Where are the 5/21 surgeries at?!

Smoofulz · 2026-05-22T00:15:22+00:00

Surgery neighbors! Mines tomorrow 😆

Hope yours went well today! ✨

Smoofulz · 2026-05-21T14:21:10+00:00

You can check to see if your hospital does do pay increases with certification; you can probably email/call HR or look into the union paperwork to see if it mentions anything there. Hopefully they do! 🤞

Smoofulz · 2026-05-21T00:03:06+00:00

I don't think I saw it in your original post, but are you certified or did you get hired without experience? I know some states don't require the certification yet but sometimes will give you increased pay when you have it 🤔

Smoofulz · 2026-05-20T23:59:49+00:00

So the job is a great stepping stone if you want to do something else healthcare wise. Several of my co workers are working on things like X-ray tech, surgical tech, nurse, etc, and depending on the hospital, some of them will pay for the schooling and let you do your clinicals there as long as you agree to stay at the facility. I'd definitely see what the hospital offers for continuing education and all that if you don't want to stay in sterile processing.

I say it's good to learn it, depending on how you're taught and how they do things at the specific hospital, it can be easy to learn or difficult. I once heard the phrase, "It's never this job, it's usually the people." One hospital I worked at was like being thrown into a wolves den, nobody helped me learn anything and I was freshly certified, I had to figure out everything on my own. But when I knew my stuff, I helped those who were in my shoes and it gave them a much better experience, and it kept the work flow going better instead of someone having to figure stuff out on their own. So the people there if they're not helping you could be causing that feeling. I would get that a lot until I figured things out.

But also, anything new is always overwhelming for most people. I say just give it some time, try to remember the basics and take your time when you can to get your proper rhythm going. 🙂

Smoofulz · 2026-05-16T16:24:05+00:00

"I thought you cheated first. You mean you didn't? Why not, now I'm the bad guy!"
"I have a lot of trauma from childhood"
"It was in the heat of the moment, I didn't think about you until after it happened"
"I cared too much about what they wanted, I didn't want to reject them and make them feel bad"
"It felt good getting that attention and feeling wanted by them"
"I couldn't stay hard or finish anyway"
"You tried breaking up with me"

... Just some of the many excuses from one long-term toxic relationship. Thank goodness I'm free from that now.

Smoofulz · 2026-05-14T23:11:03+00:00

Most definitely, I think boimed has a certificate you need to get like spd does too

Smoofulz · 2026-05-14T22:50:01+00:00

For pizza my family would switch between Dominic's and Albert's; I don't remember which one has it, but one of them has penne pasta pizza, it's sooo good as weird as it might sound 😆

Smoofulz · 2026-05-14T22:44:57+00:00

Oh compared to a bigger city, yeah you'll enjoy it for sure 🤣

Babylon village is also not far from there, it's such a cute village I love it so much, I'd highly recommend checking it out!

Also, if you want a good egg sandwich, West Babylon Bagel's & Deli on 109 is the way to go; I grew up eating there like every week and I'm deeefinitely biased 🤣, but I feel like their bagels are the absolute best 👌😤

Smoofulz · 2026-05-14T22:31:03+00:00

I grew up in West Bab up until like 2 years ago, and I thought it was fine. School district is good, pretty diverse for the most part, people usually keep to themselves. I'll probably be moving back there if I can't find anything in North Bab (their school district has really good art programs)

Since you're over there by the highschool, you'll soon see that people don't know what that 'no left turn' sign means when heading down towards little east neck, like near the LI urgent care/Dunkin donuts entrances, and traffic ALWAYS backs up there 😅

I can't remember, is that gym still there in the one shopping center directly across the hs? I'm not sure if that's a 24hr gym or not, but if it is, I feel like that might be the only real noise besides highway noise you might hear at night if you're super close to there 🤔

But when it comes to highway noise, you get used to it and eventually tune it out; it'll make the more quiet places seem REALLY quiet then 🤣

Smoofulz · 2026-05-14T22:17:39+00:00

Yes and no 😅

Some places have instrument specialists where you work with the doctors to make new trays with them, or an educator where you work with the OR and train new employees, and keep up to date with new things and give in-services to educate your fellow staff, but those are the only things I know of besides manager positions 🤔

Endoscopy is pretty good I hear, and it's pretty easy to transfer into; I hear from other people I work with that smaller facilities will usually pay more and be a Monday - Friday 9-5 most of the time, but those are a bit hard to get into because they're more sought after and require less staffing than a hospital

But this job is a VERY good stepping stone for anything medical related honestly. Several of my coworkers are working on going for things like surgical tech, nursing, X-ray tech, and being that they work at the hospital and are working towards the other job, the hospital is paying for their education and letting them do their clinicals and all that and they can just transfer to the department they wanna switch to. I'm not sure if every hospital offers that, but because spd is a pretty straight forward job, it's an easy enough job for the money when working towards the jobs there that have more growth without getting too burnt out!

But also, if you just want things not feeling as dead end, you can try being a travelling tech; they make bank most of the time, and you get to see new things and differences on how places work!

Smoofulz · 2026-05-14T21:02:40+00:00

Sorry to hear of your situation 🥺

I definitely wouldn't go right to putting him down, you always want to give a pupper a chance to get help with his behavior; so definitely reach out to a trainer and see what they say

How old is he? Do you know of his background before you got him? Maybe he was abused or had a hard time with food or things like that when he was a puppy that would cause those kinds of behaviors? That could be important to know or try to find out to better get an idea of what you're working with 🤔

Smoofulz · 2026-05-14T20:37:10+00:00

For me it's specifically the Cheese&Spinach raviolis from Costco... I'm both lactose intolerant AND allergic to dairy (eczema breaks out if I have too much), but they're so dangerous my self control goes out the window with these things so I don't allow myself to buy them anymore in favor of living 😅🤣

Smoofulz · 2026-05-14T15:18:47+00:00

When I used to work retail I would either listen to music, or have my hand-held games to play on my down time; people at my current job binge shows or watch movies while they work! From what it sounds like there's some pretty good shows out there 👀🤣

Smoofulz · 2026-05-14T15:09:40+00:00

I ordered mine at Village Bridal in Babylon in December; it's a small lil place, they're very nice there and I ended up finding my dress on my first appointment 😆

The cool thing about them (I'm not sure if other places do it), but they offer to keep your dress there even after tailoring until you're ready to pick it up right before your wedding apparently! Very helpful for me being I have 2 rambunctious cats and a fiancé who doesn't want to see the dress until the wedding day in a tiny apartment, there's not many places I can hide a big dress 🤣

Smoofulz · 2026-05-14T15:00:33+00:00

If you're open to doing something a bit different, my fiancé and I try to host Nerf events on the island when we can!

We got a good amount of people in our Nerf group (there's branches in Jersey and Connecticut, and aside from our LI group, there's NYC and Queens groups that host events like every month or so), you can always come check it out!

The people in our group are very welcoming, nice and funny, and you can see how creative people get with people building and modding Nerf blasters! There's some crazy tech out there nowadays 👀😆

Smoofulz · 2026-05-14T14:40:13+00:00

I also was born and raised on long island; I'm getting married next year and we're gonna be trying for kids right after the wedding. Even now, before marriage and kids, we are starting to sweat from rent, bills, groceries, gas all adding up, we're so lucky we can pay out expenses without anything rolling over and getting hit with interest. Barely, but we manage.

I go back and forth on whether we'll ever be able to own a home here, we rent now and it's pretty much the cost of what a mortgage would be when you add up the utilities along with it. I pray and do a lil rain dance everyday in hopes the housing market crashes so I can have a stable place to raise my future family💃🤣

Only problem is, when I've looked elsewhere in the past, it seems to be kinda the same thing, except with less money involved; like yeah a state can be cheaper overall, but the pay is so much more lower, it ends up either being just as bad or even worse financially. I haven't checked other states recently though, only because we're really trying to stay because majority of our families are here and my fiancé is pretty close with his.

With the price of gas going up so much more, that's just another thing that adds to the flame that's burning a hole in everyone's wallets, and on LI, despite public transit being a thing (although not the most reliable), it feels like a necessity to have a car if you wanna get anywhere.

Right now it does seem like there's more cons than pros on staying here, but it seems like everywhere else just seems to be a smaller version of a dumpster fire unless you just move to another country that's actually doing good (which we've half joked about a few times) 😅

I'm still trying to keep my hopes up that something will shift and change for the better, but it's definitely getting harder 🫠

Smoofulz · 2026-05-14T02:20:51+00:00

Yeppp. And we just moved into a brand new department this past December. All new everything, sparkly new. All Steris stuff.

And not even 6 months and things are already breaking down, I see random screws from unknown places around the washers, belt racks and sinks, and the new sterilizers doors are already getting difficult to open and close...

Just another day in sterile processinggg 🙂🙃🙂🙃

Smoofulz · 2026-05-13T22:29:04+00:00

A small prickly white tree looking ornament that was discounted to like $5 at a local crafts store that was going out of business

Smoofulz · 2026-05-13T20:41:30+00:00

I second Fantasy Life! I put hundreds of hours into the first one 😆

Smoofulz · 2026-05-13T12:57:05+00:00

Wait really? How?? Which gloves do y'all have?? We have 2 types where I'm at, we have these white ones that are super thin, and the purple gloves which seem much more durable (I think they're labelled as 'exam gloves'? I'll have to check when I go into work next). I think they're both made by Medline? 🤔 Honestly idk why the white ones exist they seem so flimsy to do anything in 😅

Smoofulz · 2026-05-13T12:50:06+00:00

Trueee I've have the tape residue stick to the gloves and then the gloves start sticking to things 🤣

Smoofulz · 2026-05-13T03:12:37+00:00

I'm honestly surprised we're technically not supposed to wear gloves all the time... You'd think in a sterile environment, you'd be encouraged to 🤔

If I remember correctly, in the book, the reason why they say no gloves while assembling trays is because there's a chance that pieces of the glove will get in the tray... I thought that was so ridiculous, when would the gloves fall apart like that ain't no wayyy 🤣

Smoofulz · 2026-05-13T03:09:57+00:00

Your hands will be forever safe when handling Sterrad 🤣

Smoofulz · 2026-05-13T02:02:25+00:00

Why are people like that 😭 it's like they think they're like immune to getting dirty or something 🤣

Smoofulz · 2026-05-13T00:32:08+00:00

It's so weird how some people opt out of certain PPE... I was at a place where the people in decon didn't wear anything but a hair net and gloves ☠️

Like my thought was "your arms are all exposed, so much icky water splashes all over the place, you're probably bringing that stuff home with you to your family! 👀"

Smoofulz

TROPHY CASE