nursing: it's not a job, it's a fricking endurance trial.

You may have noticed my absence from my own blog.

Or, you may not.

Or, you may have noticed, and simply been relieved, because my last posts have been even more inane and pointless than usual.

This is due to a scientific, poorly understood but common occurence called Wurkus Schmurkus, in which the brain is so pummeled by annoying patients and their family members that one's grey matter oozes out one's ear, rendering one incapable of even the simplest tasks, like blogging.

Last week was so crappy, between Multiple Wound Rotting Full Code Nightmare and Three Hundred and Sixty Lbs of Schizoaffective Hypertensive Yeast Infected Abdominal Folds Thoracic Aneurysm Double Nightmare, that Jamie, who generally loathes being floated, was, if not ecstatically happy, majorly relieved to be taking care of nauseated status post laminectomies and nauseous, vomiting fresh post-op carotid endarterectomies.

Yum! Happy goodness!

Well, it was better than 360 lb guy puking up his entire, and enormous, dinner, which also happened, and makes me never want to eat egg salad sandwiches ever again.

The people at work are very, very nice, but I decided it's floor nursing I dislike. It's boring, and when it's busy, it's often tedious and insane, not fun and challenging.

I'm misanthropic on a good day (have you noticed yet, in two years of bitching about crazy people?) and it pushes all kinds of the wrong buttons when I have to deal with needy family members. It's bad enough when the patient is a whiny little shit. (Shock! Horror! Yes, it ain't a pretty truth, it's not even particularly professional, but behind closed doors and on very public blogs, we do talk about our patients in less than complimentary ways at times--hopefully while abiding by some semblance of HIPAA.)

I'm not very good at the Nurse Friendly schtick, especially when I'm tired of them already, the patient is really sick, or even not that all sick, and you've got some freaked out family member who's demanding, during some annoying, self-entitled McTantrum, that you page the docotor right away, and Where's the doctor? and What are you doing with that medicine? etc. etc.

In fact, based on my random sampling of patient family members and psycho patients, people, in general, totally creep me out now. I try to avoid all eye contact in elevators or out on the street, because I'm desperately afraid someone's going to confront me like they do in a hospital. I'm also not joking about this phenomenon, and it worries me a little bit, because I feel kind of insane myself, because it's not like they know I'm a nurse, or something.

But, it's clear that this job kind of intensifies those social phobia tendencies I already have.

I also tend to think I chose the wrong profession, and it would have been loads better if I had gone with my original inclination in high school, which was to become a medical examiner, and I could skip the niceties of "Hi, my name is Jamie, and I am going to perform your autopsy today." I could also skip the bullshit waitress part, because no needs ice water or "a little something" to move their bowels when they're dead.

You know it's a bad week week at work when you wish all your patients were dead, but then you don't, because that means even more paperwork and bullshit than if they weren't.