Review of the Basics

Laugh!

Now, more about Stress from Basic Nursing Essentials for Practice, 6th Edition by Patricia A Potter PhD, RN, CMAC, FAAN and Anne Griffin Perry, EdD, RN, FAAN.

"Selve noted that a prolonged state of stress cause disease. Stress makes people ill as a result of (1) increased levels of powerful hormones that change our bodily processes; (2) coping choices that are unhealthy, such as not getting enough rest or a proper diet, use of tobacco, alcohol or caffeine; and (3) neglect of warnings signs of illness or prescribed medicines or treatments. (Monat and Lazarus, 1991)

(Nana's note: Here's where it gets good.)

"On the other hand, physical exercise, relaxation strategies, and letting go of excess anger reduce a person's level of arousal and stress. Exercise improves circulation and triggers the release of endorphins. The relaxation response, elicited by meditation or progressive muscle relaxation, lowers blood pressure, pulse rate, and respiratory rate. Forgiveness, or letting go of excess anger, has been shown to reduce stress provoking hormone levels. Anger, a feeling that serves people well as protective mechanism, for example, overcomes people if they continually seek revenge rather than forgive. If living with anger becomes a daily experience, the burden of carrying the anger results in continuous stress and arousal. (Enright and North 1998)"

From YOU: The Owner's Manual by Michael F. Roizen, M.D. and Mehmet C. Oz, M.D.

"It's the major stresses and nagging little stresses that age us. For years, researchers believed that having a type A, high-wired personality resulted in stress-induced illness, but your brain doesn't age from the stresses you bring on yourself---like working hard and trying to achieve your goals. And your brain doesn't age form the one-time intermediate stressors, like the flat tire on your bike or the fender bender in the parking lot. These Important But Manageable events (we call them IBM's ) do not cause us to age because they are problems we can solve. Instead illness comes mainly from the events that constantly stress you---even if they're minor to other people---and do so for a prolonged period. One category of these stressors is Nagging Unfinished Tasks (NUT) For example, the nagging stress of sitting on a wobbly toilet seat and never fixing it will age you, if it is one of the those things that just gnaws at you everytime you use it. The other, as you'd expect, is from major life events--like moving, dealing with financial burdens, or coping with the death of a family member. Nagging stress wears you out, while persistent stressors are true killers.

(Nana's note: Here's where it gets good)

"You can have a major impact on your youth by reducing stress in your life with friendships, exercise, meditation and group affiliation. In fact, doing so will give back thirty of the thirty two years that major life events can take away. Two of our favorite stress reducers are laughing and meditating...."

I have a couple new links on my Grand Roll. Grammology is a blog where a grandma is sharing her struggle (and victory) with cancer. Talk about stress! http://www.grammology.com/

Then there's Boondock Babble. This is an easy going grandma that will take you right out to the big breezy countryside where the livin' is easy. http://www.boondockbabble.blogspot.com/

(The picture above is my sister, Ant Jean. This is a girl who knows how to laugh!)

Textbook Stress

I have one more exam to take then I'm done with the online portion of the Nursing Refresher course. The last two tests have challenged my critical thinking skills. In other words, I had to think through the questions to arrive at the answers. (Hopefully the right ones!) The tests are open book, but most of the questions, to me anyway, did not have obvious answers.

I thought it would be a good day to do a post on Stress. This information is right out of the mouth of my closest companion over the last eleven weeks, that is my Nursing Textbook, Basic Nursing, Essentials For Practice, 6th Edition by coauthors, Patricia A Potter PhD, RN, CMAC, FAAN and Anne Griffin Perry, EdD, RN, FAAN

REACTION TO PSYCHOLOGICAL STRESS

The GAS (general adaptation syndrome) activates indirectly for psychological threats, which differ for each person and influence a variety of responses to stress. Lazarus (1999) maintains that a person experiences stress only if the person evaluates the event or the circumstance as personally significant. Evaluating an event for its personal meaning, or primary appraisal, happens very quickly and automatically in a person's mind. If primary appraisal results in the person identifying the event of circumstance as harm, loss, threat, or challenge the person has stress. Following the recognition of stress, secondary appraisal focuses on possible coping strategies.

A person manages psychological stress by coping. (Lazarus, 1999) Effectiveness of coping strategies depends on the individuals needs. For this reason no single coping strategy works for everyone or for every stressor. The same person copes differently from one time to another. In stressful situations people use a combination of problem-focused coping and emotion-focused coping. In other words, when under stress, we obtain information and take action to the stress. In some cases we avoid thinking about the situation or change the way we think about it, without changing the the actual situation itself (Lazarus, 1999).

After I finish my last exam tomorrow, I'll write more about the GAS and give you some excellent textbook examples on how to adapt to our stressors.

Musing on Mom's Day

On Friday, I pulled into the drive-thru teller at my bank. Two vehicles blocked the view of the teller window because I was in the third lane. I took care of my banking business then pushed the button that shoots the plastic tube up through the ceiling and into the bank. It returned in about minute. As I reached for it the teller said, "Thank you," then added "Happy Mother's Day." I said a quick thank you into the speaker, then drove away, a little surprised by her comment. The bank people don't know me from Eve. They don't know if I'm a Mother or a single girl who doesn't have children. Saying "Happy Mother's Day" is not like saying, "Happy Holidays." It just doesn't apply to everyone. But then again, after I thought it about it, maybe the bank teller can say "Happy Mother's Day" to everyone, because even if a person is not a mother, they have (or had) one. Having a mother applies to everyone. No one got here without a mother. So--- Mother's Day is a celebration of life day. I'm here, you're here, because we had a mother. (And a father, but that's next month.)

One of my all time favorite writers is Pearl S. Buck. I love her motherly wisdom and the way she puts it in words. "To My Daughters With Love,"is a book she wrote in the early seventies. She saw the world changing, the sexual revolution and the breaking apart of the family. At the time she was deeply enmeshed in two cultures, the Chinese and the American. She writes about traditions from both, the ones she wanted her daughters to embrace, and also the ones that only served to hold people in bondage and isolation. I found this wonderful volume at a library book sale, so I don't know if you can get it on Amazon. Read about Pearl at Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_S._Buck

Happy Mother's Day to All!

Invisible Bugs

Nasty invisible bugs are just about everywhere. It's not a pleasant subject, one that many people want to ignore. Maybe because there's enough to worry about without having to stress about something you can't even see. In health care settings however, there has been and will continue to be a spotlight on pathogens, the tiny creatures that cause infections.

In fact, most hospitals have a staff of infection control people who keep track of germs and educate workers on ways to avoid spreading them around. In one of my RN refresher assignments, I came across the website of an infection control lady who has brought the bugs alive. She calls her business nanobugs, Inc.

It's never too early to start teaching children about bacteria, viruses and fungi. Not all of these bugs are out to get us, some are very good friends and necessary to life. Nancy has turned the bugs into “morphologically correct” cartoon images. There's a lot to learn at nanobugs, Inc and there's even coloring pages. Microbiology can be fun.

Nancy Haberstich is a registered nurse certified in Infection Prevention and Control. She is self-employed as an international consultant, providing consultation to hospitals in Japan, the UK, Canada, and Brazil. Nancy served as the infection control coordinator in a 300-bed municipal hospital for 17 years and has served as technical advisor and scriptwriter for 13 training videotapes on a variety of infection prevention and control topics utilized by hospitals throughout the United States. Nancy spent one year as a volunteer in Liberia, West Africa in 1999/2000 to reopen a school of nursing and paramedical training programs that had been destroyed by ten years of civil war. At the invitation of the Canadian Ministry of Health, Nancy consulted with one of the Toronto hospitals involved in the SARS crisis in 2003. Nancy is the founder and owner of nanobugs, Inc.

http://www.nanobugs.com/

My Grandchild

It's been awhile since my last post. I miss blogging. Renewing my RN license has been the focus of my days, along with making sure I get a daily dose of my Kenz. Here's some thoughts on my favorite subject.

My Grandchild

She is an endless volume of wonder.


Her trails take me to places, I didn't know existed.


Her energy is molecular, bouncing off the walls, collecting pieces of everything to make something from nothing, creative motion; there is no standing still with my grandchild.


Her presence is laughter, a game, a story, a future and a forgetting of life's aches and pains.



When I die, a part of me is going with my grandchild, away, away, away......where a whole nother lifetime awaits us both.


I'm grateful for our time together, the way she reminds me
with her smiles and tears, my granchild says...
stay in the moment and live in the now.

Song From A Grandchild

Here's Miley on Oprah singing her song about missing her grandfather after he died. Sweet.

Perpetual Motion

(click on picture to enlarge)

Kenz has sooooo much energy. She can go non-stop. Once we finish one activity (she calls em activities, too) she immediately says, What do you want to do next Nana?

I picked up Kenz from school today and we played in the yard, squirting our very cool laser beams (a dollar store find). After that we played catch ---with water balloons. Then I blew giant bubbles while Kenz blasted the soap monsters to smithereens with her laser beam.

For our next activity we went inside and watched part of an old video, a surprise party I had for Kenz's mother, my daughter, when she turned thirteen. It was 1992 and all the girls had bangs that sort of looked like rounded spider webs coming off their foreheads. (I remember my husband called them 'tootzels.') Kenz thought this was hilarious!

After the video we played Polly Pockets. I sat next to Kenz on the floor and she did all the talking and imagining. She created scenes from 'real life' mixed in with the Cory In the House actors, her favorite TV program. Every once in awhile I got instructions. OK Nana, your person says____. Now Nana, your people clap. Nana, you dress this doll in this outfit.

By five o'clock I was exhausted and her mommy was still at work. I suggested to Kenz that we get out our yoga mats and lay down, rest, maybe meditate.

"OK Nana, that's a good idea. Oh Nana, I know what we can do...let's play... yoga."

Last year, when she was four, I bought a Yoga Kit for Kids at a yard sale. It has about thirty cards with poses. I wasn't thinking about the kit when I suggested our mats, but she remembered it, immediately. She found it on the bookcase and within minutes she had the cards lined up and we were both posing. OK Nana, now do the frog. Ribbit, Ribbit.

The kit includes a fish, a pretzel, a dog, a windmill, a waterfall, a shark, a bug, a tree, a mountain, a lion, a cat, a bird, a turtle, a flower, a butterfly, a mouse and a peacock among others.


Kenz took her time studying each card and doing the poses. We laughed and she insisted on me copying her. After we finished going through the cards, stretching and perfecting the poses, surprisingly ---I was--- revived! So we played once more before her mom arrived.

Being a Nana is teaching me something very important and that is-- ya gotta keep moving!


You never know what game is coming next.


The more I move, the more I can move, but right now I think I'll do one of my favorite poses in the Kid's Yoga Kit and that is the 'do nothing doll.'

A Find

Look what I found at a yard sale!

It's green steel with a Formica top, that lifts up.

A desk, the same kind of desk I remember from my childhood. It's a heavy duty, 'watch that your fingers don't get pinched' desk. It brought back memories of grammar school during the fifties and sixties. I remember emptying the contents of my desk every June.

In my mind's eye, under the lid was a stack of hard covered books with papers sticking out from all angles. Hiding under the books were all the yellow #2 pencils I thought were lost, pink erasers covered with pen tip holes and wide-ruled leftover notebook paper in crumpled plastic. I had mixed emotions while dumping the contents into a brown paper grocery bag. I was leaving the Felician nuns, the huge black chalkboard, the seatwork and departmental for all of June,July and August. By the time summer vacation rolled around each year I had my name inked or carved into the yellow Formica top of my familiar desk. (The carving came later, around fifth grade, because by then I had a math compass.)

It was a soccer team hosting the neighborhood yard sale, a few of the teens carried the desk to my car. I electronically rolled back the front seat as they carefully tucked it in against the dash. The little chair went into the trunk. I had given twenty five dollars to somebody's mother who was standing at the top of the driveway smiling as I pulled away. Now that I think of it, she looked very happy to be bidding farewell--- to the desk. That's OK, because now it's Kenzie's desk, her own school desk, something she hasn't seen at Montessori, that's for sure. There they do their 'jobs' at little tables or on their own special rugs that they carefully roll up and put back in the basket when they're done. The philosphy of Montessori in the 3-6 class anyhow, is that the children are free to move about. At Nana's house if Kenzie chooses to sit at a desk, she will have that option.

To add to the wonderful find, this week... Kenz started reading. She has been 'sounding out' sentences from the BOB books (Set One). I'll blog more on those later. Gotta hit the books. I know my Nursing Study Guide is somewhere on my desk. It's here somewhere. I'll find it.


I do alot of living at my desk.



Desks are terrific.

Family Care

I am half-way through the ten weeks of the online part of the RN Refresher Program.

This weeks required reading from the *textbook includes the chapter FAMILY CONTEXT IN NURSING. A few of the Learning Objectives are: examine current trends in the American family, assess the way family structure and patterns of functioning affect the health of family members and the family as a whole, interpret external and internal factors that promote family health.

The book mentions how much the family has changed from the 1950's. Here's some terms to help define our present world.

Nuclear Family- this family consists of husband and wife and perhaps one or more children
Extended Family- this family includes relatives (aunts, grandparents, and cousins) in addition to the nuclear family
Single-Parent Family-this family is formed when one parent leaves the nuclear family because of death,divorce or desertion or when a single person decides to have or adopt a child
Blended Family this family is formed when parents bring unrelated children from prior or foster parenting relationships into a new joint living situation
Alternate Patterns of Relationships-these relationships include multi adult households, "skip generation" families (grandparents caring for grandchildren) and communal groups with children, "nonfamilies" (adults living alone), cohabiting partners and homosexual couples.

*Basic Nursing

Essentials For Practice

(6th Edition) Potter and Perry

I should be doing my critical thinking and answering the questions at the end of the chapter, but I wanted to post today about a new blogger on my Grand Roll. She's a grandma who is dealing with the family situation, "they come back." Her daughter is moving home for a year with her two sons and her boyfriend. I read the post to my husband this morning. I'm not sure why, but by the end of it I was holding back tears. I think I was touched by her love for her family. She titled the post Sacrifice.

I think her situation fits into the first textbook criteria for FACTORS INFLUENCING FAMILY FORMS--- Economic Factors. The others are Homelessness, and Domestic Violence.

I will leave you with something good from this chapter. It's called Family Hardiness. Family hardiness is defined as the internal strengths and durability of the family unit. Some characteristics of family hardiness are a sense of control over the outcome of life, a view of change as beneficial and growth producing, and an active rather than passive orientation in adapting to stressful events.

Read about a hardy grandmother at www.TCROSS17.blogspot.com

Word Rocker

I am all for the guy who loves doing crossword puzzles. We need role models like him who promote using the brain in active ways. He calls himself a word nerd, but he is very cool. I enjoy watching the American Idol performers and this year I like David Cook. I think he'll win!

Perlers and Daffodils

After my bulletin board episode with the Perlers a few weeks back (see Feb. 5th post) I have come to accept the fact that Perler bead creations can stand alone and do not always need to be huddled in collections.

Kenz continues to be a prolific Perler beader and gifts me with the plastic iron-together beads just about--- every other day.

I have discovered that I can set one or more of the creations next to an object which has the same shades of color in it. I have them next to candles, pictures frames and even books.

The Easter gift she gave me matched my yellow daffodils.

With her creations next to my keepsakes, I am constantly reminded of her little hands and her happy lively spirit.

I would say I have found the perfect way to display Perlers.