unhappy.

I spent Christmas Eve night shift sending a patient to the unit within the first 45 minutes of my shift. It should have been done earlier, but the kid who picked up the patient three hours before mine was a new grad fresh off the SS Clueless, so it didn't happen then.

Then I spent another half a shift with a patient I thought was having a heart attack. It took two hours, multiple pages and hospital administrators to get the on-call doc to call back.

Not only was it terrifying, but the doctor treated me like a stupid slut when he did bother to call back, pooh-poohing my assessment and blaming her issues on her "respiratory history" even though a) patient stated, when I asked, that "This is how she felt when she had her other heart attack" and b) she had EKG changes (on an EKG I had done, stat, no thanks to any doctor's order).

He didn't bother to come in and see the patient, and refused to look at the EKG, which I offered twice to fax to him, because of the significant changes from the one three days ago, and her history of an old MI and stent X2. I didn't even get to the part of the assessment where I could explain I thought she had "significant ST elevations and broadening of her QRS complexes."

He thought I was all talking crazy, and cut me off in the middle of my assessment, apparently wanting to get back to merry making with Miss Merry Holiday Ho 2006, or whatever he was so busy doing it took the hospital administrator on call herself to help find him.

I'm getting so tired of being treated like a stupid slut by doctors who don't have enough professionalism or intelligence to answer their pages in a timely manner.

And I'm still angry about the situation. Very, very angry. It's anger I need to let go of, obviously, but it's hard. I wish I could get to the point where I just don't care any more, because then maybe I could see the rational in the popular plan espoused by lazy docs: "do nothing" or its equally famous corollary, "wait and see."

The woman could have died, and probably suffered a serious cardiac event, and I had no orders, not even conditional orders, for two hours. And the orders I got treated the symptoms, but didn't really do anything to help diagnose the underlying problem, in my opinion.

Two hours.

It's a long time to stare at a HR in the 140's, a patient who looks like crap, and an EKG that looks even crappier. Meanwhile, I had to call another doctor twice because of his demented patient, who was picking off all his telemetry, clothing, etc, and refusing to take his meds. I did get to chart for posterity that the doc's response to the med refusal was, "Patient refuses to take meds. Whatever."

I then picked up a patient at 3 a.m. who was just as loopy, but not restrained, and having a great time playing "Let's try to climb over the bedrails!' for hours and hours.

And another patient who, while nice, insisted on every two hour Dilaudid IV push meds, for pain. I understood why he needed the pain medicine, but I thought I might poke my own eye out with a syringe before the night was over, just to see if I couldn't earn myself a trip to the ER and some pain medicine, too.

I'm still so angry about that shift it makes me wonder what the point is, and makes me laugh bitterly when Apple, with their fucked up "protocols" about sending me a stupid, lousy, made-in-Tawain power adapter, sanctimoniously tells me "they can't help me unless they make sure the power adapter really, truly doesn't work."

There's irony there, isn't there?

Deep, powerful, annoying, anger-and-resentment-causing irony.

No one better fuck with me at work tonight.

Nobody.