Part of me has always wanted to do some travel nursing ( or is it traveling nursing)? It would accomplish two purposes I think, the need to feel as if I was making a difference if volunteering, and the need to satisfy me overall health and fitness by the change of scenery and breathing different air. I can remember when I was about 8 or 9 and we were living in Pakistan, seeing the conditions that so much of the world outside of the United States lives in and wanting to make it better. Helping those who scooted around on cardboard begging on the streets. Wanting the families that had mud huts they carved out of the ground to have the conveniences that I did.

  But the travel nursing that I come in contact most currently are those brave individuals who take contracts of varying lengths in different areas throughout the country and work from area to area. That takes a bit of courage in my book any way you cut it. A bit of the vagabond and some wanderlust sorely lacking in most of us as well. We get attached to our surroundings and have families, or build financial responsibilities that keep us from moving. We get older and don't want to deal with moving again. We build a life for ourselves and then can't find a good enough reason to change that. Now, all that being said....and I apologize for offending anyone in advance...why does it seem like there are so many travellers who are a bit odd?

  Usually, they are perfectly nice people. Oh, occasionally you get a sour one, but for the most part they are pleasant enough. There are some you are glad to get rid of for one reason or another. But it is rarely a professional one. They don't make it long enough in the unit. if it is determined that you have no idea what you are doing, that you a truely a danger or a portential one to some one, you will be removed form your assignment. Nurses do not tolerate incompotence in their vicinity. Something dangerous, or someone dangerous, to patients is not tolerated. There are some you don't want to see leave, and hope that they get another contract so they can stay longer. or better yet, that decide theywant to stay and hire on at your facility.

  But there are some....well, they are just odd ducks. There was a perfectly delightful woman to work with, pleasant with patients, helpful, compotent...but thought that aliens were controlling us through the power grid. There was a woman from Minnesota or North Dakota who loved running naked in the mid winter there because she felt planetary connection. Not just occasionally, like a couple times a week. There was the retired army nurse who just would not shut up, and always was a better nurse than you...he had delsuions of grandeur. Now that I think about it...maybe most of them are not so odd. Maybe just some of them are odd.

  Okay, just back to the top for a moment.The time is coming closer to the fact that travelling now may be a possibility...I find myself financially imbedded in where I am, the thought of moving again annoys me, I am comfortable where I am. So I live vicariously, to some degree, to those folks who momentarily share my ICU space. And maybe someday, some nurse will be saying about me " you know, that woman who always went to that volcano".