By the time you read this column, the weather might have turned, there could be balm and breeze in the air, we may finally have dug out from the worst that winter had to offer. Either that or the snow will have buried us once and for all.

I am in Connecticut, but as of this writing it looks more like Antarctica. In my 8 years as a traveling nurse, I don't think I've ever experienced so many single-digit temperature days. If nothing else, I've learned a couple of things this winter about being a nurse in the Year of the Polar Bear.

• You have to arrive at work at least 10 minutes earlier, to allow time to take off all your multiple layers of clothes, before you can change into scrubs.
• Everything is relative. Last summer you complained about being too hot when you had to wear a scrub jacket on the job. Now you hope you get in early enough to snag a second one, both of them buttoned up to your neck.
• You don't have to set your alarm clock to make sure you're up in the morning. The snowplows coming down the street outside will take care of that. (Also, they're louder and 15 minutes earlier than your alarm.)
• For the first time since, oh, never, the OR isn't the coldest place on earth.
• You seriously consider keeping 1 of the 2 blankets you just pulled out of the warmer. Normothermia isn't just for patients anymore.
• You're doing Internet research to see if cloth scrub hats come in wool or corduroy, with ear flaps.
• You have to buy another pair of Danskos, a size bigger, to fit over the heavy wool socks you've started wearing.
• Every OR is equipped with 2 forced-air warming blowers, 1 for the patient's blanket and the other for the anesthesia provider's hands.

• You beg to circulate on the pediatric and burn cases, since you get to turn up the thermostat a bit on those.
• Just because you get off at 1500 doesn't mean you're on your way home. You have to put the multiple layers of clothes back on first, then resuscitate your car, then dig it out of the snow and ice it's encased in.
• Dry air means static electricity. You've been shocked so many times by touching a doorknob that you begin to believe you know how a code patient must feel once you get them back.
• It's a good thing the dress-up holidays are over and there are no functions to attend, because snow boots don't do it with the little black dress.
• You've stayed overnight with the co-worker who lives close to the hospital so many times, they've included you in their most recent family portrait.
• Out of the 6 cases posted to your room, 5 of them are open reduction-internal fixations to ankles or arms of patients who've taken spills on the ice.

It hasn't taken me long, but I've grown to dislike those little, innocent snowflakes that a thousand years ago used to thrill me with the possibility of closing school for the day. I hold a grudge against the ice in beverages, for the slips and falls that have sent me sprawling on the ground (luckily, nothing but my pride has been hurt). Nothing personal, winter, but I think I'll like you better once summer is sweating us.