silver bullet

Pardon my blog absence, which I'm sure has gone virtually unnoticed by those with actual lives whose existences don't revolve around the navel-gazing observations of a cranky ICU nurse-in-the-training.

Perhaps I'm making a broad generalization here, but since this blog is not bound my any strict scientific convention that I'm aware of, I'm going to make: April seems to be a traditionally crappy month for me.

As in: last year, I was fighting off demons at work, and this year, I'm in the midst of job training that on some days might give the Marine Corps a run for its money, dithering back and forth and back and forth and back and forth on some personal issues, and recently, whallopped by what I am calling "strep throat" and the medical community at large isn't calling anything else (okay, maybe "pharyngitis") due to their inability to provide all but the most nominal of primary care services (including answering services whose operators can't be bothered to even page a triage nurse properly).

After five days of suffering the wrath of a mighty plague that rendered even Miss Chatterbox herself grimly croaky (and cranky beyond belief to boot), I finally scored some blackmarket antibiotics (you know you're getting old when your drug dealer happens to be doling out Z-packs unused by family members in whom it caused anaphylatic shock) and have, I think, just turned the corner with this ugly disease.

Unfortunately, I'm still required to inform work of my whereabouts, deathbed ill or not, and I've spent most of the week not only wishing I were never born, but also having immense psychological trauma induced by trying to figure out how I will be perceived calling out so much with such short time "on the books" as it were, on my new unit.

I've even tried to gauge if I'll sound "sick enough" to warrant a dispensation from my boss (who happens to be an extremely nice, fair boss).

There's nothing that says, "You're a fucking weak-ass slacker!" like getting strep throat 2 months in to training and calling out sick for the better part of two weeks.

On the other hand, there's nothing quite like knowing you're going to be forced to work one of the most stressful jobs on the planet at a health capacity of say, 50-80% for the next month, and that on your days off, you're going to be shut inside, an invalid, prisoner not only of your body but conscience as well, shunning extracurricular activities that might actually be fun for you and replenish your flogged soul, would it not for the worry that you'll be causing yourself a flag in energy and thus limit optimal recovery time.

I don't know if I was this neurotic about sick time before, but having succumbed to all manner of illness since joining the wonderful workforce of indentured servitude nearly three years ago, I can't tell you how much headspace is devoted towards covetously accumulating, and then judiciously doling out one's own precious sick time.

I won't even go into the mental and bureaucratic gymnastics of how it's possible to be sick for four days in a row during a certain month and be "written up" for "abuse of sick time", as per my old staff job.

Any way, I was rather hoping to employ a strategy of not getting sick at all for orientation, when the pressure isn't as high stakes (imagine that) and I'm not truly counted in the staffing numbers, and in some ways, it's less of a burden not to have an all-thumbs, green newbie stumbling around pouring the contents of a patient's tube feed all down her front in a fit of complete nerves.

This strategy would have meant saving up sick time for when I really did fall sick, and am going to be counted in the numbers.

So much for that. I'm now legitimately ill, a few days before a written exam, which I ominously predict I shall gloriously fail, due to the inadequate ratio of time studying versus being a dull stupor this week.

And then people will sit around and shake their heads, and mumble darkly about that wayward Jamie person, who is showing early tell tale signs of being a Bad Employee.

SO MUCH STRESS.

No wonder I get sick so often!

Sigh.