Grease

Okay, so I am the World's Most Hypocritical Nurse.

First of all, until a fellow nurse friend of mine totally guilted me into filling my prescriptions, I had totally gone off my po antibiotics, because man oh man, who needs to put up with explosive diarrhea, especially when contemplating going back to work as early as tomorrow?!

Besides, Flagyl sucks ass, in that it makes you feel like you've been drinking molten copper and can't get the taste out of your mouth. Nor can you drown the taste with alcohol, because this devil drug actually acts as Antabuse. In other words, unless I want to spend the rest of the week upchucking mercilessly, I have to go off the sauce. Not that alcohol sounds like fun at this point. In fact, "fun" means sleeping and feeling damned sorry for myself at present. Okay, so maybe that's not fun.

I have discovered that being NPO (nothing by mouth) for 72 hours is counterproductive if you've been trying to maintain your weight (okay, body mass for you physics purists and sticklers for word meaning out there). I also discovered another corallary to this annoying illness: it makes me hanker for British food. No joke.

I stopped at an Arthur Treacher's this morning and argued lamely with the cashier about substituting coleslaw for hushpuppies, which gross me out. She argued even more lamely that the cole slaw was more expensive, ergo, they couldn't substitute same.

Excuse me?! It's made of cabbage and mayonnaise, two of the cheapest and most plentiful foodstuffs in North American cuisine for Chrissake! I was too tired and put out to argue the point further, and besides, was distracted by simultaneously trying to identify the weird smell in the restaurant, which wasn't fried lard or fish, oddly enough, but which I assumed was probably... malt vinegar? Tartar sauce? Stray dogs used in the hush puppy batter? I shuddered, and made a resolution next time to find a more reputable establishment from which to purchase my British fare fix.

Any way, I was determined to wreck more havoc on my intenstines (which is frankly why people like me need to be hospitalized, because at least it sets limits on our unpredictable and self-damaging behavior). I am the village idiot, but who cares, I've got antibiotics now to offset any potential damage. (God forbid I ever really get sick, incidentally).

Meanwhile, I had these wonderful dreams last night about discussing applications of Kantian morality to medical ethics with a much admired old professor of mine. The great thing about dreams is you wake up thinking you've had all sorts of brilliant never-before-thought-of-ideas when really in your dream you were probably saying something like, "The turkey's aboslute power of rationality supercedes that of the greatest common denominator of fish and chips baloney liver sauce noumenal transcendental intuitions."

Kind of like reality. You think you have a great job where you "help people" when in reality what you have is a lousy job where you enable every other employee in the hospital to do a lousy job and get paid for it. (Bitter, who's bitter?!)

Meanwhile, starting to feel foggy headed again. I do believe it's naptime for the convalescing amongst us.