50 truths not worth knowing

Life, like work, is full of these truths that, when you think about it, aren't really worth knowing.

On the other hand, if you can get some ice cream out of the deal, you're lucky.

piper defies death!

Piper turned eleven on Monday. He seems nonplussed by his age. He had a near-death experience last week when he stole some chicken wings, and choked on a chicken bone.

After the near-canine code had passed, he ran around with a sheepish little look on his face, and he was completely fine after about 15 minutes.

Piper defies death! He's Magic Dog. He's survived falling out of a three story window and then being lost for a couple of days (under someone else's supervision a few years ago) and now, a serious choking incident. I was imagining myself having to perform a crichoidectomy with a butter knife and salad tongs, or something. I even tried Doggie Heimlich, to no avail. He finally managed to get the damn bone down his gullet I can't imagine it felt very good, and then I worried about him perforating his bowel with a sharp chicken bone end.

Then I realized dogs had been probably pulling this dumb shit since cavemen tossed away their spit-roasted woolly mammoth carcasses, and if those Prehistoric Canines had survived the gene-pool to become Pampered Lap Dog Piper, there probably isn't a whole lot you can do to kill your dog.

Except, probably, feed them premium dog food laced with rat poison at the factory site.

guys and dolls.

One thing I've come to suspect over the years is that men are fairly binary in their decision making processes.

Ergo:

If a guy really wants a beer, he gets up off his ass and gets a beer.

If a guy doesn't really want a beer, he doesn't bother to get off his ass and get a beer.

Likewise:

If a guy really wants the girl, he gets up off his ass and gets the girl.

If a guy doesn't really want the girl, he doesn't bother to get off his ass and get the girl.

This is only a working theory, but I'm pretty sure this is Occam's Razor for Relationship Dummies.

Or, for Smart Dummies:

entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.

devil's advocate

Nursing koan:

Why do nurses get brainwashed during school into thinking they are actually going to function as the patient advocate, when the system is so fucked up the only advocate you could possibly function as is Satan's, and that's on a really, really good day?

truth or fiction--you decide!

JAMIE:
So, your patient? She isn't going for brain surgery [on that cancerous mass] tonight; the family decided against it for now; want a second consult before they proceed, and neurosurgery is aware.

DOCTOR:
Uh...? Okay. Umm... It doesn't matter to me.

JAMIE:
Uh...? Okay. Just thought you'd like to know.

silence of the lambs

Today's topic is: horizontal violence at work, and why it sucks.

Except, I'm too tired, and too burnt out to tell you how I Cried At Work In The Breakroom for the second time in two years (should this ever happen at all, in any job?) yesterday because I felt so burnt out from the pointless abuse everyone is subjected to on a typical hospital shift.

LIke I get reamed out by the attending physician and a completely has-no-business-at-all-with-the-patient-sitting-around-charting-on-some-
other-patient doc. And not for something stupid, like: 'Dude man, the guy needs like, a stool softener, and it's 2 a.m., and I woke you up for this 'tard order."

Rather, it was like, "Dude, Beavis, I'm calling to let you know that your neck fracture guy has had major mental status and respiratory system changes (on a neuro surgical stepdown unit patient) plus y'all had an abnormal admission lab two days ago that never received a proper work up, and not only is that Bad For the Patient, it's also like, seriously bad medical malpractice karma, dude."

Meanwhile my co-workers stood around and acted like it was normal work place "stuff," this "publicly humiliate someone who's just trying to do their job until they have to run into the breakroom and sob for five minutes" business.

The guy finally needed an intensive care bed this morning, which didn't surprise me.

Attending bother this morning to see the patient who night shift and myself watched swirl the drain slowly for almost 72 hours?

Nah.

Poetic Justice: The family thought the doctor sucked, too, and fired him, even before their loved one needed the ICU.

stealing candy from a baby. or protestants.

Today at orientation, which was held in a conference room of a church, I wandered into the kitchen, and noticed they had all this unattended candy (and money!) lying around.

I thought about just taking the candy, but then thought, "You can't do that. It'd be liking having sex in a church confessional!"

Then I thought, "But, these people are Protestants, with the cheesy photographs of a clearly Caucasian, non-Jewish, blonde Brad-Pitt-look-alike Jesus standing around in a lush, Florida landscape so unlike backwater Galilee. I thought they weren't into iconography, those hypocritical bastards! Those silly pictures alone make me feel they deserve to have their stupid candy robbed from their stupid Christian Fellowship Kitchen."

Catholics are also hypocritical bastards, but they're also not about to leave money lying around. Especially money and candy. (Unless these Catholics are also pedophilic priests trying to lure their next victim. Har har.)

Poor Protestant Reformers. They worked so hard, and this shitty denominational spin-off lameness is the crap historical thanks they get in return for being burned at the stake and run out of Europe.

N.B. This post is your post, this post is my post. It's meant in jest. As in fun. As in, I'm joking, people. Like laughing and stuff, not religious belligerence. Okay, well, maybe a little religious belligerence. But not that much. Because face it, I don't have much of an audience to begin with, much less alienate.

Alien Nation.

So, I was at the table with all these Other Nurses, and off in my own little world, thinking about whether or not I should break out my ACLS handbook during break, or whether that would look totally geeky, and then thinking about how I wished I had something more fun to do than sit here and be treated like a pre-school aged moron, like drive rusted nails up my nose. Far, far up into my brain.

While pre-occupied with these amusing thoughts, I picked up on the Young Nurse next to me, who was saying, "...and I've decided on veal, and chicken, and fish."

And Token Black Nurse says "Oh, yeah, those are good selections!"

And I think, "Are they fucking talking about their stupid Jenny Craig diets?! How is it I know, instinctively, that these people aren't going to know the IVP bolus rate of amiodarone, either? Can't I find people who want to talk about ACLS protocol, or the latest stroke research or which Latin declension is their absolute favorite?

And then Young Nurse starts blabbing on and on about "It's fifty dollars a plate!"

And at first, I think, "Wow! Those Jenny Craig diets have really gone up in price! I'm glad nursing makes me an anorexic stick! So much cheaper that way!"

Then I realize, as Young Nurse starts rhapsodizing about The Dress, With the Bustle And the Train and all that crap, that she's talking about her upcoming wedding.

I could only stand the prattle for about thirty seconds more, even though I wasn't participating in the inane drivel. I got up from the table, walked around, went to the bathroom, and wished I had thought to bring a "water bottle" of 80 proof vodka. Then, wishing I could flush myself down the toilet and end up in sewage rather than go back to Wedding Wurld, I steeled myself with the thought of how one day, I'll meet someone who does know the IVP bolus rate of amiodarone and has ACLS protocol memorized by heart.

And guess what?

That nurse was still fucking talking about her lame ass dress.

I thought, "Oh my fucking God. If I were a male, and a nurse, and constantly around these kinds of women, I'd totally, totally be gay. Everyone thinks I'm gay, already, and no guy ever fucking talks about flower arrangements and whether or not sequins on the dress is too eighties, or cool, and retro, or whatever."

Middle Aged Man and Sister of Asystole Nurse

A few days ago, one of my friends reminded me of that early 1990's Saturday Night Live skit, Middle Aged Man (and his friend, Drinking Buddy, remember?):

You know, with Mike Myers, and the jingle:

"Middle-Aged Man. Middle-Aged Man.
He has powers and knowledge that are far beyond younger men.
Middle-Aged Man.
Caught between forty and fifty-five
Accruing more interest, yet losing his sex drive.
Middle-Aged Man."

Today, I met The Absolute Worst Version of this guy, in person. (To be fair, I also met the Absolute Worst Version of Over-Forty Woman, too, as detailed in unfortunate length below).

To preface, my orientation group had four guys, all nurses I think. One was Zimbabwe, What The Hell Is He Saying With That Kooky Accent of His, Any way (?) Guy. One was I Used To Be CEO Guy, And Am Actually Articulate, But Somehow, Still A Tool Guy. One was Nice Guy, With The Good Attitude.

And then.

Then:

There was Middle Aged Man. And, okay, so he was Middle Aged Man. But he was also Insecure, Chauvanist, Still Thinks He's A Playa Middle Aged Despite The Fact That He's Clearly Not Twenty Anymore, and That Behavior Wasn't Even All That Appealing Then Man.

You can always spot this guy a mile away, or across the room at a very, very boring orientation session in which chewing off one of your own limbs seems like a fun distraction that might just get you out of the room and somewhere better, like a crowded, filthy ER, if done properly.

He's also known as the Jerky Male Nurse, aka The Cowboy. He's arrogant, cocky, and also, incredibly and very, very obviously, caught up in his own Middle Aged Crisis. He's annoying kind that asks questions that are designed to make him look smart, but actually make him look like a pseudo-intellectual hack with no real academic prowess. He's Belittling To Women Around Him, But Clearly Wants to Score.

In the words of that classic Dennis Leary song, he's an Asshole:

I'm just a regular joe
With a regular job
I'm your average white
Suburbanite slob
I like football, and porno, and books about war
I've got an average house
With a nice hardwood floor
My wife, and my job
My kids, and my car
My feet on my table
And a Cuban cigar

Yeah, he's that guy.

And, to prove I'm not just being sexist here, and that he really is that guy, I also noticed this other nurse, who looked vaguely familar. It wasn't until I got in my car at the end of the day, and was a couple miles away, when I realized who she was, not just in an archetypal sense, but as in "who she reminded me of in real life."

She was one of those Desperate, Past Their Prime And Pretending They Don't Know It Nurses. You know the type. The Trying Too Hard Kind. With the bleached blonde hair teased and hair sprayed stiff in a French twist, cakey-makeup, who just exudes sleaziness, and vapidity. (Sleaziness is okay. Sometimes, it can be kind of classy in an ironic way. If you don't think so, go watch Britney Murphy's performance in 8 Mile. But vapidity? Only if you're really, really nice, or temporarily using psychadelic drugs. Or have a Glasgow Coma Scale rating below 10. Definitely not okay otherwise.)

Well, at the end of the day, I witnessed something that made me want to use those carcinogenic antibacterial wipes we use in the hospital to clean Icky Stuff. To scrub out my eyeballs. Or possibly, just go home and scrub out my eyes with a brillo pad, but first, use that brillo pad to filter the crack I needed to smoke in order to erase the nasty memory from my brain.

And this was the image:

Middle Aged Guy was getting off the elevator with his arm around Sleazy Nurse.

It was just gross. And they weren't old friends, either, because then, as if the icky display of physical affection wasn't enough to make me "vomit a little in my mouth" to quote actress Kate Walsh, he then says to her, loud enough for all to hear, in this smarmy, suggestive tone, "I really enjoyed talking to you."

He might as well have said, "I really think you're an easy piece of ass; can I do you in the parking lot?"

So here's the part I thought about on my way home. I knew I'd seen that nasty teased blonde hair somewhere, and now I remember where. It was on my staff floor, and the nurse was this rehab/ortho idiot who floated to telemetry, and wandered around for an entire shift looking like she was diverting, and currently on, Ativan. She even my asked my friend, "Why does the monitor in that patient's room says "asystole"?" (And, she sounded like she didn't know what "asystole" meant, on top of it.) So, after my friend sniggered about this revelation to me, this poor nurse comes up to me like five minutes later, and asks "Why does the monitor say asystole?"

I assumed, perhaps generously, that the patient was actually not asystole since change of shift thirty minutes ago, and said something to the effect of, "Uh, is the patient hooked up to the monitor properly?'

Her answer was classic: "Oh! I don't work on a cardiac floor! I don't know about these monitors and things!"

And I thought, Yes, I get that the big fancy technology from 1985 intimidates you, but didn't they teach you in nursing school how to tell, just by looking at a patient who's breathing and in no apparent distress, if a patient is living or dead?

Or that, like, if the toaster isn't working, maybe you should make sure you plugged the fucking thing into the electrical outlet, because this is the 21st century, and things run on electricity now, not magic like In The Olden Days, at least most of the time?

dumber and "dumberest"

Orientation, day two, was today.

It wasn't a very good day, first of all, because I learned at 1230 this morning that someone I care about is being deployed to Iraq for a year.

I knew this was coming, and somehow, knew to pick up the phone that late at night, even if I didn't recognize the number.

It was horribly disturbing news, knowing someone was about 12 hours from boarding a plane, possibly en route to his death, and I was powerless to do anything about it, but the fucking President is, and still insists we keep sending young men and women to their deaths and lifetime disfigurements and dysfunctions.

Then, this morning, I got stuck in traffic, and a twenty minute commute became a seventy minute bumper-to-bumper excursion in Why Everyone Should Give Up Commuting, and Stay At Home.

Then I actually got to orientation, which was so stultifying I spent a majority of the time declining Latin nouns and drawing pictures of my dog on the orientation manual.

At one of the lowest points in the whole day, we were required to make up a skit about a hospital policy, and present it to the group. My table had to do a presentation on "how to clock in and out with your badge." No, I'm not kidding. Yes, I'm serious.

I thought, "No fucking wonder doctors treat us like infantile idiots! That's how we treat our own colleagues!"

It felt like the equivalent of, I don't know, earning a master's degree and a nursing degree, and then being forced to redo kindergarten and learn your colors, and then do a skit about learning your colors. Except I wasn't learning anything, and I knew my colors by the time I was three, as well as how to read at a kindergarten level by the time I went to preschool.

(The preschool teacher phoned my mom a couple months into the school year, saying basically, she thought I was retarded because I didn't know how to tie my shows, the alphabet, my phone number or my colors, like all the other four year olds. I was being a little pre-school slacker! So, my mom asked me why I was refusing to do these things in school, because she knew I could read and do all those other things. Cheeky little monkey hat I was, I said, "Mom, I already know how to do those things. Why should I do them again?!"

My parents pulled me out of that nursery school, and enrolled me in kindgergarten instead. In first grade, I had my IQ tested to see if I should be promoted and skip a grade. I had no idea what the hell that Nice Psychology Lady was actually doing, I just thought it was great, exciting fun to be pulled out of class and do this interesting stuff, like solve puzzles and use my brain. I had so much fun!

The concurrence was that I should be skipped a grade ahead, but my mother held off, thinking it would impede my social skills if I were a couple years younger than the rest of the second graders with their seven-year-old growth spurts and all that fancy developmental advancement.

Well! I showed her! I was socially inept as hell, any way, and still miserably bored and underchallenged in most subjects through most of my primary schooling.

This feeling of underwhelming mediocrity is how I feel about nursing, in general. It's kind of also how I feel about our president, who uses non-words like "misunderestimate" to illustrate not only in a verbally obtunded but also completely illogical way "how pointless wars in foreign countries is good for democracy."

At the end of the day, it was all I could do to pull my shit together and decide o come back for more mind-bludgeoning crap tomorrow.

vocabulary, people.

I was at the bookstore today, browsing, and opened a book which claimed to contain "the toughest words on the GRE."

I read the cover after I'd flipped through the book, and quickly put it down and walked away with a guffaw of disgust, because it contained definitions for words like axiom and anomalous. I thought, in all sincerity, that the book would be called something like Vocabulary Lists For Your Marginally Talented Sixth Grade Honors Student, not a preparation guide for graduate school entrance exams!

I'm sorry to sound once again like the snobby pseudo-academic elitist I am, but I was astounded and aghast (which, note, are probably words most twenty-one-year-olds seeking admission into an MBA program have to sound out phonetically if this book I flipped through is indeed any indication of the the pithy vocabulary of the illiterati morons it targets).

Burning questions I now have in earnest: Aren't American students required to read during undergraduate school? You know, like actual books, without color illustrations, plot summaries, or pop-up icons and characters that speak with bubbles over their heads?! Doesn't anybody else learn the Latin adjective pulcher, pulchra, pulchrum and marvel at the word "pulchritudinous"?! Don't today's kids at least listen to the crappy U.S. national news or, Christ, I don't know... watch Law and Order re-runs and therefore have at least some vague idea what "litigious" and "exculpate" might mean without having to miss major plot points of a) world history b) current events, such as the Anna Nicole Smith debacle?

And last, but not least: how, pray tell, can words like zeal and wretched wind up on GRE vocabulary lists? Those words might qualify for a fourth grader's spelling exam, but graduate entry level exams?!

Nobody says you have to Love Reading So Much That Etymology Is A Big Turn On For You, Like It Is For Jamie And Geeks Like Her, but come on, college graduates! I was hoping they were just kidding about that grade inflation piece they did on Ivy Leagues like Harvard, but now I'm not so sure.

The mind spins madly.

Katy, unwitting and brave teacher of the Those In Their Late Teens, what sayeth you of this trend of apparent illiteracy in college grads?

for the love of dog

I realize I'm not an Average Jane type of girl.

For one, you know the way some women get over their wedding day, and their wedding dress, and all that crap?

Well, I could care less about that shit. Really. I think it's an expensive waste of money, and cheered when Sandra Oh's character told her t.v. fiance that she didn't care about "all that crap."

On the other hand, I get absolutely bat-shit crazy crackers starry-eyed when somebody starts talking about university graduation, or academic regalia, and whether or not they own it. I get totally jealous of people's academic degrees and how many they have.

Graduating (again and again and again) has been One of the Best Days of My Life. If I was going to die tomorrow, and someone wanted to know what day was the happiest of my life, I'd probably say graduating from divinity school.

Also, I realized today when I went into a pet store, that a) what diamond ring shopping is to some women, pet window shopping is to me and b) what babies are to some women, puppies are to me.

There's this little Piper dog in one of the pet stores across the street, and it's a good thing I'm Not Totally Stupid, because if I didn't already have a dog, I'd now have a puppy.

And, I'd probably have two squirrely little puppies, because Little Piper Dog's cagemate appears totally bonded, and vice versa, and how can you buy one and leave the other poor thing behind? (Piper was in his cage by himself when I first saw him. And totally goofy looking, but it was dog love at first sight!)

I don't really understand when people talk about wanting to raise big families with lots of kids all under the age of five, but I totally get the crazy pet people who keep adopting homeless strays. Because if I didn't travel, I'd totally be one of those crazy pet people.

Oh wait, I am already.

and your little dog(s) too!

The couple that just moved in next door has two yappy, hysterical Yorkies.

I'm not sure what happens to the yappy, hysterical canines during the day. Maybe they sleep off all the barking they do when their owners come home at night.

Can I suggest barbituates for the dogs?

Or a lethal dose of propofal?

glass half empty

Does any one else look at their life and find themselves saying after five depressing minutes of being unable to convince themselves "I'm helping people!" : "Oh my God, my career is a complete disappointing piece of crap!"

I'm not in a very good mood today.

It's a glass-half-empty sort of day.

seen and not heard

Right outside the apartment where I'm staying for this week, there's a playground. Why this playground is about ten feet from the building, I'll never, ever know.

But, it confirms my theory that Screaming Children Are Annoying.

Not much of a theory, I know, but it's true.

no doubt

Midori and Robert McDonald are giving a concert this coming weekend, in which they will play Beethovan.

I find it depressing that I haven't been to a concert since my nursing school days, and still less haven't had a proper conversation about music since highschool.

I used to be around people who loved learning for learning's sake, agreed on the basic principles of a liberal arts education, could talk philosophy and enjoyed debates about deontological ethics, how much fun it is to learn Latin, and thought it was a high honor to be named a Fulbright scholar, not the next contestant on American Idol to win a big contract.

I should face the fact that that part of my life is probably over for good, and I, too, have unwittingly become a rutting, groveling slave to the dollar in a crap soulless workplace that bludgeons moral integrity and reigns ruthlessly by wielding the great death blow to happiness and ambition through dehumanizing amounts of mediocrity and liberal amounts of its ugly twin, complacence.

But, it's still depressing that I've lost touch (mostly) with an academic community I loved to be a part of, even when it seemed silly to debate Graham Ward's Cities of God from the comfort of an air conditioned classroom while thousands go hungry and homeless in those same communities. I miss having brilliant, kind mentors whose natural gifts included the rarest of them all, the ability to teach well.

Yeah, I'm glad I had it while it lasted, and I wouldn't trade my education for anything material, but every once in awhile, I long to be intellectually challenged. The point of a liberal arts education isn't to gather knowledge, precisely. The point of a liberal arts education, rather, is to learn how to engage the knowledge and situations one does come across, in life, and, further, how to manipulate and test the world's claims about itself not merely according to a set of equally dogmatic set of claims of one's own, but with a rigorous analysis and critique that lends to as many questions as supposed answers.

Those who say "they don't need that humanities stuff" or "why should I memorize history when I'm not going to use it in my every day job?" are missing the point entirely of a broad scope of education that goes beyond trade or technical ability. The point of learning history is not necessarily knowing when the Crimean War happened, or why, or which of Beethovan's symphonies was originally dedicated to Napolean. That's the stuff of t.v. trivia. Nice to know, but not need to know.

"The point" of learning history, humanities, etc, and having a well rounded education i so that one is able to critically analyze data, to be able to look for patterns, fallacies in arguments, and be able to argue one's point succinctly and clearly.

However, the American educational system, by and large, seems to fail its students throughout their lifespan as learners, at least by my random sample of purely anecdotal conversations with colleagues.

Caveat:

My colleagues are, for the most part, very kind, decent people with lots of common sense and think-on-your-feet type smartness. I enjoy working with many of them, and have befriended a few. I don't think they're stupid because they don't know or care who Catherine de Medici is.

But, out of all the nurses I've worked with, I've only met one who could talk about Marxist Labor politics and knew better than to think "Pravda" was a rip off fashion designer.

I find I rarely have anything to say to most of my colleagues of them except for polite small talk, and shop talk (which is mostly just bitching any way) and couldn't connect with them outside of work if I tried. These people talk about stuff that bores the shit out of me--like where there's a sale on shoes or detergent, and which Dancing With The Stars contestant they voted for last night.

This is not an indictment of nurses, or their education. Being a great intellectual is not a prequisite for the job.

It's just, I miss being able to talk about the things I enjoy talking about, with someone who "gets it" the same way I do.

Ergo, I have to quell a big portion of who I am--even if it's probably a very unappealing part in some respects, because who likes the dorky grade-obsessed nerd--when I'm around most of my colleagues. I rarely mention I went to graduate school, or an Ivy League university for nursing, and I try not to use what other people call "big words." I can always tell when I've used a word no one understands, or reference something I think is in common parlance but others don't. One night at work, I said, "Those policies are absolutely Machiavellian!" Three nurses looked at me with this puzzled look on their face and continued their discussion without agreeing or disagreeing. I felt like an ass. I should have just said, "Fuck management!" ( I think I did, actually.)

I don't think I'm better than other people because of my education, but I find, increasingly at work, it is an extremely socially isolating factor of my existence in Wurkville. I mean, when a big part of your responsibility is wiping someone else's ass, where the hell are you supposed to meet all these other educated people who grew up listening to Mozart rather than Madonna and laugh at the Latin jokes in Life of Brian because they actually studied Latin?

I fear that I've unwittingly pigeon-holed myself into a mundane world where the best conversation I'm ever going to get out of a colleague revolves around my choice of bathroom sanitizer or how to get Little Bobby Joe Jr to eat his strained peas.

My colleagues seem pretty happy with talking about their trips to the Caribbean and their new Gucci bags, or if Heather Mills' artificial leg is going to hamper her chances at winning a round in Dancing With The Stars.

I just wish, sometimes, I could be the same way, and be satisfied with conversations on topics I probably didn't even have interest in as a sixth grader.

dog days

Poor Piper has dermatitis due to a mild flea problem, which which he's been on meds (rilly expensive meds, as in I-have-to-work-a-whole-hour-and-a-half-to-afford-
three-doses kinds of meds) and I thought had completely cleared up. All he's done is scratch and scratch and scratch, and all I did was work and work and work, and was too tired to make an appointment on my days off to get him to the vet.

He went a couple of days ago, and they gave him a shot of hydrocortisone. His blood sugar is probably 550, and he's probably hypokalemic, but he's not scratching as much! and appears much more comfortable. Also, due to vacation, I'm much better able to take care of him, as in feed him more than crappy dry dog food, take him for more walks, brush him daily, and generally hang out with him.

In knitting news: I've been working on a blanket for charity for three months, and it seems to never, ever end, even though I've been on the last ball of wool for what seems like a very, very long time.

Also, I need to read more than yahoo headlines and restaurant mensu, because my brain is turning into mush, and I'm having a hard time figuring out what day of the week it is. No sudoku puzzles, though. Those would just ensure my need for anxiolytics on the level of, oh say, horse tranquilizers.

concept of anxiety

I spend a lot of time at the bookstore now that I'm off for (sob!) seven more days (sob again!). It's in a shopping complex right across the street, within walking distance. The only thing better would be a library within walking distance (libraries get me hot and bothered the same way Latin does).

Today I browsed through the philosophy section and came upon Kierkegaard's "Concept of Anxiety." I opened it up to the page where he talks about anxiety and nothing being the same (uh oh, I feel a need to footnote, and wonder if I'm paraphrasing correctly). I really dig Kierkegaard, and what those long, dark Danish winters did to him certainly was a boon for Western philosophy.

So much for new news.

one fine day

I should say that the weather in central Florida is indeed gorgeous, and as I was stuck in the northeast freezing my ass off for the last hree years, this is the first spring I've enjoyed in a good long while that doesn't involve snow melting into damp small rivers of salt and dirt, refreezing at night so in the morning, you slip on the sidewalk and fall on your ass.

I have another nine days off of work before I start this New Assignment, and I'm enjoying the stressfree environment. I picked up Suzanne Gordon's book "Nursing Against the Odds" while in a bookstore today, opened it up to a scenario in which a nurse couldn't get any of the multiple docs she'd asked to look at a crashing patient, let alone order anything. The nurse knew was going to code and would never survive the code, and was trying to prevent this from happening, as the outcome wasn't ever going to be good.

I skimmed that paragraph, horrified, and shut the book. It hit way, way too close to home. Note that I wasn't horrified because I've never heard of such things like that happening to a nurse/patient. I was horrified because I've been that nurse and I've known that patient, and those doctors. That could be, and often has been, me, on an average day at work. I wondered, as I hastily put the book away, if lay people who read the book will think Gordon is overemphasizing or hyperbolizing this kind of scenario, but most nurses could vouch for that happening in their career not once, but multiple times.

When I don't have to work, therefore, I am very happy, even if all I have to do is menial tasks and cooking. Even if I'm sick with a cold (which I am now, apparently) I think, "Oh thank God I don't have to work 12 hour shifts sick as a dog!"

I've decided I can only subject myself to that kind of moral trauma for a maximum of five years (believe it or not, I've almost been a nurse for two years!) and then I have to either get out completely, or go back to school and get an advance practice degree, where the stress is diffferent, but the autonomy hopefully greater.

As for now, I treat my days off as if they're never going to come again, because sometimes that's how it feels when you're working.

cogito ergo sum

A few days ago I went to my undergraduate college and looked up my thesis. It was the first time I'd ever seen it bound, and the first time since I graduated that I'd read or seen it.

You know what?

It was depressing. Depressing as hell on two counts, as illustrated below:

1) Entitled: What a Stupid Thesis! Or Why Most Undergrads Shouldn't Write Theses

The thesis itself always approximated the minimum standards of acceptable academic prowess. It wasn't that I blew off the project; on the contrary, I took it very seriously, and worked very hard on it. The writing and prose was polished, that much I can say about it. But, the thesis itself was an exercise in writing a very long, very dry paper that didn't say a lot about anything that hadn't already been said before. I agreed at the time that the "whole point" was merely for me to learn more about Kantian moral thought in a systematic, highly autodidactic way. I slogged through a lot of Kant. I slogged through even more commentary on Kant. I thought, and synthesized several academic approaches, and wound up with a 60 page thesis which has an excellent bibliography.

The odd thing is, I've thought a lot about Kant since graduating college, even on my shittiest day in nursing, I think about his ethical commonwealth, and his concept of the highest good, and what was really going on with all that "tension" and "unresolved contradictions" in his theories about the moral and theological nature of man.

I finally came to the conclusion that a lot of that "tension" in his works is still present in Western thought and culture, and is largely the result of the Scientific Revolution and rise of the modern historical collective conscience as we know it. Knowing it's electricity, not magic, that makes the lights turn on when you flip a switch can make it somewhat intellectually difficult to then believe the claim that virgins give birth to babies, and dead men rise after three days and ascend into heaven.

Kierkegaard got around this festering problem, as well as the problem of salvation based on a finite histoircal act (crucifixion and ressurection) with his "leap of faith" talk, which ironically, seems to make more sense to me than Kant's elaborate moral schemes mired in Cartesian duality and frustrated with its own fascination with science, objectivity and human freedom on one hand and traditional theological claims about faith and God on the other.

Of course, it took me five years of pondering this one, tiny thing in order to understand it, and I'm not so sure I didn't just finally understand why my teachers believed about Kant, as opposed to what Kant actually meant himself. In other words, I haven't thought of anything original.

I have often thought I have wasted my intellectual years of learning on, well... intellectual learning. I never felt I had anything orinigal or unique to say, much less write about. Now that I'm stuck in the messy moral quagmire of completely grown-up work, I have plenty to say, but little critical venue for my pathos.

2) Bye, bye Miss American Geekling

I miss being a student, and the validation of independent thinking in a liberal arts setting. In the real world, knowing the right answers often gets you nowhere, or backfires on you. Nobody may care you know what the right thing to do is, or how to do it. Instead of nuturing your intellect and offering constructive feedback, other grown ups in charge of you find ways mean, petty and countless ways belittle you, and suck the joy right out of your work.

After years of being encouraged to think on my own, working has come as a major culture shock, and many situations I encounter in the workplace feel like the equivalent of having to ask for a hallpass to take a piss, or getting mom and dad to sign a form explaining that I was really sick, not just sitting at home playing video games and eating icecream. The endless paperwork feels like those stupid handwriting exercises in which you had to copy the letter "W" over and over and over until your hand went numb.

And, they don't even make a fake effort, like they did in highschool, to corral the smart kids away from the stupid kids by giving the smart kids marginally more difficult courses in separate classrooms. In Work Hell, you're stuck with all those morons who spent their time being disruptive and lazy in the back of the classroom--only now, they spend their time being disruptive and lazy two cublicles down--or horror of horrors, "managing" you-- and no one, seemingly, can put them in detention or suspend them from coming to work for a day or two, so other people can get their work done in peace.

In conclusion: parts of school may have sucked, but work sucks more.

good night, and good luck.

Friday was my last day at Hospital of Hell. It was one of those nights that made marching in Tiennemann square in front of tanks sound circa 1989 sound "relatively fun and entertaining(!)" and made me think, "I should try that! It would be less painful to be crushed by a several ton moving machine of war than do my job for another four hours!"

I moved out of my apartment on Saturday, and headed toward north by northeast (sorry, Hitchcock/Carey Grant fans).

I decided to do another travel assignment, by default, since the nurse manager of CCU told human resources she wasn't offering the job because "I sounded distracted during my interview." I was like, "Huh? So distracted you offered me a job at the end of the interview?! Who's the distracted one, here?"

The next day I got a much higher paying travel job in central Florida, and am actually much happier, even though I'm freaked out, as it's neuro surgical, not cardiac. I'm trying to memorize stroke protocol and obsessively googling things like "status post laminectomy" and "cranial nerve assessment."

I'm also enjoying my two weeks off before my assignment starts, and the beautiful weather. I'm trying to mute Angry About Work Jamie and just be Happy About Life Jamie for two more weeks. This alone should probably lower my cholesterol levels about ten points, and lessen my increasing risk for hemorrhagic stroke due to a hypertensive crisis secondary to work stress.

Did I mention my new assignment is a day position, and therefore I get to sort of work normal work hours, and go to bed before 11p.m. on my work days like most mortals?

As I'm not a vampire, this prospect excites me and my circadian rhythm to no end.