Halloween 50s Style!

Halloween 50s style! Charleston, SC

Not everyone can dress for Halloween in a hospital but some of us can and my volunteer team led the charge. Elvis and Rick James joined the parade serenading the staff and patients. It was a fun day. I think I got my 10,000 steps in.

Pink Bagels for Sale!

Pink Ribbon Bagels, Panera Bread Company, Charelston, SC 

My team and I sold 250 bagels yesterday morning - pink ribbon bagels! I wasn't sure we could pull it off but they were very much in demand and we sold out. Panera Bread makes these especially during October and donates the profits to breast cancer research.

Yesterday 100% of the proceeds were donated and for the rest of the month a percentage of profits from the bagels sold in their stores goes towards the cause. Thanks Panera! 

Putting in the miles

Charleston, SC 

It's been a busy stretch at work with many of our electronic systems down and everyone scrambling to do what needed to be done. I served as runner around the building delivering results and logging 10 miles on Monday, 8.5 on Tuesday and a measly 5 miles today as things started coming back online. What a great group of people I work with. Everyone's dedication was impressive to see as we rallied to make sure everyone was taken care of old style.

Needless to say I haven't had to go for my usual evening walk and come home ready to crash instead!

Cards for Heroes

Cards for Heroes, Charleston, SC   

Every year I order 1,000 holiday greeting cards and set up tables in our hospitals and health system invited staff to write a message of gratitude to be distributed to service members on active duty during the holidays.

The Red Cross does the leg work for us but all day I am touched by the meaningful messages written on these cards. Thank you ladies and gentleman in the military. We appreciated your service.

Future healthcare professionals

SCRUBS Camp 2017   

Meet the good folks who will be managing your health in the future. These students all applied, wrote essays and had their teachers recommend them for the annual SCRUBS health career camp and we are having a wonderful time! It will be an action packed week. 

Valentine's day rounds

Valentine's Day , Charleston, SC   

It's our valentine tradition. Each year I contact Randall Dukes and without fail he summons up a beauty queen to serve as an honorary volunteer on Valentine's Day and pass out treats at the hospital. Tiara and sashes have an amazing effect on a beautiful gal. Children assume she is a princess and both men and women agree to pose for a picture.

This year's beauty queen is Reagan Mobley - Miss Charleston Southern University. She was incredibly gracious and walked for a couple of miles visiting nursing stations, offices and waiting rooms. Thanks Reagan!

Pucker up!

Celebrating sixty-five years!

I should have saved this shot for Valentine's Day. I caught two of my precious hospital volunteers celebrating their sixty-fifth wedding anniversary over a cup of soup in the hospital cafeteria. That is an amazing achievement and lovely to see. Happy anniversary Bob & Norma!

Future surgeons of the lowcountry

Future surgeons, Charleston, SC 

If you don't have a good healthcare provider in years to come don't blame me! I had 37 of the lowcountry's brightest aspiring surgeons under my wing this evening and they didn't want to leave! Parents were waiting, I'd worked for twelve hours and this gang was still hungry for knowledge.

There is nothing more fun than teaching students who are eager to learn. This evening's session was part of the SCRUBS mentoring program and the Operating Room session is always a bit hit. Thanks to the staff who made it such a grand evening!

Bed time for me. 

Gimme a kiss!

Chocolate Kisses Halloween, Charleston, SC   

One last Halloween post before I close the chapter for the year. Halloween is like a national holiday for the hospital volunteer department. This happy group coordinated their costume designing and came as Chocolate Kisses. The funniest part was trying to get them all on an elevator together! They roamed the hospital passing out candy treats and posing for photos.

Onward!

Pink on peach

Charleston, SC    

Groundhog Day is on tv. So you know what we are going to do. We are going to settle in and watch a movie until past bedtime.

This is the time of year when winter camellias run over into spring blooming time. And we like it that way.

Yawn. I am home late after hosting a student career evening on Emergency Medical Services careers. How many students can you fit in the back of an ambulance for a ride? A lot of them!

Choral Holiday Fun at Roper St. Francis Healthcare!

This is the mischief I was up to last week! Enjoy! Thanks to Dr. Richard Ulmer, Craig David, Cheri McElwee, the Lowcountry Senior Center Choir and all my talented friends!

Honoring Volunteers

Peri-op Volunteers, Charleston, S.C.

I may be one of the most fortunate people in the world - getting to work with people who do a job because they want to make a difference. I spend my days recruiting, interviewing, processing, scheduling and training hospital volunteers and I have the best team anyone could every hope for. I love these folks. My health system has over 600 volunteers who serve during a year and in 2012 my team worked well over 82,000 hours. What an incredible group of people.

Volunteer Week is in April and we have a few recognition events the first of which was today. This is a very small part of the volunteer teamp. For this photo grouping we tried to gather volunteers who greet patients coming in for surgical procedures, staff the OR Waiting Room, pre-surgical area and recovery room. What a difference this team makes. Thanks folks! You are the VERY best.

Blogger Meet Up

Kate & Jim, Charleston, S.C.

Kate and husband Jim from the Visual St. Paul blog in Minnesota are visiting Charleston and dropped by the hospital for a tour. I was able to treat them to a classy cafeteria lunch and walk through our beautiful garden. Kate has a blog similar to mine featuring pictures from St. Paul but for the time being we can enjoy photos from the lowcountry. They are making the most of their time here. Thanks to everyone on Facebook who suggested places to find the best shrimp and grits in town.

It was a treat to show them where I spend my days. Welcome to Charleston!

My favorite things

Meditation Garden, Bon Secours St. Francis Hospital, Charleston, S.C.

I park on the other side of this garden each morning and have the option of walking across the parking lot or through the garden. The garden route is a little less direct so I don't take it every day which is really dumb since it is so breathtakingly beautiful.

Most mornings as I enter the hospital from the west Women's Services entrances there will be a young man sitting on the bench by the door. He is rumpled, bleary eyed and talking excitedly into a phone. It's a different man every morning but they all have one thing in common. They aren't patients but they wear thin plastic bracelets around a wrist. The bracelet is the tell tale sign of a new father. They are new fathers who have fallen in love with a precious baby born during the night. It's finally a reasonable hour to wake up friends and loved ones.

That is the moment I walk by and smile to myself. It's not a bad way to begin a day.

School Days

Window Box, Charleston, S.C.

First week of school for the lowcountry and I made a mother cry.

All the back-to-school ads brought back fun memories of my kids and since I don't have any children in my immediate circle I called a single mother of a great teenager and asked mom how her daughter was set for school. She started to cry. I had waited almost too late to offer to help out a bright young gal whose mother works a minimum wage job. I got the cash I would have spent on my own and put it in an envelope to take care of a couple outfits for the first day at school and class supplies.

The lady slipped by my office to get the envelope and was so grateful when she left that I felt the sting of tears in my eyes. It was shame really, for letting her get to that stage. One of the nurses I work with asked what was wrong and kicked into action. By the end of the week we had a box of gently used fashionable clothes of the right size, school supplies and gift cards. She has four new "aunts" looking out for her. Thanks Kelly, Beth and Ginger! I love ya.

The Lone Sailor

The Lone Sailor, Riverfront Park, North Charleston, S.C.

He is a bit over dressed for our heat but Iam pleased that North Charleston has one of the twelve copies of the Lone Sailor Statue. The original Lone Sailor statue was created in 1987 as a tribute to all the personnel of the sea services and placed at the United States Navy Memorial. This gentleman overlooks the Cooper River at the North Charleston Riverfront Park.


In other more local news, my hospital passed our Joint Commission survey with flying colors today. Whew. What a relief. No matter how much we try to maintain a high level of care you never know exactly what surveyors are going to concentrate on.  They send a team that can pop up anywhere. Our CEO gave us the good news at 4 p.m. that all went well and they left very impressed. I am very proud of all my co-workers today. High fives to everyone! Yippee!

Sharing the love, and raising our sugar levels

Thanks to Alexandra Seabrook, Miss College of Charleston for putting on her tiara and heels and spreading smiles all over the hospital this morning. She was such a great sport and I marched her all over the building passing out candy treats and posing for pictures. She had the most dramatic high heel shoes on, her feet must have been numb.

I stayed up late last night baking coconut cupcakes for the Valentine Cupcake decorating contest. I never enter to be judged but I feel I should support the project since it is a fundraiser for my favorite charity - the American Heart Association. There was no doubt who was the clear winners were. Look at these amazing cupcakes!

Trot for Tots

Shem Creek, Mt. Pleasant, S.C.

I read that the new boardwalk along Shem Creek opened this week. That should make a sweet walk some weekend morning. I've been thinking of Vickery's Salmon Caesar salad since the day I went kayaking on Shem Creek and had brunch there. Mmmmm.

Speaking of Mt. Pleasant, the 2nd annual Trot for Tots 5K Run/Walk will be held on Saturday, Oct. 29th at the Roper St. Francis Mount Pleasant Hospital. There is a kiddie costume contest, face painting etc. and prizes will be awarded. The event helps fund car seats for babies who might not get them otherwise. Registration link here. There is free parking on campus and live Music will be provided by Steel Petals. I missed it last year but the photos made it look like a fun event.

Don't let me forget that I am to be at work before 7 a.m. tomorrow to take a picture of a gaggle of anesthesiologists in the OR. I am very motivated to cooperate with the people who control pain.

My baby luvin' peeps

Charleston, S.C.

When I moved to Charleston many years ago, not knowing a soul, I went to every hospital in town and asked to see their labor & delivery unit. I was an experienced nurse. I'd worked in community hospitals, huge medical universities and ran a free standing birthing center for a few years.

St. Francis Hospital was downtown at Rutledge and Calhoun St. at that time and the Birthing Suite was on the back of the third floor facing Calhoun St. The nurse on duty gave me a tour but was bewildered. She said there were no positions open, there never were. Their nurses didn't leave. Bingo! I knew exactly where I was going to work.

I eventually joined this gang of wacky loving southern women who made me feel welcome and became my family. We worked our butts off on evening shift, delivering babies left and right. We worked double shifts when necessary, came in early and stayed late. We worked hard and laughed until we cried. We caught the babies the doctors didn't make it for and cried with the parents who suffered losses. The Birth Suite has won every "Best Place to Have a Baby" award that Charleston City Paper has ever awarded. Years later people still proudly parade their growing children past the labor unit hoping to see the nurse whose picture is in their baby book.

I left bedside nursing long ago and it seems I keep going to retirement parties or farewell parties of some of the old gang. I'm not sure you can get a closer bond than this - we delivered each others babies and watching each others children grow up.

Miss Elnora Hazel retired this week. She used to sneak in to all my new mothers behind me with extra snacks at bedtime worried that "skinny nurses didn't feed you enough". She was known for giving her patients a real back rub before she "shut" the light. Countless lowcountry mothers and babies have been sent home well loved because of Miss Hazel. It feels like the end of an era.

Sleep in on Monday Miss Hazel. You deserve it!

Sue Veon, Ginger Ballentine, Elnora Hazel and me.

Flowers? For me? Cool!

Bon Secours St. Francis Hospital, Charleston, S.C.

I coordinate mentoring for a lot of students on health career paths. I've been doing it for long enough that I can look around my co-workers and smile knowing how many of them started in my office.

It's very cool to watch people get their first real taste of what they want to do in life. I see that every day and it's all part of my master plan to make sure I have nurses, doctors and physical therapists who will pamper me and take good care of me when I am old and sick.

Summer is ending and it was fun to walk around checking on students who will be heading back to school soon. We tracked them down on surgical floors, ICU and coming out of last minute meetings with the nurse recruiter. We heard them talk about their day in surgery and watching a birth. Then, JD turned the tables on me and surprised me with flowers. Someone raised him right and since his Dad happens to be a Charleston blogger I thought I'd use his picture as my photo of the day. JD is returning to USC and is going to make a terrific physician.