represent.

Work has been a mite better than say... oh, last time I blogged.

My assignments were pretty decent, in that my patients a) stayed in bed b) complied with treatment c) weren't on the call light every five minutes d) had appropriate family members, or none at all.

As horrible as it sounds for the patient, I sometimes wish they didn't allow family/friends to visit for hours at a time, because my God it's such a fucking inconvenience to have to talk to them.

I loathe talking to the family, who always want to know something mysterioso I can't possibly answer, but they think I should magically know. My least favorite question du jour is When The Doctor Is Going To See Their Dad/Mom/Brother/Sister/Pet Hermit Crab?

Dude, if I had a dollar for every time I was asked that question, I could quit nursing and do something marginally more useful with my time, like knit blankets for homeless pet hermit crabs.

Then, for some reason, they want to know How Dad/Mom/Brother/Sister/Pet Hermit Crab is doing.

Like, what the fuck do I look like, Font of Hospital Wisdom 2007? The Great and Powerful Oz? An internet search engine?

How the fuck am I supposed to know, exactly?!

Half the time, the doctor's don't even know precisely what the fuck is going on, and I'm magically supposed to know myself?

Fuck the Nurse Friendly crap. I wish it was possible to say, "I don't know how they're doing, but give me fifty bucks and I'll make up some half-baked story, like I'm doing now, so you maybe won't bother me for fifteen minutes, so I can go see my other patients and make sure they aren't dead."

In fact, I think I have a reputation around the unit as being a bit of a hard-core bitch when it comes to whiny family/patients. I make the unit nurses laugh with my blunt expressions of apathy and toneless, ironic wit, but I think I also scare them just a little bit.

I know.

Me. A bitch.

Who would have thunk it?

I'm actually kind of honored, though, that other bitches think I'm a bitch. It's kind of like getting jumped into a street gang.

That totally makes me like, Bitch Goddess of the Unit, or something.

I know that's not exactly something to be proud of, but it is kind of funny, because before I became a nurse, I thought of myself as a nice, mature person who didn't play petty power games with others, or have to suppress the urge to roll my eyes and look totally annoyed when families ask how old, craggy grandpa hermit crab is doing.

But, it turns out, I really am an impatient, half-crazy Bitchatolla with very little emotional self control when it comes to high stress situations that aren't life threatening.

Stunning revelation, that.

For example, this weekend, I happened to be totally bitching to my coworkers about some wacked out Uber-Weird, Uber-Bitchy interventional radiology nurse. This nurse was totally giving me the shit-end-of-the-guiac-stick, so, in retaliation, I decided to page him a few extra times, just to piss him off.

I knew it was totally immature, and that he wasn't gonna answer the pages, but I know how fucking annoyed I get when my pager goes off multiple times in a row over the same crap, and he'd been such a fucking asshole, and left me with about an hour's worth of extra work to do, that I decided, "Ha ha, bitch! You just fucked with the wrong bitch, bitch!"

It was a very Cartman moment. I get kind of teary-eyed thinking about it.

By now, the unit nurses have all gotten used to my style of The Sky Is Falling tantrums when I get stressed out over nothing. I think they sort of treat it like, "Oh, here goes The Jamie Show. Tune in next time, same Bat Station, same Bat Channel."

I seem to only have this reaction to minor, bullshit situations. When Real Shit Hits The Fan, I'm pretty reliable and get down to bid'nez, and that's why I think my colleagues overlook my unfortunate tendency to hyperbolize when I run into some small snafu.

But, when I was a new grad, on the floor where I was a new grad, guaranteed, this little crap incident would suddenly snowball into some multi-faceted situation that would totally suck ass for the rest of the shift. In Ghetto Nursing, you had to have your back up 24-7, or you totally got beaten down and taken out. So, I kick Freak Out Mode into high gear, totally over-compensating, because that's what we all did back in my Ghetto Nursing Days.

It's like East Coast meets West Coast, and West Coast is all, 'What the fuck is wrong with that East Coast bitch, all stressing over nothing? It's all good, man. Tell the bitch to chill out!"

(Telling my East Coast Ghetto Nursing stories to these West Coast Kayak-Granola Nurses, I notice there's a huge disconnect between my New Grad world full of thugs and hos, and their world of Duuuuude, Possession of Pot Is Just a Misdemeanor Here, Quit Freaking Out, It's All Good. )

Any way, one of my colleagues, who I consider to be a sharp nurse, but even more of an abrasive bitch than I am, laughed at me as I was muttering aloud like a psycho, planning my petty paging-fest revenge, and said, humorously, "Oh my God, Jamie! You're a such a fucking bitch!"

I know it sounds fucked-up, but this was her version of a compliment, and I took it as such.

"Yeah, well, bitch shoulda never given me his pager number, that dumb fuck idiot." I declared in a self satisfied way, as I imagined that Bitchy Interventional Nurse going all status epilecticus as his pager went off for the fourth time in a row, courtesy moi.

I'm glad I spent all that time in divinity school writing essays about compassion and forgiveness, because it certainly hasn't come in handy when dealing with boneheads on the job.