MGS RADAR

I’m in charge for a ward of four rooms with five people on a trauma surgical ward and considering we’re still student nurses it’s a challenge for all of us.

We split the four rooms in half so for each shift half of the staff is responsible for EVERYTHING what the nurses normally do which means I have three to six patients.

Positive:

- My team is great, just great they are putting so much effort in this thing and they work like maniacs to get the best out of our patients.

- Everybody is an expert in a certain aspect of nursing, Mine is pain medicine and medications, other is mobilization of patients and besides that everybody is an expert of the basics

- The team itself is great because WE TALK. We talk about everything and everybody knows about everything. The key of pushing teammates is to give them personal responsibility for their work and the consequences of their actions.

- Our teaching nurse is very helpful, she wants to see the absolute maximum !
-  The doctors are new on this ward and besides that they care about true teamwork which means interchanging work. We think about things they have to think and they think about our things. We have a very experienced surgeon and a very new and dedicated intern surgeon. Makes fun.

Negative:

- The material we are working with is shit. I have to work with broken toilet seats, I have three bedsheets and three bedcovers (on a GOOD day) to take care about post-operative (Which means dirty and bleeding) patients. I have no towels or washcloths. The blood-pressure - cuff is either lost or also not working and I need thirty minutes of searching through the whole hospital to get a decent cuff so we have at least the BASIC equipment to take care about patients. This is not funny at all!

- The division managing nurse bothers me as a charge nurse with permanent shitload of things. She has no fucking clue about my patients and tells me to take a patient out of the bed or give him something to eat which I didn’t because the patient didn’t WANT TO EAT OR GET OUT OF BED. During the talking with her, she signalizes me exactly what she thinks of us: I have no clue, I have no experience, I’m just a fucking student nurse to fuck up with shitwork she won’t do.. I respect 20 years of nursing experience but I think respect should be on both sides.

All in all, we handle our patients very well and they are improving…great job!

Again something about things you wear in the winter…as you can see in my series , the first item was the “Buff Cyclone” and I lost mine on New Years Eve , but I took me only 2 days to re-buy it.

My Glove Philosophy:

I live in not the warmest climate on earth but also not the coldest. The last winters were harder than usual but most of the time I have to deal with winter temperatures around -5°C to +5°C.

No matter what glove you choose, if you have FINGER gloves which means you put every fingers in one desired sheath, you will get cold fingers. The blood flow in your fingers is not high enough and they are too far away from the body that they can withstand a cold climate for a long time. It depends on the temperature but be sure, that even in the thickest gloves you will have cold fingers. If you choose mittens you don’t have this problems.

I don’t like and I even hate putting out my gloves for tasks that require dexterity. If you choose thick gloves, you need to put them out for opening your car or your door or just manipulating the radio in your car. That rules out wool or fleece gloves for me, I have them and I wear them but generally in very cold climate.

So my requirement is, that I don’t have to put out my gloves that often and I choose to have a solution between protection from the cold and dexterity.

The third thing to talk about is protection. I personally like to wear gloves while working. I play drums for over 8 years which put a really big strain on my hands. I also had numerous cuts from my cats and unskillfull handling of blades. I also use desinfectant regulary which puts my skin and my hands to a VERY high level of irritation. I also had a very nasty cut in my index finger in August 2009.

The healing took very long and I still don’t have a very good feeling in my index finger because they was nerve damage.Also the scar tissue hurts if I want to apply big pressure. So this was a lesson about protecting my hands, I need them for my work.

So, the test about the HATCH KED 100 Cut resistant glove.

Hatch gloves are VERY expensive in Germany, but if you buy them overseas over ebay or someting similar you can get them to very nice prices EVEN if you include shipping. So I did and I payed 25 € over PayPal.

I put my gloves on and I was suprised about the warmth and the feeling in them. At first they were VERY stiff, but they wore out by using them. The glove is very tight on the skin and the goat-leather (I guess it’s goat) gives you a very good feeling an protection.

During cold and wet conditions (Welcome to Germany!) they are in their field of expertise. You get absolutely NO moisture inside your palm, even if you touch wet objects like roofs of a car or bushes that are wet.

They are cut resistant and have a Kevlar lining inside the glove…I’m not quite sure how much I can rely on the CUT RESISTANT by hatch. I don’t think that a full stab with a very sharp knife will protect my hands from getting bloodless. I don’t want to test it out, and cut resistance wasn’t one of my options. - It was just included and I bought them because of the price.
Rough handling with these gloves, persons or sharp objects works very good because of the big friction you have, but the thumb is strange to me and doesn’t fit very well, don’t know why.

CRITICAL COMMENTS

The gloves are very SHORT IMO, the last part which you expect to go over your base of the hand just ends at the end of the palm, which is a little bit TOO short for winter-used gloves. The positive aspect in this is , that you have a better range of movement, but if it rains or snows something of this will get into your glove, nasty thing.

All in all, I tried out gloves from Mammuth(C) for over 50€, and in comparison to my police duty gloves they sucked. Very minimal dexterity, if fleece is wet - you don’t have to worry about getting warm anyhow. So, please buy Hatch Gloves (They tend to make great products!)

Carnival is not fun, it is not the best time or the fourth season of the year. It’s a big fuck for me everytime it’s coming close and passing by…There is a multicasual approach to my hate and disgust collected over the time.

I was however a member of the fun club…years ago! I was one of the dickheads squirming around a spot, partly desorientated by cheap but tough booze. Yeah try to imagine the stories of your youth by taking part of carnival, beeing drunk one, maybe two times…okay maybe three times in this short 5 day time window. Guess what, in my best times with Padde and Mamerio around, we started drinking at school at 10am during the geography class, took part of the internal event (Which SUCKED, motherfuckers from THIS SCHOOL IT SUCKED because the fucking cunts from there started to make an educational sense of this shit…) and the rest was pure foolish will to PARTY HARD.
One time I was part of the STUDENT COUNCIL (one, maybe two cool people around this council, the rest was a bunch of stupid underfucked backstabbing cunts) I took part of the organization, fucked it all up by not playing the game because I don’t want this shit on my C.V….true thing is I sabotaged the event by letting “phrase-sheets” dissapear and let the bloke from the music technique play the wrong music (Nothing too obvious) , as the fun was over I dissapeared in the shadows)

But to get back here, you think you got a hard time carnival by getting drunk 3 times in 5 days? Don’t waste my time with this shit…again with Padde and Mamerio we started at Thursday 10am Nato Time and boozed our way till 3pm. Then we met again, partly drunk to join a stupid tent-party where I puked in two glasses and scared two pals down the hall by running after them with parts of a bench. I slept at Mamerios place I think and we tried to sanitize our morning-pain with nothing as plain as beer, to start hustlin’ over a private party at Friday 8pm. Again, we wasted ourselves, but started again at 10am on Saturday. We just put some fuel on the yesterday’s flames and we were right on the game. I remember drinking a mixture of whatsoever drinks from a fuel-canister…off to a private party at the same Saturday still wasted and got trewn out because I cracked an egg over the face of some asshole trying to impress me with his non-existend gangsta skills. On Sunday, the high - fest of the week in Brempt was present, we ran out of cash but organized ourselves some shit and got wasted, rather thrown out of the tent again. On monday we were broke, but nothing stopped us from walking 6km to Dülken fueled by pure fun,evil sin  and cheap whine. Again a day without much money left and cheap booze is nothing to be fond of.

We were young and we were REALLY stupid, but we tried to push ourselves out to the maximum. We hassled some guys and girls but only the ones that deserved true punishment for theirselves.

If you compare this to the generation of young drinkers today, they are all a bunch of whining suckers, trying to outbreak their parental over-control by DRINKING alcohol…just to set a statement or whatever.

We took responsibility for our own shit. We organized the alcohol, we organized a ride but mostly we were just fucking BROKE so we had to walk to the events of the day and we dealt with the shit in our own way. Every cent I spent during that days was my own money, in case something wrent wrong we just started to pull ourselves out of the shit. Parents offered us a ride, many times we just adjourned the offer (though sometimes we were too wasted to reject, hands down…still got enough credibility!) It was a small game, but we played a small game…I admit that.

Todays youn-guns are over-archievers. They just see drinking and alcohol as a part of their “educational” process. “Trying out things!” or “Just try to set the line” Something to write into your C.V. and something you need to discuss with your mother (maybe together with his son/daughter in HER/HIS favourite club-location dressed like a whore) so it doesn’t affect your overall process…and with that they just pull more idiots down, making something highly criminal out of youth…..Come on guys!

Todays drinking kids just drink to reach a balcony…a balcony from which they can see things too far away from their parental control psychosis. And the only chance to take a look on that is an outbreak, booze yourself to near-coma or make the smal Hulk out of you….”What are you looking at?” “You looked at my girlfriend?” Just raise impulses to proove you still got testosteron in your testicles. Because your psycho-parents try to numb you from anything. How ridiculous is THIS?

We drank because we liked it. We drank because we were young and we still know how to let the cages rattle. We were honourable enough to hide our self-destruction from our parents, because we know how to cover up our issues without bothering or hurting other people around them. And nothing, I repeat…NOTHING of the hundred of stupid acts including jumping from a fairly high tree down to a carport nearly destroying the whole thing (as you may notice…drunk as shit) or destroying numerous gardens of people because we wanted to take a short cut (An early form of PARCOURS…but not as “balletic” and “graceful” ….just pure violence) is something to be really proud of. Maybe you can impress some blokes who didn’t had a life but this is it. No matter how drunk you were, no matter how many times you puked…nothing to be proud off or nothing intelectual with educational factors. Just stupid shit drinking!

Also as a nurse, I see many victims of carnival…many young-motherfuckers who try to fuck the nurses and doctors over with violence, bragging, puking, spitting, biting and whining around. We are the sweepers of the fucked up…they lost the game, Alcohol again won. But not many of the young-guns can actually accept that they LOST the game…the game is over and this is the sweeper zone of the lost. While many of their buddies have good time, they lie around on the floors , bedded in their own excrements, their parents are coming over…the game is over. But they don’t accept the lost, they try to make their point, at the wrong place and wrong time and (now comes the worst part) take up ressources like ambulances, paramedics, nurses, doctors and even housekeeping staff. Many people need these RARE ressources (today, they are RARE!) but they are taking it because they want to win in the overtime.

I mean, these problems are not new…but the number and the “way” of the problems are new. The increasing number of violent young MOTHERFUCKERS with actually no medical problems at all is a problem, at least for me. Try to fuck me over during a nightshift on carnival…just try it out!
Everybody has a right to be stupid…everybody has a right to be sweeped…everybody has the right to be dragged up by the paramedics and sobered by the nurses. But let us stay to the actual medical problem, not the numbed-violence-parental-control-scheme or anything else twisted fuckover you bother the hospitals with.

Carnival just lost its bright and coloured fun, it’s not the same anymore !

Every man has to face one challenge in his life…he will at least once be invited to a wedding party which has no great expectations for him. It will be boring, it will be just fulfilling his duty…but there are ways to survive.

Definitions and Beforehands
The first thing you have to clear up for yourself is how the boredom factor of the wedding will be…the determinants of the facts are the following

• Weddings which are away from your home so that you have to take a room or at least a sleeping place are usually more boring than other weddings.

• Weddings which you can attend with your first officer of choice OR girlfriend are usually more entertaining than if you are invited alone or just because you are the boyfriend of x…

• Do you know the bride? Do you know the pair? If you have a semi-relationship to the pair, the boredom factor rises

• What was your first reaction as you heard from your invitation?  The more bad-ass the reaction will be, the higher the boredom.

• Are any other people around you know? When was the last time you had contact with them? Try to remember your social network

Planning and measures beforehand

The very important thing you have to do is to plan your logistics

• Plan your arrive and your leaving very narrow, no extra day to spent in the woods. If you plan very close you always have to say “I have to leave, I have to work next day
• It is better to come with train or plane because they don’t change their schedule…if you choose to be individual, your schedule is determined by many factors
• Know the schedule of the wedding, it is crucial ! If you want to cheat you have to know WHEN to cheat.
• Don’t regret your selfishness, if you really don’t relate to this wedding, they can take  a shit on your presence, so you just play the row-filler. Time is crucial in these days and you have to manage YOUR time.

Strategies by location

Church

• Be on point! Don’t waste any time by coming to early to sit in the front row, the pair won’t even recognize you because they are to busy remembering one,maybe two words or reading some speech from a card.
• If you are late you can choose a row far behind, away from interested people, lenses, photo- or videographer who can document your mental absence
• Look for a small book or something familiar to entertain your brain, hide it in the singing book.
• Pick out random people sitting in the church and try to guess their biography just based on their appearance, inner laugh guarantee. Put them into funny categories like “This is the guy who works in an office, but tries to fullfill his dream to be the handyman at home by wasting his time to add a not-necessary room to this house”
• Be familiar with the church code of conduct….know when to stand up and when to shut the fuck up

Wedding Dinner

• Pre-plan the fact, that you need to ask for a place close to the buffet or kitchen, you will be served first in general and the faster you eat the earlier you are gone
• Really use the dinner time, use it to stack up your body fat for at least a week, if you live alone you’ll appreciate a good, warm middle class dinner FOR FREE
• Study the menu so you can chose effective!
• Ask everyone you seem to like about the day program, try to inform yourself about the enemy and it’s logistic so you can make an escape plan.
• Enjoy the eating, it will be the best thing of this day so really enjoy it and spent time with the dinner, there is no reason to panic here!

Wedding dance/Wedding games/Photograph shoots/wedding gifts

• There will (hopefully) be many people around.
• Now comes the bastard trick: Be a photo - poser if it is important to you that somebody notices your presence. Be a poser, try to be surprised if the picky and gay photographer will take a picture but use your chance. If you are on 10-15 photos per 100 shots your presence is well documented and many people think it was important to you
• Be one of the first group or individual to hand out the gift, be the smug and be one of the first, you can make on “CHECK” more on your list
• I don’t like dancing, I hate it and the best trick about avoiding it is getting stuck into semi-deep conversations with wedding guests you really don’t know and which are easily fooled by your words. Try to look enthusiastic. Also you can hide near the buffet and if the danger is coming go to the buffet and pick something random, people won’t bug you with dancing.
• The best chance to escape is the phase where it starts to loose up and the chained husbands start to get drunk. Be around with a beer or more , if you are determined by another person get drunk as fast as a british mate, so you are the first guy to get sick from drinking or feeling not so well. If everybody is lightly drunk, ESCAPE
• Many people are afraid from saying goodbye to the main host so they will notice your absence. Try to expand the time you are present in the room so the main host won’t notice you so much and by the right timing just disappear without saying sorry, if you document your presence well and loose enough traces, they won’t notice your escape
• Even if they notice you escaped, who gives a shit?

If you make it right, you did your duty VERY well and also you save your time from boredom!