Settling In

So life is officially underway in Waxahachie! I'm settling in to my (small) apartment, and trying to figure out what I need to be doing at work. Fortunately, I've been upgraded to 40 hours/wk salaried! For now I'm taking on some Quality Improvement projects (increasing compliance with Pneumonia Core Measures, and reducing Catheter-Associated UTI, for those of you that speak medical). I'm going to shadow a nurse on Monday to see the work flow, but my office is in the Medical Office Building that is across the parking lot from the hospital. This makes it hard to be visible, so I'm still trying to figure out how to start getting the know the nurses. I'm their biggest resource - they need to know me!

The strangest thing I'm running into here is that the Nurses don't even know what a CNS is. This is a new position for Baylor Waxahachie, and I'm prepared to explain what I'll be doing at this facility; I also expect to explain what I am and what I do to non-clinical people, but I actually had a staff nurse ask me what I did the other day. I had to back it up and ask her if she even knew what a Nurse Practitioner was, to lay the groundwork. It's almost like they've never heard of Advanced Practice Nurses. It was really weird. I realize this is small town Texas, but we're only 25 miles from Dallas and most people commute in! I guess some of these nurses have only worked in Waxahachie, so they've been a bit sheltered. Hurdles and challenges to make me better!

The personal part of being here has its ups and downs. The first 11 days were busy getting into the new job and driving back and forth between here and Austin, so I didn't really have much time to start missing Marc. But this weekend I'm here all weekend and he has to work, so he's in Austin. The good thing is we probably talk a lot more now than we have over the past few months! It's almost like dating again, lol. But tonight sitting here, I realize I have no clue what's on TV on a Saturday night, but it's all I have to do since I'm alone. Marc is at our friend's birthday dinner without me, so I think we're both kind of feeling the separation tonight. I just keep telling myself it's only temporary!

Marc has been applying for jobs and sending his resume out, so hopefully something will come along for him soon. Then we'll get to see where we'll be a bit more permanently.

In the meantime, I'm getting to know my way around Waxahachie, and really getting to like the small town, kind of "good ol' country" this place is. I also like that I'm close enough to Dallas to have a social life, as I make more friends. One of our friends back in Austin told me about these signs, but I didn't think they'd still be displayed. Sure enough, I found one the other day: