Florida to Wisconsin

After seventeen years of working at one hospital in ICU and recovery units, the same corporate politics and work environment became too much for Elsa. She has been at the nursing profession for thirty-five years and it was time for a change. I was transitioning as well with a consultant contract coming to its end. It was June 2019, Kyla was heading to her final year at university and planned to move away (anywhere but home), after graduation. The stars aligned to rethink all our futures.

We took three months to explore various options and prepared the home for long absences. It was time to start living a life as a couple again, our job complete with raising a daughter. Not one to do nothing, Elsa interviewed with several travel nursing agencies. Our chosen path would hopefully take us to new places and provide new experiences as we work/explore America. The whole agency process was a learning school on its own and she finally submitted and was accepted at a large training university in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

It was a three-day drive from Florida to the Great Lakes, pretty much through the center of the USA. We found accommodation with a nice guy in the suburb of Brookfield where we rented the upstairs area of his house. As with any new hospital assignment, the first week consisted of ‘orientation and training’. By the second day, the computers were down for Elsa to learn a completely new system and on day three she was placed in the unit to take patients. No introductions, show-and-tell for bathrooms or general lay-out of the hospital. When trying to figure out what to do, she was not supported at all. Right there and then we decided that she does not need this in her life and advised her agency that we are pulling the plug. It was a rough start to a ‘dream’ job.

So we turned back and was grateful to stay a few days at the vacation home of our friends, Tom and Carol, in Indiana. Their property sits on a beautiful lake, and we could decompress a bit before heading back to Florida or to a new assignment. The upside was that we did visit a few breweries (all great) and experienced deep fried ‘curd cheese’ (not so great), while there.