DiTL

I don't usually do this, (and by usually, I mean ever) but Julia over at My Life in Transition posted about linking up for a Day in the Life post and I thought I would go for it!

If you got here from Julia's blog, welcome! I am probably not the average reader/blogger, but I love it and I have a long list of mommy blogs on my feed. Anyway, let me introduce myself. I'm Jillian. I'm 28 (28.69 to be exact) I am single and live with roommates and work as a Nurse Practitioner with an amazing group of hospitalists.

Date: Tuesday, April 7, 2015

First of all, I am not a great sleeper. I used to be and then something happened. I don't remember the last time that I slept through the night. Yes, I am 28, not 8 months old. I don't know what to do about it. It has gotten better though. Monday night I went to bed around 10:30. I was awake from 11:30-11:45, 3:10-3:35, and 4:15-4:30ish. No fun!

5:00 am| Alarm goes off. Waking up is not my favorite thing, but if I have to choose between getting things done in the morning and trying to be productive after a long day at work, I pick morning. Hands down. Every single time. Also, coffee. :)

I should warn you before we go any further that I am totally a creature of habit. I like routine. My roommates make fun of me for it sometimes. Anyway, after staring at my phone willing the time to magically change back to midnight, I roll out of bed. Head to the bathroom, brush my teeth, and weigh. I weigh every morning. I'm neurotic like that. Then I go back to my room and make my bed. Every day.

Stella, the Titans panda, started off as a joke but somehow she has remained on my bed...

5:10 am| Go downstairs to make coffee and breakfast. Check my email while my coffee is brewing. Also check my bank account. Another thing that I do everyday. Put away some dishes while making breakfast.

5:25 am| Sit down for breakfast, coffee, and some time with Jesus. Realize there is no green in my breakfast this morning. Oh well, I'll make up for it later today.

Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day!

6:00 am| My 6am alarm goes off. Time to go back upstairs to get ready for work, but I really want to finish up a blog post for this week so I stay and work on that.

6:15 am| Can't hold off any longer. Back upstairs. Good thing my clothes are all laid out! I lay out all my clothes for the week on Sunday. Takes the guess work out of things. Also, I'm neurotic. I get dressed and throw my workout clothes in a bag.

6:30 am| Back to the bathroom for hair and makeup. That makes it sound fancy like I have a team to get me ready for work. Really it's just me, straightening my hair so that I can then curl it and putting on enough makeup to look presentable. Julia said to take selfies, so I'm doing it. But I am notoriously bad at pictures and don't smile or look normal so be prepared for faces...

7:00 am| Walking downstairs as my 7am alarm goes off. Perfect timing! Make another cup of coffee to go. Note to self: Clean the Keurig! Sheesh! Check my Pacer app to make sure I have taken at least 1000 steps before I leave for work.

7:05 am| Leave for work. Sometimes I think about wearing heels to work. Then I think about walking around the hospital all day and going up and down 11 flights of stairs and I decide against it. Ignore my messy room. And dirty mirror. Yuck!

7:14 am| Pull into the parking garage. Nine minute commute. And that includes driving through 2 school zones. I love living close to work.

7:20 am| Get into the office. Look over the patient list. Only 8 patients thanks to the Easter holiday and the weather. Change in weather is always a good way to slow things down. It's finally getting warm and people are enjoying the weather. No one wants to come to the hospital unless they're actually sick.
I look over the patients. Check on labs and vitals, put in some orders, and see who might be going home today. I am precepting a student this semester and he isn't here yet so I sign some notes that have been transcribed and are sitting in my inbox.

8:00 am| My student is here. We go meet with the case manager and social worker to run the list with them. Sometimes it's to talk about small things like a patient that is ready to go home but doesn't have insurance and we have to make sure all his meds are on the $4 list. Other times it's a patient that physical therapy says needs to go to rehab, but she doesn't have any rehab benefits with her insurance and she isn't safe to go home. Ugh! So frustrating! Insurance companies make me crazy!

8:15 am| Meet with the doctor that I'm working with this week. The doctors in our group work 7 days on/7 days off from Tuesday to Monday so this is his first day on service. I run the list with him and fill him in on what's going on with the patients.

8:30 am| See the first patient who I think can go home. She's in her 90s and when I get to her room she is up cleaning things up. A good sign that she's feeling better and can go home! I talk to her about the plan and then get her discharge paperwork ready.

9:00 am| See patient number 2 and discharge him. I don't think any other people should go home today so I stop and do notes on them.

9:45 am| See 3 more patients and write notes on them. Talk through some teaching points with my student.

11:00 am| 2 more patients seen and notes written.

11:45 am| Remember that I am supposed to schedule an appointment with a therapist. I've been meaning to do it for a while and keep forgetting. I know that if I don't do it now, I'll forget again, so I call. I have to leave a message which is super awkward because my student is right beside me and I'm trying to be evasive!

11:50 am| I have 1 patient left to see but she's in surgery so I take some time to dictate some discharge summaries from yesterday so they aren't hanging over my head.

12:30 am| Patient still isn't out of surgery and I totally forget about our group meeting. Run down to the cafe and grab lunch, drop my student off at my office, and then head to our conference room. We have a monthly meeting with all 11 docs and the 2 nurse practitioners to talk about business stuff and the residents and where things are going.

1:45 pm| Finally out of the meeting! It was long, but we are never all together so after we finished the actual business stuff we just sat around and talked before everyone decided that they still had patients to see and we should get back to work.

2:00 pm| After the meeting, I go back out to the floor. The patient is out of surgery so I see my final patient and write that note. Short patient lists make for great days! Last week there were days I didn't leave until around 6. Blah!

2:45 pm| Send my student home and head back to my office. The 2 patients that I discharged today have already left so I decide to go ahead and dictate their summaries since it's still early and I love being all caught up. Then I clean up my desk a little. If you made it through all that, congrats! My work day is pretty boring to write about. You know, HIPAA and all that...

3:30 pm| Leave work and head for the River! I have a 4pm appointment to get my nails done. I have been going every 2-3 weeks for the past 2 years or so. Yes, it's a luxury but I now go with one of my friends and it's become a standing date with us. I haven't seen her in a couple weeks so I'm excited to get to catch up.

3:50 pm| Make it to the nailbar early. It's quiet here. They are having a party tonight so we are one of the last appointments of the day. Love coming here to relax after work. I grab my box (They give you a box when you come with your own nail file and stuff so that you're not sharing with other people). They also serve wine and play a movie. I rarely go to the movies so this is the way I usually keep up with the new releases. We watched This Voice this week.

Before and after of my nails. The first picture looks awful. That was after 3 weeks!

5:10 pm| The day is gorgeous when I leave the nailbar, so I decide to walk on the River. I changed clothes and went for a walk (when I wasn't admiring the sunset) I was not the only one to have this idea. There were tons of people out- running, biking, rollerblading, walking dogs... I  didn't take a screenshot of the weather, but I think my car said it was 76 while I was driving and I had my windows down. I love Spring!

Another awkward face

6:00 pm| I leave the River and it's still gorgeous outside. I'm enjoying the weather so I decide to run some errands. A couple weeks ago I decide to do weekly random acts of kindness and drop off little goodies. It has been a lot of fun, so I made my way to one of my favorite bookstores to pick up a few things. It was a minor mistake because I love bookstores and can get lost there for hours! Which I did!

6:40 pm| The therapist I called this morning calls back. I pull out my calendar and sit down on a couch to talk to her. A couch that is ironically in the self-help section. I make the appointment for her fist available slot which is like 2 weeks away. Way too much time to think! Oh well.

6:50 pm| I realize what time it is and that I haven't gotten any gifts for random acts of kindness so I finally choose a few books and some fun stuff from the gift section up front. I can't take any pictures of my purchases because that would ruin the surprise, but I'm excited about them!

7:20 pm| While I'm out, I decide to run to the grocery store. I need a couple of things so I might as well get them now. I keep an ongoing grocery list on my phone so that I always know what I need. Makes things super easy. I don't have my reusable bags with me though. Ugh! Guess paper will have to work this time.

They don't have the quinoa bars that I want. They only have the chocolate ones, but are out of the fruit and nut. Will have to keep that on the list until next time.

Swing by the gift cards on my way to checkout. These make fun random acts of kindness gifts as well so I decide to pick up a couple.

7:45 pm| Leave the Krosher and go to a different Kroger to get gas. I have a system, I promise. And even though I didn't get a ton of groceries tonight, it paid off. I had enough points and got 10 cents off. Yes please!

Now I am really hungry and the thought of going home and cooking sounds miserable right now so I give in and call Pei Wei. They have some creepy phone number recognition thing so when I call they ask if I want the same thing I got last time and put it in. Super easy, but also a little Big Brother-esque...

8:00 pm| I make it to Pei Wei and my food isn't ready yet. Play a little Trivia Crack while I wait.

8:15 pm| Food's ready. Pay and go home. Put away groceries and then decide to curl up on the couch while I eat, because I just decided that I'm getting tired. Flip through DVR and choose New Girl. Then, because I'm a slow eater, I watch an episode of Big Bang Theory too.

9:10 pm| To spare me from eating out tomorrow, I throw some chicken in the crockpot. I am going to make chicken pot pie soup. Tomorrow morning when I wake up, I'll add a bag of frozen veggies and let it cook for another 30 minutes. Easy as that!

9:20 pm| Jump in the shower. I am a notoriously long shower-er. I get lost in my thoughts and the warm water. It's so relaxing!

9:45 pm| Straighten up my room some because I realized how bad it looked in pictures this morning.

10:00 pm| Dry my hair as quickly as possible so that it is one less thing to do in the morning.

10:20 pm| Read some fluff, pointless, mindless, wonderful book. Tonight it is Wedding Night by Sophie Kinsella. Reading is a perfect way to wind down at the end of the day!

11:08 pm| Finish the book and realize what time it is. Time to get some sleep!

And that's it. You made it! I made it through writing all that! Next time, I'll try to be better about taking more pictures. And maybe some more pictures of people. And me. Maybe even smiling. Probably not...