August 19, 2013, 12:10 pm
On August 3, 2005, the first Emergiblog post was published.
Eight years and 935 posts later, and with a part of me dreading this even as I write, it is time to say good-bye.
It’s been 10 months since my last entry. Many times over those months, I’ve run into a situation and thought, “this would make a great blog post!”
Yet, I did not put my thoughts into writing.
The passing of time has not rekindled the passion to write, and when the desire to write is gone, one is no longer a blogger.
Damn, that was hard to write.
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There are still topics I could write about: the metamorphosis of my hospital into a corporate appendage, the uselessness of electronic medical records (very sad realization, that), the feeling that as nurses advance their education, basic nursing care is being forgotten (oh, the stories!).
Topics like this used to rev me up, make me head for the keyboard and blow out a rant.
Now, all I want to do is reach for the Prilosec.
Even if I still had the urge to write, I wouldn’t want to sound like a bitter, sarcastic nurse who is angry all the time. And I would sound like that (I wrote the paragraph above four times before it stopped sounding like I was ready to punch the wall.)
That isn’t fun to read, and it certainly does nothing to help the profession.
These days, frankly, I’d rather spend my time off in Portland with my grandson, catching up on Doctor Who episodes from the last 50 years and cheering my head off for NASCAR every weekend.
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But it was a hell of a ride! 😀
I have met and made friends from around the world.
I connected with nurses who shared their stories and was inspired. In fact, it was student nurse bloggers who inspired me to go back for my BSN.
I connected with physicians who shared their stories and was shown a wider perspective.
I connected with patients who shared their stories and I became a better nurse.
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And now, some thank-yous:
Shane Pike has been with me from almost the very beginning, keeping things running behind the scenes. Emergiblog would not have been what it is without him. “Thank you” doesn’t even cover it.
The “medbloggers” were able to meet at BlogWorld for four years, thanks to Rob Halper and Marc Monseau, who spearheaded the Johnson & Johnson sponsorship of our track. Thank you both! For BlogWorld and the chance to speak in Orlando!
Of course, those meetings would never have happened if Rick Calvert, CEO of BlogWorld (now known as New Media Expo) had not seen my rant decrying the lack of medbloggers at conferences. He said, “We have room for you here!” Not only did I meet my fellow medbloggers, but also my “Blogfathers” Hugh Hewitt and James Lileks! Thank you, Rick!
Bora Zivkovik gave me my first link. I remember waking up and seeing that 35 people had read the post overnight and realizing that I didn’t have that many family members who knew I blogged, so something must have happened! Thank you, Bora, for the encouragement that link provided!
Terri Polick, aka Nurse Ratched’s Place, is my “Blogdaughter”, BFF and partner-in-crime all these years. Thanks for all the fun/commiseration/support! We had quite a ride, didn’t we? 😀
And last, but certainly not least,
My heartfelt thanks to everyone who has stopped by to read Emergiblog. A blog without readers is just a diary. Emergiblog was a success because you came to read.
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(The actual blog will remain up. Comments to all old posts have been disabled (this post is still open.) The “Contact” button still works. I’m still on Twitter as @emergiblog and if you can stand cat pictures and a lot of NASCAR talk, I’m also on Facebook. )
January 7, 2013, 1:52 pm
Oh! what I would give for a paper chart!
…for a clean, crisp empty sheet of nursing notes!
Oh! to see perfectly horizontal black lines, inviting me to hover my delicately-balanced pen above, poised to create a work of art.
Oh! to eloquently describe my nursing care in cursive so beautiful my great-grandmother would cry.
What would I give?
I’d give my (expletive) Cerner workstation a shove into the San Francisco Bay.
Yeah, we finally entered the 21st century at work.
Computerized charting. What a crock.
Boy, do I have a rant all ready to explode for this one.
But that’s the next post.
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What do you do when you lose your voice?
Your blogging voice.
It used to be so easy.
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When I started blogging in 2005 I just talked about what it was like to be a staff nurse. That was my “voice.” The stories flowed off the keyboard. Blogging was a creative outlet.
Blogging was fun.
Today, an old-school Catholic nun sits in my head, rapping my knuckles with her ruler if I even consider posting something that isn’t “prim and proper”.
The trouble is, “prim and proper” is not my style.
Now, I can write “prim and proper” with the best of them. But a blog is not the place for that. This blog is not the place for that.
And to be honest with you, I have not been all that enamored of health care in the last year or so, of watching my wonderful small community hospital become an appendage of a corporate behemoth. Or of reading about health care in terms of partisan politics every single day in the news.
I wanted to rant and blog. But I didn’t know what to say, or how to say it. Sister Super-ego wanted prim and proper, but I couldn’t produce prim and proper.
So when I went to “speak,” nothing came out.
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I don’t know where Sister Super-ego came from, or where I got the idea that everything produced on this blog had to look like it was ready for a peer-reviewed journal.
This blog never was and never will be a “professional publication”.
It’s just the story of the life and times of an emergency department nurse.
Time to get back to my “roots.”
If anyone is still reading, thanks for hanging in there! 
October 29, 2012, 11:03 am
Apparently even one-eyed alien nurses wear caps!
For the life of me, I cannot remember where I found this photo, but it looks straight out of Doctor Who circa 1963.
There were nurses in one episode of Doctor Who: a race of humanoid feline nuns called the Sisters of Plentitude.
I was about to say, “You can’t make this stuff up!”, but obviously someone did!
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You would think that after 18 years online and more than 7 years as a blogger, I’d know better.
But no, I actually fell for a scam this week.
No money changed hands.
Worse.
They ticked me off.
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It has been a long time since any sort of scam-type email has come through to me.
They have improved! They don’t misspell. The grammar almost passes muster.
It seems a company wanted to use “Emergiblog” as their domain name and keyword in….wait for it…China/Asia.
You’re already smacking your head, right? “Doh!” Ding, ding, ding….scam!
The email wanted to know if I was connected with this “company” and if they were my distributor in China/Asia, because there was a conflict.
The company is a UK construction firm.
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Hmmmm.
I sent a cordial email back that said (a) I was not affiliated with the company who wanted the name and (b) I did not want the name registered by anyone else and (c) it would be a cold day in hell before I’d give the name up.
And that was that.
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Then, a second email arrives from a Yahoo address in….wait for it….China (with broken English, “Dear Sirs,”…ding…ding…ding!) saying basically, we got your message and we are going to do it anyway even though the guy who sent the first email advises us to find another name.
Okay….now you’ve done it.
Now you have pissed…me…off.
And you do not want to piss….me….off….
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The first rule of internet correspondence is that one remains cordial.
So, I sent a cordial response stating “oh, HELL no,” indicating that legal representation was being obtained.
You can’t swing a cat two feet in this family without hitting enough lawyers to form a firm.
It wouldn’t be hard to get exactly what I need.
But…
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I decided to let Web-guy extraordinaire, Shane, know what was happening.
About ten seconds later, I got the response:
“Oldest scam in the book.”
Followed by my Facebook blogger pals telling me the same thing.
How could I not have seen this?
It was only as large as a neon, freaking billboard!
I smacked my head so hard I had LOC for ten minutes.
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It won’t happen again.
I’m chagrined it happened at all.
How embarrassing.
The only consolation is that the threat to my blog identity brought out my killer instinct, even if I’m not blogging as much as I would like to.
One does not mess with another’s domain name.
It just isn’t done.
On August 3, 2005, the first Emergiblog post was published.
