Every once in awhile I get this idea of how my ideal Fantasy Life would go in, you know, Fantasy Land.
It pretty much goes like this: I would be able to go to work and not pull my back all the time, I'd be able to eat a full meal and not get an upset stomach or other GI upset, and I'd be able to fall asleep within fifteen minutes of my head hitting my pillow at night.
Plus, when I went to the doctor because I couldn't do one or some of those things, that doctor would actually be the doctor I made an appointment with, not I Just Got Out Of Residency Five Days Ago McSmarty Pants MD, and then that doctor would docilely just prescribe what I need, not make useless little patronizing speeches about sleep hygiene.
I mean, "If you can't get used to night shift, you'll probably have to find another job," is not helpful when probably 90% of the hospital nursing jobs are night shift, especially if you have to start all over and find another job because your first night shift job was killing you.
I was almost sorry I brought up the fact that my back has been hurting for two weeks straight. I can't sit or lie down without LOTS OF PAIN, and it is sort of starting to wear on my temper just a wee bit.
Apparently, even though it is my job to control my patient's pain, when it's my turn to be the patient, I'm just supposed to suffer in silence.
Well, maybe not in complete silence, but wholly unmedicated, any way.
I guess that doc was right in a way, though, I could potentially solve all my problems if I just got the hell away from bedside nursing.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Saturday, June 28, 2008
why I heart hearts.
As if to mock me, the poor soul being damned to night shift (because I'm sure the weather personally cares) it's turned summer 'round these parts, replete with the loud various landscaping power tools and ubiquitous siren song which is the hallmark of the drunken and disorderly.
The beds at work are crammed full of summer's first blush of warm-weather-related traumas. In fact, Work refers to summer as "trauma season." And, one supposes they might as well, as how else does one differentiate summer from any other season around here, other than the sun comes out, people mistake it for Armageddon, and immediately commence shooting and stabbing each other.
I'm also convinced that Seattlites mistake "sunny" for "hot," as they are well-acquainted to neither. Yesterday, everyone I knew at work complained of it being "hot"--including visitors--yet when I was finally released from Haus of Payne (or Chateau de la Pain-in-the-Ass, alternately) I found it only mildly warm, and nothing I would change into hot pants and a tube top for, even if I were going for the Slutty Seventies look.
In any case, after working three-days-in-a-row (my most dreaded schedule, as there can be no pain like the pain of knowing you've just gone through some of the worst work-crap of your life, and yet somehow, you're still not allowed to go home) I have some observations and pithy trite sounding maxims.
Maxim #1: Even if you're feeling lots of annoyance and bitterness at say, Piper (value neutral as I can get, right?) always say good bye to Piper and at least have something marginally friendly to say before you leave, even if he gives you a mildly puzzled look which conveys he's utterly nonplussed at your solicitous overtures. Sure, he might have left you feeling a bit cold the night before when he snubbed you for the couch, a six pack of milk bones and Bad Bitches of Animal Planet Gone Wild, or some such, but god forbid you come home and find him "down for an unknown length of time" which is medical-jargon for "you're fucked."
I'm not saying I always practice this maxim, because in a lot of cases, I don't. Have I bothered to reach out to family or friends who have taken the high road and left for greener pastures? No. So one day, this maxim is bound to hamstring me with deep guilt and shame at my own hypocrisy.
But, I did just that yesterday before leaving yesterday, and was glad I had, because the first five hours of my shift was spent withdrawing care on a patient who had suffered a devastating injury only the night before, and watching his partner grieve openly at the bedside while his loved one died right in front of him.
Observation:
Every time I have to take care of a brain dead patient or dying patient or what not, I totally lose my appetite.
It's not because of the dead part. Really, at that point, the patient isn't feeling any pain. It's about the grief and suffering I witness from the family's end.
It's like taking a detour to hell for a few hours.
Even more jarring: half an hour later, you're admitting a new, living patient into the same bed and taking care of a whole new set of issues and family who expect you to give a damn.
And you're just supposed to process all of that, because It's Your Job, and you'll be branded as a wuss if you can't take it.
I have a weird job, really.
Observation:
I think I decided a long time ago I trauma really isn't my bag. Sure, it's fun to look up the daily horror show of local news and know what you're day is gonna look like, but I don't really like it. It's just a constant reminder that your life could be all happy and then complete shit five seconds to the rest of you life later.
However, I really like the people on the unit, and the way it's run.
But, I think I belong back in the world of elective heart surgery and interventional cardiology, so I don't know how long I'll stick with this trauma gig. Long enough to get some real experience and feel comfortable as an ICU nurse, but I think at the very top, two years is about all I can handle of level one trauma without becoming a traumatic brain injury case myself.
Observation/silliness:
As a resident so pithily observed yesterday when teaching another doc how to pronounce death legally (almost as bad as filling out one's taxes), "Think about it: everybody dies of cardiac arrest. Don't use it as a cause of death."
Point being: this is the third patient of mine since I started ICU whose cardiac death I've watched on the monitor. Reading cardiac monitors is like reading the language of life, if I may be so floridly purple prose about it.
It's one of the things, philosophically, that I love and prefer about cardiac nursing: reading telemetry is like being able to read a foreign language in some ways. (Unfortunately, it comes with the caveat that a lot of the times, what you're reading is, "Uh oh! Danger! Bad!")
Any way, every time I've had the misfortune to be stuck being Death Watch Nurse, I've always marveled at how stubborn the heart is. I'm tempted to call the heart blindly optimistic; even if it isn't pumping blood any more, it's still trying to do it's sodium-and-potassium-pump channel thing, busy organizing an electrical impulse, and while I suppose physiologically this is no more than brain-dead patients "posturing" due to random spinal cord firings--there's a certain kind of ironic optimism about a dying heart.
I mean, I think if I can indulge in one more irritating reference and make a lame joke, I'm rather tempted to believe, based on my preference for the cardiovascular system over the neurological one, that G-d spent a great deal of time designing the first, and rather had to gloss over quite a bit when it came time to give us the latter--especially the brain. I mean,if you follow that whole seven-day biblical creation story bit and follow it out to its logical conclusion, I'm assuming G-d had to cut corners on some stuff just so that He didn't disappoint His inaugural Monday night bowling team date with, like, the Holy Rollers, or something.
I've always held the cardiovascular system to be rather more well-thought out and practical, and, in an optimal state, I really think quite proletarian and puritanical in its work ethic, whereas the neuro stuff I've always kind of thought of as the product of what would occur if you married the physiological equivalent of the Crazy Darkly Artistic One with the Brilliant Mad Scientist One and The Megalomaniac Control Freak One and then they had offspring: no one really understands a damn bit of the science part, so then the artistic part takes over and makes up a bullshit, impressive sounding reason that in actual fact no one else really gets, either, but since Meglomaniac Control Freak One says that's the way it goes, nobody argues. On top of that, this brilliant brood is saddled with being responsible for an entire group of physiological systems it rather thinks of as its servants, servants it would rather just eschew altogether if it could, but is unwilling to abdicate its coronal powerhouse, and thus...
Also noted: for all of the reverence we accord neurosurgeons (bless them, for they spend their lives digging around in other people's noodles for a living) most of what I heard in rounds is, "Well, we really don't know what the outcome is going to be," which I always interpret as not only the truth, but also, a thinly veiled, polite way of saying, "We think your loved one is really very fucked right now, and we don't know enough about the brain to say otherwise."
Yes, if I had to compare physiological systems to philosophies, I would call the cardiovascular system Kantian (plugging away in its little self-contained universe, stubbornly doing The Right Thing when all hell is breaking loose around it and all evidence points to imminent doom no matter what the heart does or doesn't do).
The beds at work are crammed full of summer's first blush of warm-weather-related traumas. In fact, Work refers to summer as "trauma season." And, one supposes they might as well, as how else does one differentiate summer from any other season around here, other than the sun comes out, people mistake it for Armageddon, and immediately commence shooting and stabbing each other.
I'm also convinced that Seattlites mistake "sunny" for "hot," as they are well-acquainted to neither. Yesterday, everyone I knew at work complained of it being "hot"--including visitors--yet when I was finally released from Haus of Payne (or Chateau de la Pain-in-the-Ass, alternately) I found it only mildly warm, and nothing I would change into hot pants and a tube top for, even if I were going for the Slutty Seventies look.
In any case, after working three-days-in-a-row (my most dreaded schedule, as there can be no pain like the pain of knowing you've just gone through some of the worst work-crap of your life, and yet somehow, you're still not allowed to go home) I have some observations and pithy trite sounding maxims.
Maxim #1: Even if you're feeling lots of annoyance and bitterness at say, Piper (value neutral as I can get, right?) always say good bye to Piper and at least have something marginally friendly to say before you leave, even if he gives you a mildly puzzled look which conveys he's utterly nonplussed at your solicitous overtures. Sure, he might have left you feeling a bit cold the night before when he snubbed you for the couch, a six pack of milk bones and Bad Bitches of Animal Planet Gone Wild, or some such, but god forbid you come home and find him "down for an unknown length of time" which is medical-jargon for "you're fucked."
I'm not saying I always practice this maxim, because in a lot of cases, I don't. Have I bothered to reach out to family or friends who have taken the high road and left for greener pastures? No. So one day, this maxim is bound to hamstring me with deep guilt and shame at my own hypocrisy.
But, I did just that yesterday before leaving yesterday, and was glad I had, because the first five hours of my shift was spent withdrawing care on a patient who had suffered a devastating injury only the night before, and watching his partner grieve openly at the bedside while his loved one died right in front of him.
Observation:
Every time I have to take care of a brain dead patient or dying patient or what not, I totally lose my appetite.
It's not because of the dead part. Really, at that point, the patient isn't feeling any pain. It's about the grief and suffering I witness from the family's end.
It's like taking a detour to hell for a few hours.
Even more jarring: half an hour later, you're admitting a new, living patient into the same bed and taking care of a whole new set of issues and family who expect you to give a damn.
And you're just supposed to process all of that, because It's Your Job, and you'll be branded as a wuss if you can't take it.
I have a weird job, really.
Observation:
I think I decided a long time ago I trauma really isn't my bag. Sure, it's fun to look up the daily horror show of local news and know what you're day is gonna look like, but I don't really like it. It's just a constant reminder that your life could be all happy and then complete shit five seconds to the rest of you life later.
However, I really like the people on the unit, and the way it's run.
But, I think I belong back in the world of elective heart surgery and interventional cardiology, so I don't know how long I'll stick with this trauma gig. Long enough to get some real experience and feel comfortable as an ICU nurse, but I think at the very top, two years is about all I can handle of level one trauma without becoming a traumatic brain injury case myself.
Observation/silliness:
As a resident so pithily observed yesterday when teaching another doc how to pronounce death legally (almost as bad as filling out one's taxes), "Think about it: everybody dies of cardiac arrest. Don't use it as a cause of death."
Point being: this is the third patient of mine since I started ICU whose cardiac death I've watched on the monitor. Reading cardiac monitors is like reading the language of life, if I may be so floridly purple prose about it.
It's one of the things, philosophically, that I love and prefer about cardiac nursing: reading telemetry is like being able to read a foreign language in some ways. (Unfortunately, it comes with the caveat that a lot of the times, what you're reading is, "Uh oh! Danger! Bad!")
Any way, every time I've had the misfortune to be stuck being Death Watch Nurse, I've always marveled at how stubborn the heart is. I'm tempted to call the heart blindly optimistic; even if it isn't pumping blood any more, it's still trying to do it's sodium-and-potassium-pump channel thing, busy organizing an electrical impulse, and while I suppose physiologically this is no more than brain-dead patients "posturing" due to random spinal cord firings--there's a certain kind of ironic optimism about a dying heart.
I mean, I think if I can indulge in one more irritating reference and make a lame joke, I'm rather tempted to believe, based on my preference for the cardiovascular system over the neurological one, that G-d spent a great deal of time designing the first, and rather had to gloss over quite a bit when it came time to give us the latter--especially the brain. I mean,if you follow that whole seven-day biblical creation story bit and follow it out to its logical conclusion, I'm assuming G-d had to cut corners on some stuff just so that He didn't disappoint His inaugural Monday night bowling team date with, like, the Holy Rollers, or something.
I've always held the cardiovascular system to be rather more well-thought out and practical, and, in an optimal state, I really think quite proletarian and puritanical in its work ethic, whereas the neuro stuff I've always kind of thought of as the product of what would occur if you married the physiological equivalent of the Crazy Darkly Artistic One with the Brilliant Mad Scientist One and The Megalomaniac Control Freak One and then they had offspring: no one really understands a damn bit of the science part, so then the artistic part takes over and makes up a bullshit, impressive sounding reason that in actual fact no one else really gets, either, but since Meglomaniac Control Freak One says that's the way it goes, nobody argues. On top of that, this brilliant brood is saddled with being responsible for an entire group of physiological systems it rather thinks of as its servants, servants it would rather just eschew altogether if it could, but is unwilling to abdicate its coronal powerhouse, and thus...
Also noted: for all of the reverence we accord neurosurgeons (bless them, for they spend their lives digging around in other people's noodles for a living) most of what I heard in rounds is, "Well, we really don't know what the outcome is going to be," which I always interpret as not only the truth, but also, a thinly veiled, polite way of saying, "We think your loved one is really very fucked right now, and we don't know enough about the brain to say otherwise."
Yes, if I had to compare physiological systems to philosophies, I would call the cardiovascular system Kantian (plugging away in its little self-contained universe, stubbornly doing The Right Thing when all hell is breaking loose around it and all evidence points to imminent doom no matter what the heart does or doesn't do).
Thursday, June 26, 2008
misery hates company
Have you ever had the unpleasant experience of swallowing all of your anger for somewhere around two weeks to two years, and finally, one day at work, you realize, "Boy, am I miserable!"?
At the time, you'll be tempted to blame it on work, which seems the most likely suspect.
But then, you go home, and sit down, and expose yourself to relative quiet and sounds that don't mean, "Someone might die if you don't do something about this all quick like!" and realize it wasn't work that was making you want to throw things and use profanity in the manner of a sailor. I mean, yes, in a general sense, work absolutely sucks, and it's a good target to blame, but then you take a good look around your surrondings and realize it's not all work's fault. In fact, you make the almost-awful true discovery that indeed, work has picked up the scapegoat slack about a hundred times for something/someone at which/whom you're exceptionally pissed off.
Not that it makes it any easier to go to work when you're mood smacks of a sort of Goodfellas goomba, "I wanna smash your face in, Paulie, etc." (And, in my line of work, people come in with faces already smashed, thank you very much.)
In fact, I feel particularly cranky at the fact that I now have to to go to work having spent half the night up in a miserable, seething kind of emotional detritus, the kind that then can't sleep because of all the snoring going on right next to it.
While I can assure worried readers of this blog that anything as sensational or cinematic as Michael Douglas's baseball-bat-in-commuter-traffic performance from Falling Down will happen today, it seems to me modern life leaves little civil recourse for the kind of pathetic angst it inspires.
If revenge is a meal best served cold, what of piping hot anger?
I could spend a good part of my morning drinking beer and throwing the bottles at the tile fireplace, but then that would only inspire more anger, as I'd then have to clean up the mess. (I mean, I could if I had Jeeves, and also, if I didn't have to show up sober to my workplace in an hour).
I'm clearly in the wrong profession. I should be a rock star, for whom regular hooliganish behavior is not only tolerated, it's expected.
However, I think my temperment is far more of the Suicidal Dark Poet, somewhere between the pop cultural phenom of J.K. Rowling ("I did want to kill myself, but then I made more money than God, and now, funnily enough, I don't.") and the guy who does those travel shows about food ("I'm angry and hate things in a snide and sneering way, but I sure do eat a lot of tasty meals for absolutely free!')
Any way, it's not so much as being morose right now as it just feeling large amounts of resentment and the urge to slam cupboard doors and primal scream in the closet until hoarse.
I feel like that robot with his vacuum-piping arms flailing madly about, screaming "Danger! Danger!"
If the human soul comes free with an anger compactor, mine is on overdrive today. I hope work is a perfect steady state of whatever I need to keep my fingers from randomly scratching out my eyes in sheer frustration.
At the time, you'll be tempted to blame it on work, which seems the most likely suspect.
But then, you go home, and sit down, and expose yourself to relative quiet and sounds that don't mean, "Someone might die if you don't do something about this all quick like!" and realize it wasn't work that was making you want to throw things and use profanity in the manner of a sailor. I mean, yes, in a general sense, work absolutely sucks, and it's a good target to blame, but then you take a good look around your surrondings and realize it's not all work's fault. In fact, you make the almost-awful true discovery that indeed, work has picked up the scapegoat slack about a hundred times for something/someone at which/whom you're exceptionally pissed off.
Not that it makes it any easier to go to work when you're mood smacks of a sort of Goodfellas goomba, "I wanna smash your face in, Paulie, etc." (And, in my line of work, people come in with faces already smashed, thank you very much.)
In fact, I feel particularly cranky at the fact that I now have to to go to work having spent half the night up in a miserable, seething kind of emotional detritus, the kind that then can't sleep because of all the snoring going on right next to it.
While I can assure worried readers of this blog that anything as sensational or cinematic as Michael Douglas's baseball-bat-in-commuter-traffic performance from Falling Down will happen today, it seems to me modern life leaves little civil recourse for the kind of pathetic angst it inspires.
If revenge is a meal best served cold, what of piping hot anger?
I could spend a good part of my morning drinking beer and throwing the bottles at the tile fireplace, but then that would only inspire more anger, as I'd then have to clean up the mess. (I mean, I could if I had Jeeves, and also, if I didn't have to show up sober to my workplace in an hour).
I'm clearly in the wrong profession. I should be a rock star, for whom regular hooliganish behavior is not only tolerated, it's expected.
However, I think my temperment is far more of the Suicidal Dark Poet, somewhere between the pop cultural phenom of J.K. Rowling ("I did want to kill myself, but then I made more money than God, and now, funnily enough, I don't.") and the guy who does those travel shows about food ("I'm angry and hate things in a snide and sneering way, but I sure do eat a lot of tasty meals for absolutely free!')
Any way, it's not so much as being morose right now as it just feeling large amounts of resentment and the urge to slam cupboard doors and primal scream in the closet until hoarse.
I feel like that robot with his vacuum-piping arms flailing madly about, screaming "Danger! Danger!"
If the human soul comes free with an anger compactor, mine is on overdrive today. I hope work is a perfect steady state of whatever I need to keep my fingers from randomly scratching out my eyes in sheer frustration.
Monday, June 09, 2008
bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
For the record: it is JUNE and I am wearing a wool sweater and double knit wool cap.
I am also just on the other side of being rather sick (eg getting better) and still a bit fuzzy headed. I still sound convincingly sick. All I want to do is curl up and rest, but I do feel better than even a couple of days ago.
It is grey and damp and chilly. I wouldn't be surprised if the suicide rate spiked in Seattle this month.
Reminds me of JK Rowling's Dementors flying around in London circa Harry Potter book #6, producing all that unnatural mist and cold in July.
Oh God. Please don't let this weather wind on into July.
I am also just on the other side of being rather sick (eg getting better) and still a bit fuzzy headed. I still sound convincingly sick. All I want to do is curl up and rest, but I do feel better than even a couple of days ago.
It is grey and damp and chilly. I wouldn't be surprised if the suicide rate spiked in Seattle this month.
Reminds me of JK Rowling's Dementors flying around in London circa Harry Potter book #6, producing all that unnatural mist and cold in July.
Oh God. Please don't let this weather wind on into July.
Saturday, June 07, 2008
sickness unto death
By crikey, I am sick.
I had a preview of what I was in for as D got all sick and cough-y before I did, but either D is more stoic than I am about The Pain, or else I got a more virulent dose of The Plague than he did--in any case, what a gift that keeps on giving!
Unfortunately, I make myself worse with the hackity-hack when I lay down, so this cold has a bit of a medieval-morality-play-Dante-in-yo'-face quality to it. I have self-exiled myself to the couch so as not to reinfect D or keep him awake with my dreary litany of "cough cough hack hack, moan, cough" repeat ad infinitem.
Meanwhile, it also heartily sucks to live in Seattle at present, with the gloom-and-doom, ever grey, damned cold weather (it is 47 degrees right now. Evil and wrong, I say!)
I am knitting D a warm woolen cap out of leftover wool from his much-hyped hybrid sweater (which sounds energy efficient, but refers in actually to the shoulder shaping--a piece of knitting trivia that I doubt interests anyone but a knitting geek like myself), which he may as well wear now as in December.
As for myself, I am craftily awaiting a surreptitious stash of good old fashioned Shetland wool, etc, for my wool self-swaddling. I am finally going to attempt the Henley Neck Fair Isle in Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Around. And a Moebius scarf, which never appealed to me before in the slightest, but now comes to the foreground as An Objet which I must knit. And if I may be so bold, a Snail Hat, which no doubt will make me look like a right old frigid sno-cone in winter time. (Again, more knitting esoterica which makes no sense unless you are a big a fan of Zimmermann's knitting patterns as I--and approximately a million other knitters globally--am).
In other news of the inane (very hard to write of anything of universal interest when the whole of one's senses is narrowed to "my damned head is full of snot!") Piper finally got his teeth cleaned on Tuesday last (right as I thought I was getting over my cold--useless prediction that was) which left him stoned and rather a wobbly-on-his-pins treat to watch for a couple of days. This, I'm afraid, was a rather expensive venture, and one I have been putting off for more financially fair-weather times, but alas, dental hygiene, even from a dog's perspective, cannot be neglected, and the dog really was starting to suffer.
I am not much good for conversation these days, having lost my voice about Thursday. I retreat to a pile of knitting and the hopes I will turn a corner in this dread disease soon-ish, rather.
I had a preview of what I was in for as D got all sick and cough-y before I did, but either D is more stoic than I am about The Pain, or else I got a more virulent dose of The Plague than he did--in any case, what a gift that keeps on giving!
Unfortunately, I make myself worse with the hackity-hack when I lay down, so this cold has a bit of a medieval-morality-play-Dante-in-yo'-face quality to it. I have self-exiled myself to the couch so as not to reinfect D or keep him awake with my dreary litany of "cough cough hack hack, moan, cough" repeat ad infinitem.
Meanwhile, it also heartily sucks to live in Seattle at present, with the gloom-and-doom, ever grey, damned cold weather (it is 47 degrees right now. Evil and wrong, I say!)
I am knitting D a warm woolen cap out of leftover wool from his much-hyped hybrid sweater (which sounds energy efficient, but refers in actually to the shoulder shaping--a piece of knitting trivia that I doubt interests anyone but a knitting geek like myself), which he may as well wear now as in December.
As for myself, I am craftily awaiting a surreptitious stash of good old fashioned Shetland wool, etc, for my wool self-swaddling. I am finally going to attempt the Henley Neck Fair Isle in Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Around. And a Moebius scarf, which never appealed to me before in the slightest, but now comes to the foreground as An Objet which I must knit. And if I may be so bold, a Snail Hat, which no doubt will make me look like a right old frigid sno-cone in winter time. (Again, more knitting esoterica which makes no sense unless you are a big a fan of Zimmermann's knitting patterns as I--and approximately a million other knitters globally--am).
In other news of the inane (very hard to write of anything of universal interest when the whole of one's senses is narrowed to "my damned head is full of snot!") Piper finally got his teeth cleaned on Tuesday last (right as I thought I was getting over my cold--useless prediction that was) which left him stoned and rather a wobbly-on-his-pins treat to watch for a couple of days. This, I'm afraid, was a rather expensive venture, and one I have been putting off for more financially fair-weather times, but alas, dental hygiene, even from a dog's perspective, cannot be neglected, and the dog really was starting to suffer.
I am not much good for conversation these days, having lost my voice about Thursday. I retreat to a pile of knitting and the hopes I will turn a corner in this dread disease soon-ish, rather.
Monday, June 02, 2008
batteries not included.
(Overheard)
SURGEON #1:
...So this guy comes in, right, and he tells us he's got a vibrator lodged somewhere up his, uh... colon.
SURGEON #2:
[chuckles]
Really? He told you the truth?
[muses]
Usually people don't, you know.
SURGEON #1:
Yeah, well, we asked him if when we go to retrieve it, if he actually wanted it out, or just have the batteries changed.
[General mirth at expense of patient who, thankfully, is several floors below and can't hear the above conversation].
...So this guy comes in, right, and he tells us he's got a vibrator lodged somewhere up his, uh... colon.
SURGEON #2:
[chuckles]
Really? He told you the truth?
[muses]
Usually people don't, you know.
SURGEON #1:
Yeah, well, we asked him if when we go to retrieve it, if he actually wanted it out, or just have the batteries changed.
[General mirth at expense of patient who, thankfully, is several floors below and can't hear the above conversation].
most of what i know.
Most of what I know, I can't believe. -Richard Swift.
It's been awhile since I've blogged. I've been saying that a lot, because I've been working a lot, and lately that tends to mean a lot sleep on my days off.
Plus, I inherited a cold from D, which has us both sycophantically hacking up a lung all night long.
Swell.
Any way, I find lately, along with a strange suspicion that God is mocking me from on high not only with Seattle's crap weather (am I really still wearing my down jacket in the mornings in June? Why yes, Virginia, I am!) but also with a somewhat nagging suspicion that my metaphoric brains have leaked out of my ears almost entirely.
I seem to be caught in a middling storm of mediocrity, in which I can still manage to chuckle mirthlessly at Marx's criticism of what he calls Hegel's "logical mysticism."
(Try explaining to those in the nearby vicinity why you're laughing while reading Marx's Critique of Hegel's Doctrine of State sometime, and you'll find yourself feeling even more ridiculous than usual, I promise. )
In any case, coming up at the fifth month mark of what is beginning to be a strangely interminable orientation (not that I'm complaining) I seem to be feeling a sense of accomplishment on the one hand for having managed to survive the front end of an exhausting introduction to the world of critical care, and a sense of dull, glazed-eye fear at the thought of being finally kicked out of the nest on the other.
I'd say I'm in an awkward holding-pattern of an ICU nurse's professional adolescence--a bad combination of knowing just enough to be dangerous and yet still tell-tale klutzy and overly green in ways I can now recognize in those with even less experience than myself. When, oh when, do I get to grow up and become one of those cool, sophisticated paragons of ICU nursing--those nurses for whom even the scariest of bad scenarios is handled with swift, skilled professional aplomb?
I get the feeling it's going to be awhile before I shake off not only my underwhelming sense of confidence in my skill set, but also that nagging sense that everyone else in the vicinity is not secretly sneering into the sleeve of their white lab coat and thinking, "Amateur!"
I'm also faced with the bald, inelegantly trite fact that there's no way through this mess except directly through it and have resigned myself, if somewhat sadly, to this fate.
My world as of late feels achingly lower middle class and I can't shake the feeling that I'm slowly physically going to seed. Two colds in the span of two months? This is a record,for one who typically succumbs to GI Infestation of the Month, but not the common cold.
Feel pasty and soft, although I've tried to start a half-hearted walking/jog regimen on the streets of oh-so-safe (not) Rainier Valley. Annoyed my attempts at getting in shape have been thwarted by lame-ass cold, which is of the half-assed variety, but will probably hang on in tenacious fashion until mid-June. (Tune in next time for Pointless Predictions of Pestilence with Peevish Patty!)
I think, however, the simple solution to all this mealy-morass would be a steady infusion of sunshine.
Seattle Weather Gods, what say you?
It's been awhile since I've blogged. I've been saying that a lot, because I've been working a lot, and lately that tends to mean a lot sleep on my days off.
Plus, I inherited a cold from D, which has us both sycophantically hacking up a lung all night long.
Swell.
Any way, I find lately, along with a strange suspicion that God is mocking me from on high not only with Seattle's crap weather (am I really still wearing my down jacket in the mornings in June? Why yes, Virginia, I am!) but also with a somewhat nagging suspicion that my metaphoric brains have leaked out of my ears almost entirely.
I seem to be caught in a middling storm of mediocrity, in which I can still manage to chuckle mirthlessly at Marx's criticism of what he calls Hegel's "logical mysticism."
(Try explaining to those in the nearby vicinity why you're laughing while reading Marx's Critique of Hegel's Doctrine of State sometime, and you'll find yourself feeling even more ridiculous than usual, I promise. )
In any case, coming up at the fifth month mark of what is beginning to be a strangely interminable orientation (not that I'm complaining) I seem to be feeling a sense of accomplishment on the one hand for having managed to survive the front end of an exhausting introduction to the world of critical care, and a sense of dull, glazed-eye fear at the thought of being finally kicked out of the nest on the other.
I'd say I'm in an awkward holding-pattern of an ICU nurse's professional adolescence--a bad combination of knowing just enough to be dangerous and yet still tell-tale klutzy and overly green in ways I can now recognize in those with even less experience than myself. When, oh when, do I get to grow up and become one of those cool, sophisticated paragons of ICU nursing--those nurses for whom even the scariest of bad scenarios is handled with swift, skilled professional aplomb?
I get the feeling it's going to be awhile before I shake off not only my underwhelming sense of confidence in my skill set, but also that nagging sense that everyone else in the vicinity is not secretly sneering into the sleeve of their white lab coat and thinking, "Amateur!"
I'm also faced with the bald, inelegantly trite fact that there's no way through this mess except directly through it and have resigned myself, if somewhat sadly, to this fate.
My world as of late feels achingly lower middle class and I can't shake the feeling that I'm slowly physically going to seed. Two colds in the span of two months? This is a record,for one who typically succumbs to GI Infestation of the Month, but not the common cold.
Feel pasty and soft, although I've tried to start a half-hearted walking/jog regimen on the streets of oh-so-safe (not) Rainier Valley. Annoyed my attempts at getting in shape have been thwarted by lame-ass cold, which is of the half-assed variety, but will probably hang on in tenacious fashion until mid-June. (Tune in next time for Pointless Predictions of Pestilence with Peevish Patty!)
I think, however, the simple solution to all this mealy-morass would be a steady infusion of sunshine.
Seattle Weather Gods, what say you?
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