Long time readers will know that I usually spend the summer in South Asia, teaching critical care skills in Nepal, the Himalayan country between India and China. Starting in 2007, I made eleven trips there, travelling throughout the country, being hosted by nursing schools and medical colleges, especially in the region known as “The Terai.” I did not go in 2020, and I am not going this summer. All good things must come to an end, and the twin difficulties of a deteriorating political situation along with a robust second wave of covid19 have made it a no-go for me.
The larger context of course, is the unfolding tragedy of a pandemic out of control in India. On the news I get to watch videos of hospitals in South Asia — these are familiar scenes to me. I trained more than four thousand nurses and doctors over the course of time, I hope they are able to use their skills to save lives. But for me, staying in USA, the question has become, what do I do now?
It’s true I am past retirement age. I still am working, partly to maximize the social security benefit but also because I actually love my job. What’s not to like? I teach nursing at a community college and I get to impart the wisdom of “old age” to a new generation. The past few semesters there are more and more students who are at the age where the could be my grandchildren. And in the hospitals where I take students for clinical practice ( an important part of the nursing school experience), there are more and more patients who are younger than me. Heck, the staff nurses are young enough to be my grandchildren. The kids keep me on my toes and it’s a pleasure to see the personal growth the beginner students acquire during their fifteen weeks with me.
My actual one-and-only grandchild is two-and-a-half years old. He lives in Maine with his parents in an 1830 post-and-beam farmhouse they are fixing up. ( for a young couple, fixing up an old place is a sort of rite of passage in Maine.) I have not seen “Rooster” in person for more than a year now.
Breaking Free from Lockdown
I love my job but I hated last summer on lockdown. So I decided to go to Maine this summer — I am becoming a “snowbird.” ( in my own way, re-creating Nomadland, for just a few months.) The problem for me was how to arrange things, when I want to keep my apartment intact here in Florida yet my daughter has firmly stated that pitching a tent on their Back Forty will not be allowed. I can’t mooch off my daughter and her husband.
The ideal would be a summer “camp” on a pond, ala the movie “On Golden Pond.” Alas, any such places have been scooped up by outtastaters and are beyond my price range (try, $1,300 per week. My plan is to be in Maine for ten weeks. Yikes!). So I have hit on a two-pronged strategy.
Camping from my car
First is to pitch my tent at state parks. You can’t book more than fourteen days in a row at any single park, but I have cobbled together a series of reservations so that I have got the time covered. On my days off my daughter can bring the grandson to visit me at these places, or I can go for day trips to her house. This holds the costs down. I am accustomed to camping. After all, I was an Eagle Scout and over the course of my life I have backpacked more than half the Appalachian Trail. Car camping will not be anywhere as strenuous as hoisting the backpack for weeks at a time. I have the room in the car to haul a bigger tent. I had a fleeting fantasy of buying a Lotus Belle tent and “glamping it” as though I was at Burning Man — but that is just not “me.” More like Rocinante and Charlie. My other daughter says she will join me at the picnic table part of the time, cybercommuting to her own job while I go to mine.
RN License Update
One big change in the past decades has been the development of the “multi-state Nurse Licensure Compact.” When a Registered Nurse would move from one state to another, the original system was always to present your credentials to the Licensing Board in the new state. ( at one time or another I had an RN license in Massachusetts, California, Maine, Washington State, Hawaii and now, Florida. And also the country of Nepal….) These days, 35 states have joined “the Compact,” both Maine and Florida among them. When I got my Florida license I chose the “Florida-only option” so now I needed to either convert it to a Compact License or else re-activate my Maine license, which I had allowed to lapse. Turns out that it’s easier and faster to use the Compact route. I still need yet another set of fingerprints (been fingerprinted three times already since moving here, this will be the fourth) and another FBI background check ( been backgrounded three times since moving here).
Part-Time work?
The second part of the plan worked out better than I thought. Weeks ago I wrote to some of the colleges that teach nursing in Maine, asking whether they needed adjuncts for summer coursework. An adjunct is a fixed-length, paid-by-the-hour position. Sure enough, the replies came and now I will be working part-time while in Maine, teaching nursing there for 16 to 24 hours per week. It will bring in enough money to pay for the State Park fees and other expenses. The job will include classroom lecturing on critical care topics for final-semester students; work in their skills lab teaching advanced skills; running some of the simulations in the simulation lab, and the like. Many of the simulation scenarios are similar to Advanced Cardiac Life Support courses that all nurses and doctors must take. This is something for which I have expertise. There is an urgency knowing that many of these students will soon graduate and look for hospital jobs. Covid19 is not going away. It takes time to grow a nurse who can do critical care, and I am part of the team to start them on their path if that is what they want.
A long car trip
I plan to drive to Maine, a distance of one thousand five hundred and thirty two miles according to my GPS. Twentytwo hours if you drove like a crazy person. Been a long time since I did that kind of road trip where I was behind the wheel. I return to Tampa in early August for start of fall semester.
Rediscovering books
I have a request from my friends here at DKos. I have decided to read some novels this summer. Just for fun. I imagine sitting by the campfire at the state park, getting lost in the adventures of others. ( as opposed to being terminally confused by my own meager adventure). I could re-read my favorites, such as the Tolkien Trilogy. And of course, I plan to read children’s books to my grandson! But I need some suggestions for long reads that could transport me far, far away. I read professional journals and books all the time but I want escapism! Got any good suggestions?