Save in NY

New York City

Cold

Just a quicky!!

Arrived savely.. having lots of fun..

Love you all!

Rea

Santa's Little Helper

Potsdam, Germany
11:00 Pm
Foggy cold night

Hi folks,

This is my last entry before I leave for New York City.

Last weeks have been busy. At work we had a lot of children with gastroenteritis. The ward was full every day and I often stayed late. Oh this picture was taken after my last night shift.

Two weeks ago I played Santa Clause (yes, sorry, he’s not real) at Yannick’s kinder garden. It was so cute. The kids were shy at first but quickly got friendlier with me, in the end they tried crawling into my sack. Hilarious!

On the 22nd of December, we held the annual Christmas party at my place. This year’s guests:

Lea, Franzi, Christoph,

Donnée, Lauri, Sandra, Jenny, Micha, Max and Marina.

I spend the day cleaning and preparing the food: cake, cookies,

and a turkey. We spend the evening decorating self made cookies, ate cake, decorated the Christmas tree, did “Stehrumchen”,

played with Max,

and enjoyed the turkey. The whole evening was a success.

During the whole evening my Christmas LP’s were playing, a “fire” was sizzling in my TV and we laughed a lot.

Christmas this year was a day early. Marina and I left for Mom’s place on the 23rd, where we had the traditional goose lunch and exchanged gifts. Marina left to visit her godson and we (Mom, her boyfriend Henry and I) went on a walk through the winter wonderland. Marina and I left for Dad’s a bit later. More gifts being exchanged, the traditional potato salad dinner and a visit to my granddads afterwards.

Marina and I worked on the 24th. But that day I had a full blown Bronchitis. I was offered to stay home on the 26th and used that day to sleep, use my meds and drink lots of fluids. It’s a bit better today, but I will still fly to New York City tomorrow. Wish me luck.

To all of you that I haven’t reached per mail, phone or personally:
I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!! Much Health, love and happiness to all of you.


Andrea

Talking Christmas

Potsdam, Germany
07:00pm
Wet

Hello everyone,

First of all a big hug to my friend J. (you know who I’m talking about, girl)! I know you are going through some hard times right now, but please keep in mind that the most unexpected gifts are sometimes the most precious ones. You will get through this.

Lives been okay, lots of work, health back to old self and I have been at a communication seminary. The theme was how to talk to patients and families so that both parties benefit from the conversation. We discussed how many ways a child and their parents had to go until they were finally able to rest in their room (sometimes not even achieving that, because of a crying roommate). The woman who did this training with us, pointed out how displaced these ppl are in opposition to us who are kind of at home on the ward. We learned 2 different types of communication (there are dozen more):
Type 1:
- Set your goal before you go into the room, e.g. rechecking the temperature after a high fever.
- Evaluate the situation, e.g. distressed parents, child just fell asleep, but immediate danger of a febrile seizure.
- have a positive pose towards your self like “I can do this”
- Call parent and child by name (amazing how a simple “Mr. Smith, I’m nurse Andrea.” catches a persons attention) and keep eye contact.
- stand or sit upright
- Explain in short precise phrases what you have to do.
- Keep eye contact.
- Quite mimic and gestures.
- Do not use “not”! E.g. use phrases like “Justin has to stay in bed today.”, instead of “Justin is not allowed to leave his bed tonight”.
- If the parent tries to evade, stick to your goal and repeat the first steps.
- If you achieved your goal, give a short thank you to the parents for letting you do what you have to do.
- Afterwards, re-evaluate how the situation went; give yourself a pad on the shoulder for e.g. managing to take the temperature without much fuss from the parents.
Type1 is usually used for situation in which I, as a nurse, have to hold the upper hand and do what is necessary for the health of my little patient.

Type 2 is more the taking time and assessing the emotional state in which my opposite is in as well as taking that in consideration.
I found out that I am more type 2, but am able to use Type 1 in difficult situations. Since that training, I have caught myself consciously doing things, e.g. better taking the parents situation in account and using Type 1 when I have to, so I still find it hard not to give in, especially when I can feel with the parent.

Last weekend, Marina, Sandra and I drove to Chemnitz (a good 2 1/2h) to visit the local Christmas fair.

It was raining for the first 2 hours of the road trip. As we drew near, the sky cleared.

It’s not big but has lots of handy works,

local specialities (food, drinks) and just a very nice atmosphere. As you can see that we were up to no good.

A good friend of mine, Andreas, has a beverage stall there – go check out his hot wine, it’s delicious.

Much warmth and love from me to all of you,
Andrea