I love Dr. Seuss, I always have. My three older sisters and my mom always read his books to me before bed, and his wacky truths have reverberated in my head ever since. I’m a quote person anyway, and sometimes I have trouble refraining myself from reciting them to unsuspecting acquaintances. My family understands this predilection, as some of them do it too. So with them, I quote away without judgement or weird looks, as I once got when I said to a newly married co-worker, “my dear, Mrs. Kennedy,” in my best Clarke Gable voice. She laughed when I explained that it was from one of my favorite old movies, “Gone with the Wind,” but who wants to explain themselves all the time or risk sounding like a freak? So, at work, I merely think these things…
1. After graduating from nursing school…
“Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!”
2. What I’m thinking when report takes way too long…
“SONG LONG A long, long song.
Good-by, Thing. You sing too long.”
3. When you just have a feeling something isn’t right with a patient, even though the vital signs are fine…
“Oh, you get so many hunches
that you don’t know ever quite
if the right hunch is a wrong hunch!
Then the wrong hunch might be right!”
4. Trying to recruit help when you’re short-staffed…
“If you never did you should. These things are fun and fun is good.”
5. When you look at the clock on a crazy, busy day and you don’t know how you’ll get everything done…
“How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness, how the time has flown. How did it get so late so soon?”
6. When you have inservices on new iv pumps…
“They say I’m old-fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast!”
7. Pep talk to yourself, just before you punch in…
“You oughta be thankful
A whole heaping lot
For the people and places
You’re lucky you’re not.”
8. When there is no point in arguing with a confused patient, so you just agree…
“Oh, the wonderful things Mr. Brown can do!
He can go like a cow. He can go MOO MOO.
Mr. Brown can do it. How about you?”
9. 3 am…8 hours down, 4 to go, on the night shift….
“A yawn is quite catching, you see. Like a cough.
It just takes one yawn to start other yawns off.”
10. Trying to psyche yourself and your co-workers up at the beginning of the shift, day three..
“I know it is wet
And the sun is not sunny.
But we can have
Lots of good fun that is funny.”
11. When the s%&* is hitting the fan…
‘Then NEW troubles came!
From above! From below!
A Skritz at my neck! And a Skrink at my toe!
And now I was really in trouble, you know.”
12. What the cranky patient says to you, when you cheerfully bring in breakfast, and ask if they’d like to sit in the chair and eat….
“I would not like them here or there.
I would not like them anywhere.
I do not like green eggs and ham.
I do not like them, Sam-I-am.”
13. What you think when the sweet elderly lady, whose johnny is so big for her, it drags on the floor, pushes the call bell for the first time and says, “I’m so sorry to trouble you dear, I hate to be a bother.”…
“A person’s a person. No matter how small.”
14. What you think about anyone who complains about the Christmas decorations you and your like-minded, Christmas loving co-workers put up to decorate the unit on a slow week-end…
‘The Grinch hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season!
Now, please don’t ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
It could be his head wasn’t screwed on just right.
It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight.
But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that his heart was two sizes too small.”
15. Words of inspiration for the new grad you trained, on their last day…
“Kid, you’ll move mountains!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So get on your way!”
16. What you think when you start off a shift knowing that the “black cloud,” supervisor or charge nurse is on, who always seems to be immersed in chaos…
‘But we know a man called Mr Gump.
Mr. Gump has a seven hump Wump.
So… if you like to go Bump! Bump!
just jump on the hump of the Wump of Gump.”
17. What management says when they try to talk you into joining any kind of unit improvement team…
“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
18. Asking a co-worker to come with your for moral support…
“Things are never quite as scary when you’ve got a best friend.”
19.Consoling a frustrated co-worker…
The people that mind don’t matter, and the people that matter don’t mind.”
20. Trying to get an angry or confused patient to take their pills..
“You do not like them. So you say. Try them! Try them! And you may!”
21. When you and your CNA are in such a mess, that all you can do is laugh….
“From there to here,
From here to there,
Funny things are everywhere.”
22. When a patients family has brought in fast food, 10 friends and the family dog and you’re trying to squeeze in to get vital signs…
“I do not like
this bed at all.
A lot of things
have come to call.
A cow, a dog, a cat, a mouse.
Oh! what a bed! Oh! what a house!”
23. When you’re going over discharge instructions with a patient…
“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.”
24. Trying to be stern and tell the patient not to get out of bed alone..
“I meant what I said and I said what I meant.”
25. Me to my co-workers in the parking lot, after a 13 hour day…
“Today is gone. Today was fun.
Tomorrow is another one!
