Last day of work

Yesterday was my last day or work. It was bittersweet. I will miss the nurses and the physicians I have worked with greatly. As a nurse practitioner you don't bond with the other nurses like you do when you are a bedside nurse. you are in an office, or too busy to talk to them and they are with their patients. But over the 16months I have been at this job I have really made some great friendships. Some of my closest friends are still my old co-workers whom I spent 5 years working with at UCI. It was hard to say goodbye. I got teary eyed when I had to say goodbye to one of my favorite physicians I work with. She is amazing and I learned so much from her. One of the male physicians whom I have become very close with brought me a huge bouquet of the most gorgeous flowers I have ever seen. He also brought a card and had everyone sign it and he bought ice cream and threw me a surprise good bye party. He loved me from the moment he heard I was LDS. Apparently all his friends from med school were LDS and he spent years playing basketball with church members. Who would have known that that alone would get you a best friend at work.

Well after getting a lot of run around and applying for a billion positions at my job even with big paycuts, I was unable to retain employment there. Everytime I applied for something they would call me and say we are no longer hiring for that position, we are cutting it completely due to the budget. I am so sick of hearing that. Luckily, I was able to find a job at Kaiser as a regular bedside PICU nurse. It is not ideal, a $10.00 an hour pay cut, and having to drive all the way to bellflower to work, but it is a job and I get benefits quickly. I will have the standard maternity leave of 6 weeks paid by the state since I will only be employed there 4 months before I deliver. That is the hardest part to get over, I had 5 months paid leave at CHOC.

I still have my teaching job 1-2 days a week until August 12th and I will be starting my new job at Kaiser on July 20th. I am really excited to be working with 5 other girls I worked with at UCI. Thanks to them I got this job.