they're like can I hug you or are you gross? I'm like give me a minute, let me go shower, because COVID is COVID was bad, but, um, there are lots of other things that you can get on you doing what I do.
Speaker 1:I can only imagine. Yeah, lots of other um wonderful substances.
Speaker 2:So many substances. I don't know if I'd go as far as wonderful, but so many substances. So they're like are you good or not? And I'm like, oh, give me just a minute and I've got a little space that my scrubs go and we just work it out. So I don't know, maybe laughing at things that are probably supposed to be sad have pretty sick sense of humor.
Speaker 1:I mean dark humor. And I remember when I started getting better after my downward spiral. I remember being hyper aware and hyper cognizant of like everything that I was like doing, especially like, should I be watching this type of movie? Is this good for my mental health? And I would talk to my therapist and I remember like, hey, look like do this thing. It's a podcast and, like you know, team room humor. I'm like I laugh at these moments. Is that okay? And I remember her looking at me. It's like you're always going to be the green beret, like Denny, you're always going to have that humor. That's part of your tribe, that's part of who you are. Like there's nothing wrong with that. Don't feel ashamed that. Those moments still make you laugh. I'm like, all right, good, just wanted to make sure I literally asked my therapist that one time.
Speaker 2:I was like I just want to shake and make sure I'm not going down like serial killer pathways. Are we safe? Are we good?
Speaker 1:I know, that that morbid, that that humor that you find because there there is. You have your tribe, you have your nurse corps, your individuals that understand the things that are funny and like. You have to be able to do that on your shifts. You have to be able to look at each other and laugh in those moments and know that it's okay, like, hey, this is our, this is for us, this is our content, our humor. Yeah, if people don't get it, they don't get it.
Speaker 2:And honestly I think, kind of to do what y'all do, kind of to do what we do, you got to have maybe a screw or two loose, like I don't think anybody in their right mind is like you know what I'm going to go do. I'm going to go try this today. Yeah, not, I mean, I just think we gotta we're built a little different. Maybe we're a little neuro spicy or something, I don't.
Speaker 1:I don't know but yeah it, there's something. There's something different in the dna down deep inside. Like you have a calling and I think that's the beautiful thing about your journey is a lot of people jump into their calling right off of high school and I think you always knew you were meant for more. You always knew that there was something bigger for you. It's one thing to see somebody, like I said, graduate and go find their calling. But when somebody finally taps into that understanding of like I'm meant for more, I'm meant for a life of service and be of greater value to my fellow man, and seeing you in your journey like that's a beautiful thing. Like and being able to look back now and seeing that younger version of yourself, like how crazy is it to see? Like holy shit. Like look what I've done, look what I'm able to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I look back at because, like you said, I had no idea coming out of high school what I wanted. I wanted to go cheer and party. I was really, really good at it. And I look back now and I'm, like you know, I'm still kind of fascinated that I'm still alive. Much less that now I am gifted with being able to help other people.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And there's something to be said about that. You know there's something to be said about. It's my every day. It is my every day to intubate somebody, to paralyze them, to keep their blood pressure up, with all these different medications, but this is the scariest day of that person's life.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's the scariest day of their spouse's life, who's been with them for 40 something years, who doesn't know what's going on. Maybe they're medically naive, maybe their vocabulary is not quite to the level of how we generally speak, and so they're mad because they're scared and confused. And you have to take a second to remember that and break that back down. And it is kind of eye opening that the same girl that was out doing some dumb fuckery is now, you know, trying to calm somebody down and explain things in a way that makes them feel more comfortable and understands that we are doing everything we possibly can for their loved one, and it's a little bit of a growth as well, I'm like oh, hair flip, good job.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Look at you go.
Speaker 1:It's important to pause. I remember I recently texted a buddy of mine who I mean just I'm not going to say his name so he'll get too blushed but you go through this career with somebody and he's a little bit younger than me not by a lot, by a few years, but when we were going through the Q course he was E4, which is a specialist in the Army. He didn't have a lot of experience and he's always counted out. A lot of the senior guys would count him out and dismiss him. And watching his career just explode all the way through and to finally be at the pinnacle of his career right now, being a young team sergeant giving the difficult missions, giving the difficult problems because the command believes in him, sees him achieve so much.
Speaker 1:I remember like I remember telling him you have to pause and reflect, man. You won't get this moment in time again. You won't be able to sit here and look at what you've accomplished. But do it today. Take that moment to look at where you're at in life and look at what you've achieved. When everybody else discounted you, you kept moving. You never faltered. You remained a man of faith. You remained a man of faith. You remained a person of extreme confidence, but not in the cocky sense. He was always sure of who he was and what he brought to the table.
Speaker 1:And I say that to everybody If you're listening right now and you've accomplished something whether it's graduated from college or you got a promotion pause, pause this episode right now. Just reflect on what you've accomplished, like you will get to a point in life where things will get difficult, things will get hard. You won't have as many wins. So savor this moment right now. That way you can reflect and realize that I've done fucking awesome shit before. I've been a badass before. I can do it again. Like it.
Speaker 1:I say it all the time within the special forces creed. At the very end it says live to succeed again. And and we have to be able to look back, see the great success and understand life's a wave, it's gonna come down, it's gonna smack the shit out of us, but it'll. You know, our time's gonna come back, we're gonna be on top of the world. And and covid, that was a big kick in the dick for so many of us, but we're on the back side of it now, like we're able to see okay, like things can get better, like when you walk into work now, how do you find yourself having that ability to take a deep breath and realize, like okay, like we made it through some tough shit, I'm fucking still here and still have that hope and that positivity and not be as jaded?
Speaker 2:You know, I don't know. I mean I don't know. You've heard that song that say even bad bitches have bad days, like we. Yeah for sure, but we walk in. I walk personally. I walk in every day and I'm like, okay, what does today look like?
Speaker 2:Again, the unit that I work on at the facility that I'm in. It is wild. It is balls to the walls like super high acuity, very, very sick patients every single day. But I'm also in a unit that we get a little bit of everything. I get all kinds of stuff thrown at me. So I go in every morning and just see what we're going to do today, where are we going to go today, and I give it my all and I think there are some parts of me that are still pretty jaded.
Speaker 2:I can be doing postmortem care, thinking about what I'm going to have for lunch, and I think that's a little weird for a lot of people. Um, but I also feel like if you don't know what the inside of a body bag smells like, then I don't think you get to tell me what's weird anymore. I have worked on that Like if you it's a very much boots on the ground situation, if you were not boots on the ground and you have no hands on first person experience. I don't, I don't care as much about the judgment. Maybe, like you know, feel free to judge, do you boo? But I think if I I've gotten to where, if I won't take their advice, I also don't care about their judgment anymore.
Speaker 2:And that's been of become part of my armor, a little bit of my defense to protect myself because I think, if and like I tell people this all the time, I can tell you your room number, I can tell you what all of your labs look like, I can tell you where all of your IV access is. I have no idea what your name is and that probably sounds awful, but I think that's one of the ways that I personally like depersonalize. I keep all of my patients. While I love them all, I keep them in arm's distance so that I can protect myself.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I don't know if that's the same as jaded, but I don't think so.
Speaker 1:I think that you have to do that, um, you have to be able to do that in order to be the best provider. I think if you're too close and you get personable, like that's, that's difficult, that makes it even harder for you. And we see our medics in our docs in the military. Deal with that. I mean, when we call for doc, that motherfucker knows us and you can't. I wouldn't wish that pain on anybody. It's one thing to work on somebody you don't give a fuck about, especially if it's the enemy. But when the dude that's crying, laying next to you like, you've been through training with that dude, you know their families, that's a whole different type of pain and that's why they're the greatest. That's why our 18 deltas and every other medical specialty in, uh, our soft community there's some badass motherfuckers, because they and they have to flip that switch, um well, you have to because otherwise you make emotional decisions instead of logical ones, and emotional decisions are not always the most thought out.
Speaker 2:I mean you would make a decision that maybe didn't make any sense, because it's what your heart said. So you have to for their safety. I mean you love them enough that you cut it off. Basically, I don't even know if that makes any sense. It does in my head, but yeah, that makes sense. You have to put up a barrier and you have to just focus in and do your job to the best of your ability and then deal with the repercussions after.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think that's the only way that you can get through it. At least, that's the only way I can get through it.
Speaker 1:And what's next for you? As far as a nurse, I know that there's some things that you're trying to move around and change.
Speaker 2:Yes, I am applying to CRNA school next cycle.
Speaker 1:Why would you do that? It's more work.
Speaker 2:It is more work it is, however, comma. It's in the operating room. It's one-to-one patient scenario. I would be focused on one patient. I'm getting on up there in the years and moving every shift. The average amount of weight a nurse moves per shift is 1,000 pounds. Really, yes, between lifting, boosting, changing, rolling, you have to think we've got patients that 5, 600 pounds. We have to move them every two hours to keep them from getting bed sores.
Speaker 1:We have to pull them up to the bed.
Speaker 2:We have to bathe them. If they have bowel movements, we have to clean that up. If they need to be put in a scanner, we have to take the bed down, move them from this bed to the scanning bed, scan them, bring them back, move the bed back and that stuff adds up over the years. And I know that I haven't been doing it for too terribly long, but I was a little bit older. Going in my body won't be able to handle it forever, like these nurses who've been at it for 50, however many years those women are. When you see those women, you are safe, like you are good, you know those women, know what they're doing. Or those men even you are a good hands because, like most of the people that are closer to my age are like, okay, nurse practitioner school, crna school.
Speaker 2:How do we protect our bodies, protect our minds and kind of get out of bedside, which is, it's, sad? I think bedside nursing needs a lot of love. Right now I'm not quite sure how to intervene and help on that. It's something that I'm researching and looking at. Intervene and help on that, it's something that I'm researching and looking at, but I think everybody in the industry is trying to figure out how we keep more of us at the bedside. Yeah, but also, just you know, moving on getting the kids situated, changing some things around, trying to find things to do to stay busy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that brings me to our next question. You're somebody that's of service to your community, to anybody that you come across at the hospital, but you're also helping bring awareness and, you know, be of service to our veteran community. I want to give a shout out to your next event that's coming up. Tell us about that.
Speaker 2:Yes, so we are putting on a golf tournament. It's the crew classic. It is going to be September 11th at Greystone on the legacy course. It's a beautiful members only course. This it's for the crew. Like Marine Alliance of Alabama and their main philanthropic principles are veteran suicide prevention, tbi awareness and child gun safety.
Speaker 1:Two of the things that we cover most, not child gun safety. We here at Security Hall believe that every child should be armed. I mean, wait, no, we don't believe that Really.
Speaker 2:Appropriately maybe.
Speaker 1:With the right training, with good education and safety.
Speaker 2:I'm all right with it.
Speaker 1:So how long has the Crulette Classic been a thing?
Speaker 2:So this is our first year They've been doing fundraisers as an organization, but they're kind of like nickel-dime fundraisers, like somebody will donate a firearm and it's a $5 raffle ticket, $10 raffle ticket and they'll raise a little bit of money and they use that and they go back to doing what they're doing. I mean, they know for a fact they've prevented over 30 veteran suicides up to this point. They've done all of this work. But it's very hard to continue to do this work when they're having to nickel-dime these things.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I know.
Speaker 2:My husband and I were like, hey, let us do a golf tournament. We can get some big corporate sponsors, we can give you guys the funds that you need. It would be a one time a year thing. And it's not them doing it, it's not the organization doing it, it's us and a team of people that we've put together who are looking for fundraisers, who are going to run the tournament, who are doing all of these things, who are bringing in volunteers, which also injects a lot of youth and vitality into this organization, and it's been great. We are very excited about it. Still looking for a couple of sponsors. Still looking for a couple of teams. I think we've got three or four teams still open, teams of four.
Speaker 1:Teams couple of teams I think we've got three or four teams still open, teams of four, teams of four Yep and sponsorship is still open.
Speaker 2:Sponsorship is still open. We've got some one-star sponsors open. I think we still have a couple of the big higher-end like all the way up to $15,000 sponsors open. We have our title sponsor. Golden Scientific Labs is our title sponsor. He is a retired Marine and very invested. Yeah, we're very, very excited about it. It's going to be great. It's a little bit more work on the front end than I had anticipated, especially since when they gave us the reins in, like April, we didn't have a website until May, so it's been like get it done. It's a lot what's the website real quick.
Speaker 2:It's the crewlackclassicorg. Make sure that's it.
Speaker 1:Pause the episode right now and go to the episode description. That information will be right there for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we would love to have some actual veterans. I mean, we've got some higher level C-suite people coming to play and that's great. We would love to have more veteran involvement, not specifically Marines, it's all branches, it's everybody. It is on September 11th this year, so big day that's a huge day.
Speaker 2:We will also be honoring our. We have our local fire chief coming out. We have our local police chief coming out. All of our holes will be honoring either a fallen officer, a fallen firefighter or a fallen soldier. We, like I said, we will also be honoring our police department, our fire department. I feel like you know, that's you guys healthcare firefighters, police officers we all kind of have our little club. It feels like we do.
Speaker 1:We, we know. We know intimately what it's like to have to be there on some really rough days and then have to redo it over and over and over again. Be of service of others. It's a tribe. It's a community of individuals that are willing to put others first on a constant basis, and you don't always get the help you need, and that's something that I'd like to highlight.
Speaker 1:Our nurses, our first responders, you guys are out of the service, just like we are, as veterans and even active service members. I know for a fact a sheriff deputy or police officer can't openly say I need help and go seek mental help. It's often frowned upon and it's a liability to their department. But there are great organizations and resources out there that will keep everything 100% confidential. So if you're out there listening and that's your situation and you need help, please reach out. There are tons of organizations to connect you with. I'll hero those are three right now will help you out free, no charge to you and um, they do great work and you can be 100 confidential and have that peace of mind that they're not going to report you or put anything on documents and you can start getting help.
Speaker 1:That's the one thing we have to do. It's unfortunate, but no one's coming to save you. No one's coming, the cavalry's not coming. It's up to us Whether you're a veteran, a first responder, a nurse or a doctor, if you see somebody suffering within your organization, be willing to stop and ask and then, if you don't know where to go, just simply Google, sit down with somebody and Google for resources.
Speaker 1:That's one of the most important things. We can do that and, like I know, I do it every Thursday, we have our peer to peer support group. Right now it's still a closed group. The same individuals have been coming for the last few months and when this group eventually closes out, we'll open it back up for the next round. But remember, sometimes the one thing that we all need is just somebody that holds space for us and be willing just to hear us out and maybe be the one that Googles for resources. So, yeah, yeah, so, vicky, what is next on your agenda as far as the Krulak Classic? What else? What do we really need and what can we really help out with? A sponsorship, the most important thing or getting more people to sign up for the actual teams?
Speaker 2:Either one. I mean, we can play with what we've got. It would be great. We of course want as it in our inaugural year. We want it to be as wonderful as we can be. We're going to grow. You know we're going through some growing pains, as you do with a first year thing, and we're so excited about it we would love a couple of more sponsors we have. So I don't know if you know what Vortex. You know what Vortex is, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Does that say golf?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, Vortex Glass has now branched over into the golf world. They branched over into the golf world. They have released a range finder not the same kind of range finder. You guys have Range finder to find the flag at the end of the hole, so it lets you know how far you need to hit your ball. They've offered to give them to us at cost if we can find a sponsor to sponsor one for each of our players.
Speaker 2:That's a $300, $400 gift that we would be able to gift everyone if we could find a sponsor for that. It's been a big one. We would love that. We would love to make it something that people talk about so that we can grow it next year and keep giving back to this community, keep giving back and honoring the people that signed that blank check for us and are maybe not getting all that they could be getting. So definitely sponsorships, and obviously we would love to have it packed out. We can have up to 25 teams. We would love to have it packed out. The more the better. It increases brand awareness, so we would love that. At this point we're just working on finalizing the details. We need numbers. So if anybody wants to play, y'all come on. Come play with us, but give us some shirt sizes, because those have been ordered, so we need to get those in. Yeah, we're just, we're so excited about it. We would just love to have some more big sponsorships so that we can have some more brand awareness.
Speaker 2:I think our biggest goal this year is to lay a really great foundation and keep building.
Speaker 1:That sounds awesome. We'll get this out here, we'll start running some reels with some information and hopefully get some more awareness. So yeah, the Cruella Classic, september 11th.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:We're pumped, we're going to put it out there. I might be traveling, I might be out of the States for that, but I got some folks in the area that might want to come play golf. I don't play golf, but I'll ride around in the car and drink liquid death and make commentary all day.
Speaker 2:You know, I feel like that would be a great thing for you to do. I feel like if I gave you a camera and just let you ride around, it would be the best promos I could probably get.
Speaker 1:I think so too. We might, we might be able to make that happen.
Speaker 2:I'm here and we'll see, absolutely here for it, I will set you free.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Vicki, thank you so much for being here today. Thanks for having me. Thank you for what you're doing. I am so proud of you, absolutely thrilled to see you continue to achieve, because I don't think that you reached your absolute best position. I think you can continue going and I am so excited to see you crush life. Man, it's an absolute pleasure having you on and to all y'all listening. Be nice to your nurses so the next time you get hurt or in trouble, you know. Be kind to those people. They need your help too, especially the male nurses. They get a lot of shit. Get a lot of shit. Don't get a lot of pats on the back. They do.
Speaker 2:We kind of put them through hell too oh yeah, we'll see you all next time.
Speaker 1:till then, take care, if you like what we're doing and you enjoying the show, don't forget to share us, like us, subscribe and remember we get through this together, take care.
