Okay, sidebar.
I just saw a blog entitled "Propranolol vs. Atenolol."
This frightens me because a) who the hell devotes an entire blog to dueling beta-blockers and b) I was just writing a nurse friend of my today and pooh-poohing atenolol as the most useless beta blocker ever to be prescribed IVP (IV push).
Alright.
So for the record: I am still sick, skinny, and now, jobless, having begged off the one good nursing job I've had in a year because I was too damn ill to go back and work backbreaking back-to-back twelve hour hospital shifts.
I'm about two steps from the poorhouse, but let's not think about that now! Let's think about Latin!
There are several reasons for this strategy.
As a way of introduction: it is depressing to think about how little an American dollar actually stretches these days, and it's especially sad when suddenly these stupid hospital bills come rolling in like some insidious wave of the Bubonic Plague (incidentally, I love how the bills claim, in bold letters: "This is not a bill! It is a statement!" BALONEY. What this really means is "This is a statement. Of your bill." Friggin' wolves in sheeps' clothing! It is too a bill, just a bill in disguise. Like they think I can't deconstruct their subversive but none-too-clever crackpot scheme to defraud the working poor).
Second, when depressed, the next logical step for a confirmed academic geek like myself is to pull out old textbooks and start reciting conjugations in Latin and stem endings (-o or -m, -s, -t, -mus, -tis and -nt!). There's nothing more to warm the cockles of an academic geek's shriveled up old heart than to read those spiffy Wheelock English-to-Latin sentences that somehow always seem to involve girls saving poets from bad fates or daughters of Rome with sound character and true virtue laboring to help the state, or, in later chapters, endless references to Cicero's Cataline oratories, with swords and flames etc, or Caesar's rather boring and stilted reminscences about Gaul.
(Laugh, but trust me, my disquiet at my financial situation was such that it was either that or memorize STEMI and nonSTEMI ACLS algorithms, and don't think it didn't occur to me to dig out my 2005 ACLS pocket guidebook. Because I did. And lo, I read them while eating my oatmeal this morning. And lo, someone should shoot me now and put me out of my misery, because my God, this kind of pedantry should be illegal, child!)
Also, when depressed, it helps to think there was once a time when even if you mistranslated miles, militis, m. solidier, for milia, milium n., pl., thousands, you weren't going to kill someone because you gave them a huge dose of some vasoactive drug.
And it's also helpful to remember, when feeling like a right royal screw up, that you haven't actually killed any one on the job yet, and there are even jobs out there where you'd virtually never have to even contrive a situation where you could possibly fuck up badly enough to cause any one else permanent lasting damage, death or dismemberment. (I thought about this while shopping at Publix, the local supermarket, while I bought cooking staples like olive oil--and pondered philosophically what indeed it means to be "extra virgin.")
I used to think teaching would be one of those nice kinds of job, where you could impart your vast (or in my case, pithy) repository of knowledge and expertise on the new generation and every one would think you were doing this wonderful, altruistic thing with the added benefit that it remains extremely difficult to think of--let alone conjure-- a situation where discussing Foucaultian discours during class time could kill someone!
So what did I do? Become a nurse, where every so often they foist a poor student on you, so in addition to trying to juggle a patient assignment, you also have to shepard some poor twenty-year-old-deer-caught-in-headlights-young-thing through your shift, which means explaining why you just took fifty unauthorized shortcuts to get your meds passed and assessments done before attending rounds, bitch unprofessionally at pharmacy for not getting med orders right, throw a tantrum at the tray passers who think it's a nurse's scope of practice to set up breakfast trays, and how then smile apologetically and insist in a very half-assed way that the student should totally ignore the nurse behind the sterile field curtain and do it the right way, of course.
The scary thing about me taking on a nursing student (apart from the fact that staff nurses don't actually get paid extra to teach students) is that ummmm dude, I was just a student a year ago myself. Like, hello brilliant educational system!! I don't know what the hell I'm doing myself most days, and uh, you think I'm qualified to teach the next generation of burnt-out RNs?
Apparently the nursing shortage is such that they really could care less.
Which of course brings us a long way from Latin.
Or does it?
Because really, the whole point of diversion is to think about something entirely different from reality, and the study of Latin, oddly enough, represents to me some kind of ideal academic subject, the kind which is only mastered through rigorous and continual application of backside to chair. My favorite kind, in other words.
I also liked it because it wasn't French, at which I failed miserably (because anything that has an actual real world application is something at which I am destined to underachieve, as evidenced by my ruthlessly pointless academic degrees, religion and theology, of which people were always saying--somewhat rudely, if pointedly--"What are you going to do with that?!")
But Latin. Ah. There's a language no one speaks any more! So of course, it turned out I had much more of an aptitude for a dead language than a living one, just as I suspect if sitting in a room all day thinking about how to apply critical theory to the nursing profession was a real job description, I'd actually be employed right now.
I also just happened to like the language itself, though. So pleasantly rigorously structured, almost mathematical in a way (and math, being useful, is of course one more thing I couldn't shine at if my sorry ass life depended on it). All kinds of nice rules to follow, and declining nouns is a really fabulous way to spend an entire weekend if you just so happen to be twenty-five and stuck in a retirement town where everything closes after 5p.m.
I've always thought I would have been a much happier, perhaps less financially woe-begone person if I had been just a little bit smarter or a whole lot dumber, but that is another subject for another day.
Meanwhile I'd better stamp out my vocational ADD in a big hurry if I want to pay my hospital bills, and you know, not end up a homeless urchin giving Latin lessons to gang bangers on streetcorners.
Monday, September 25, 2006
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Sticker Shock
Okay, so grand total for 72 hours in the hospital including ED
visit and medical-surgical double occupancy room?
$9,680.88 U.S.
Shit! I could vacation in the South of France for two weeks with
that kind of money! Or at least, pay off my car!
What the hell?!
visit and medical-surgical double occupancy room?
$9,680.88 U.S.
Shit! I could vacation in the South of France for two weeks with
that kind of money! Or at least, pay off my car!
What the hell?!
Friday, September 15, 2006
Rabbit Redux
My bunny is worse than my dog about treats, specifically, raisins (her latest lust) or bananas.
This trait, I find, is devastating for the owner (me) because not only does she look ten times cuter than the dog when begs for food, she's also much more of a shameless hussy about it (and I didn't think that was possible).
The dog at least pretends to want and enjoy my company. The bunny however, erely tolerates it, until there is food in the offing. Then she puts on her best Olivia Twist routine and becomes a bunny beggar from hell. If I leave the bag on the counter, she'll scratch at the cupboards. Yesterday I witnessed a heroic--if miscalculated--two foot vertical jump in the air to attempt to snag a bag of raisins off my bedside table.
In addition, she makes absolutely no pretenses whatsoever about drinking/eating out of the dog dish. Just now I filled up Piper's bowl, and she ran over, fully expecting a five course meal. She sniffed hopefully, then with increasing disdain at the water, as if to say, That's all?! Where's the good stuff, woman?! She even butts the dog out of the way and eats his kibble, and she's so persistent about it I actually have to feed the dog in a room where she isn't (you might say: hey stupid, shut her up in her cage. And I might say: Ah, yes, grasshopper, but you've never tried to catch a rabbit with your bare hands, have you?)
Now that she has a chocolate lop husbun (an elderly rescue rabbit who isn't quite as bright in the bunny brain department but whom she absolutely adores) she isn't so interested in my baseboards, which is a blessing. Both of them spend a great deal of time out on the porch in a bunnyproofed space, but they also are well-behaved enough to spend time unsupervised in the house like a dog or a cat, as long as the cables and electrical cords are covered (this is minor bunnyproofing compared to a lot of other schemes I had to employ when she was younger, such as Constant Vigilance).
They mostly keep to themselves, and wile the day away dozing under a lamp table, rising only to nibble hay and deprieve the dog of rightful ownership and access to his own nourishment. Flipflop spends an inordinate amount of time grooming her bunny boy bald, and both seem to like to gossip surreptitiously on the pressing issue of how next to dupe the Gulliable Human One into giving them banana sundaes. At least, that's what they appear to be doing. Rabbits may not talk, but they certainly communicate, and it's highly endearing to watch two rabbits incline their heads towards another as if to say, "Hey, what do you think about that big two-legged oaf over there? Think we can con her into more strawberries?"
I haven't really named the boy bunny, referring to him as alternately as The Brown One, The Boy One or my made up term of endearment for bunnies in general, 'Boonis'. He's got a little bit of renal failure going on, and isn't as neat with his litterbox habits as Flipflop, but he's very mellow and doesn't mind being pet (whereas Flipflop hates it with impunity; to her mind, it's just not dignified lady bunny bheavior to let oneself be mauled and cuddled by some idiot human). He seems to like to nibble my toes; I have no idea if this is an affectionate gesture or he finds them aromatic and a possible tier on the bunny food pyramid.
He isn't particularly agile or atheletic, and seems to be bothered by arthritic hips. Whereas Flipflop is bunny magic in motion, careening gracefully around the room and mountaineering with surprising agility over my living room furniture (she has curiously enough never tried to jump on my bed)--the old guy clunks around without a trace of flair, often getting too close and underfoot. The bunny rescuer felt bad about his geriatric health issues--I think they originally thought he was a bit younger--and offered to let me trade him for another bunny, but I was already too attached (as was Flipflop) and couldn't bear the thought of returning a bunny who had been given up once any way.
After all, I had gotten him for Flipflop because I felt so guilty about leaving her in her cage alone for fourteen hours a day when I worked (I felt I had no choice, though, unless I wanted to come home to a Rabbit Interior Design Project every day). Smart and inquisitive, she bores easily. Since the introduction of the boy, she hasn't given a second glance at the baseboards, so my scheme paid off. Happier rabbit = happier slave human.
Flipflop always has an inquisitive, intelligent spark in her eye--unless she's zoning out--but my boy is more often than not found sitting around with a doleful, nearly baleful look about him. He seems somewhat melancholy, and I wonder if deep down in the recesses of his gentle bunny soul, he misses the people who moved and gave him to the shelter. He probably spent more than five years of his life with them, and it's not unreasonable in my animal loving, over-anthropomorphizing mind to think that pet bunnies grieve just like dogs or cats when their masters move away without them.
I've found rabbits to be much more aloof and shy than the average housecat (at least, Flipflop is; we humans have our purposes, oh yes, but providing suffocating physical affection is not it). She is cheeky, reserved, and not at all fond of human touch, despite having been raised in an indulgent, loving household. My bond to her is much more subtle; I delight in having her run to the front of her cage when I'm in the room (Let me out, stupid!), hop hopefully over to the refrigerator door when it opens (What's for supper, ma?), cavort madly about the house, jump on top of my laptop while I'm sitting on the couch, and do her famous Dead Bunny impression which she is named after, namely flipping over on her side, crossing her front paws as if in prayer, and conking out.
In rabbit language, these things mean "I'm comfortable with you, Big Klutzy Human, and I like you." Only the most relaxed, trusting rabbit would ever give herself over to a closed eyed, nose-twitching nap in front of a being five hundred times her own size and weight, and it's a huge compliment from an otherwise aloof-seeming rabbit that she does. Once she was so deeply asleep that when I opened the front door, she didn't even wake up, but continued on with her nap until I surreptitiously ended it by ascertaining she wasn't, in fact, a victim of a bunny cardiac arrest.
Being owned by a rabbit is a relationship of subtle joys and endless surprise at their individual wit, charm and sense of humor. When it comes to rabbits, there's no such thing as a dumb bunny.
This trait, I find, is devastating for the owner (me) because not only does she look ten times cuter than the dog when begs for food, she's also much more of a shameless hussy about it (and I didn't think that was possible).
The dog at least pretends to want and enjoy my company. The bunny however, erely tolerates it, until there is food in the offing. Then she puts on her best Olivia Twist routine and becomes a bunny beggar from hell. If I leave the bag on the counter, she'll scratch at the cupboards. Yesterday I witnessed a heroic--if miscalculated--two foot vertical jump in the air to attempt to snag a bag of raisins off my bedside table.
In addition, she makes absolutely no pretenses whatsoever about drinking/eating out of the dog dish. Just now I filled up Piper's bowl, and she ran over, fully expecting a five course meal. She sniffed hopefully, then with increasing disdain at the water, as if to say, That's all?! Where's the good stuff, woman?! She even butts the dog out of the way and eats his kibble, and she's so persistent about it I actually have to feed the dog in a room where she isn't (you might say: hey stupid, shut her up in her cage. And I might say: Ah, yes, grasshopper, but you've never tried to catch a rabbit with your bare hands, have you?)
Now that she has a chocolate lop husbun (an elderly rescue rabbit who isn't quite as bright in the bunny brain department but whom she absolutely adores) she isn't so interested in my baseboards, which is a blessing. Both of them spend a great deal of time out on the porch in a bunnyproofed space, but they also are well-behaved enough to spend time unsupervised in the house like a dog or a cat, as long as the cables and electrical cords are covered (this is minor bunnyproofing compared to a lot of other schemes I had to employ when she was younger, such as Constant Vigilance).
They mostly keep to themselves, and wile the day away dozing under a lamp table, rising only to nibble hay and deprieve the dog of rightful ownership and access to his own nourishment. Flipflop spends an inordinate amount of time grooming her bunny boy bald, and both seem to like to gossip surreptitiously on the pressing issue of how next to dupe the Gulliable Human One into giving them banana sundaes. At least, that's what they appear to be doing. Rabbits may not talk, but they certainly communicate, and it's highly endearing to watch two rabbits incline their heads towards another as if to say, "Hey, what do you think about that big two-legged oaf over there? Think we can con her into more strawberries?"
I haven't really named the boy bunny, referring to him as alternately as The Brown One, The Boy One or my made up term of endearment for bunnies in general, 'Boonis'. He's got a little bit of renal failure going on, and isn't as neat with his litterbox habits as Flipflop, but he's very mellow and doesn't mind being pet (whereas Flipflop hates it with impunity; to her mind, it's just not dignified lady bunny bheavior to let oneself be mauled and cuddled by some idiot human). He seems to like to nibble my toes; I have no idea if this is an affectionate gesture or he finds them aromatic and a possible tier on the bunny food pyramid.
He isn't particularly agile or atheletic, and seems to be bothered by arthritic hips. Whereas Flipflop is bunny magic in motion, careening gracefully around the room and mountaineering with surprising agility over my living room furniture (she has curiously enough never tried to jump on my bed)--the old guy clunks around without a trace of flair, often getting too close and underfoot. The bunny rescuer felt bad about his geriatric health issues--I think they originally thought he was a bit younger--and offered to let me trade him for another bunny, but I was already too attached (as was Flipflop) and couldn't bear the thought of returning a bunny who had been given up once any way.
After all, I had gotten him for Flipflop because I felt so guilty about leaving her in her cage alone for fourteen hours a day when I worked (I felt I had no choice, though, unless I wanted to come home to a Rabbit Interior Design Project every day). Smart and inquisitive, she bores easily. Since the introduction of the boy, she hasn't given a second glance at the baseboards, so my scheme paid off. Happier rabbit = happier slave human.
Flipflop always has an inquisitive, intelligent spark in her eye--unless she's zoning out--but my boy is more often than not found sitting around with a doleful, nearly baleful look about him. He seems somewhat melancholy, and I wonder if deep down in the recesses of his gentle bunny soul, he misses the people who moved and gave him to the shelter. He probably spent more than five years of his life with them, and it's not unreasonable in my animal loving, over-anthropomorphizing mind to think that pet bunnies grieve just like dogs or cats when their masters move away without them.
I've found rabbits to be much more aloof and shy than the average housecat (at least, Flipflop is; we humans have our purposes, oh yes, but providing suffocating physical affection is not it). She is cheeky, reserved, and not at all fond of human touch, despite having been raised in an indulgent, loving household. My bond to her is much more subtle; I delight in having her run to the front of her cage when I'm in the room (Let me out, stupid!), hop hopefully over to the refrigerator door when it opens (What's for supper, ma?), cavort madly about the house, jump on top of my laptop while I'm sitting on the couch, and do her famous Dead Bunny impression which she is named after, namely flipping over on her side, crossing her front paws as if in prayer, and conking out.
In rabbit language, these things mean "I'm comfortable with you, Big Klutzy Human, and I like you." Only the most relaxed, trusting rabbit would ever give herself over to a closed eyed, nose-twitching nap in front of a being five hundred times her own size and weight, and it's a huge compliment from an otherwise aloof-seeming rabbit that she does. Once she was so deeply asleep that when I opened the front door, she didn't even wake up, but continued on with her nap until I surreptitiously ended it by ascertaining she wasn't, in fact, a victim of a bunny cardiac arrest.
Being owned by a rabbit is a relationship of subtle joys and endless surprise at their individual wit, charm and sense of humor. When it comes to rabbits, there's no such thing as a dumb bunny.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Dogster
Piper now has his own website!
Check out this tremendously clever and sweet website, Dogster--arguably paws down the hippest pet website around--for more unbearably cute canine capers of dogs and their slaves around the world.
Uh oh. I'm like, one of those yuppie moms.
A yuppie dog mom.
Except less upperwardly mobile, somehow.
Check out this tremendously clever and sweet website, Dogster--arguably paws down the hippest pet website around--for more unbearably cute canine capers of dogs and their slaves around the world.
Uh oh. I'm like, one of those yuppie moms.
A yuppie dog mom.
Except less upperwardly mobile, somehow.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
regret
old man
you should
not be standing
next to her
crumpled and
grey with grief.
we have done
this to you,
to her.
brought you
here and
made you
watch
the carnival
show that
was her
grotesque
last.
you should
be at home
now,
holding her
hand
wiping her
brow.
allowed to
say
in your own
good time
in your own
good way:
i love you,
my darling,
goodbye.
instead
the automatic
hum and click
of machines
will decide
a doctor's
pen will
pronounce
that which
should
have never
been.
--to Mr. C and his wife, for whom the end should have been much different.
you should
not be standing
next to her
crumpled and
grey with grief.
we have done
this to you,
to her.
brought you
here and
made you
watch
the carnival
show that
was her
grotesque
last.
you should
be at home
now,
holding her
hand
wiping her
brow.
allowed to
say
in your own
good time
in your own
good way:
i love you,
my darling,
goodbye.
instead
the automatic
hum and click
of machines
will decide
a doctor's
pen will
pronounce
that which
should
have never
been.
--to Mr. C and his wife, for whom the end should have been much different.
For Inez and her Mother
even as we
became yours,
you are like
us no longer.
your belly
swells again,
that old
pale moon-
eve's curse
redoubled:
death now
haunts
your womb.
old mother,
it is time.
the fresh pink
sweet of your
babies' squalls,
lacing up shoes
felt crowns and
heroes' capes
tart apples and
honey in the
autumn:
all the birthing
work
is done.
sweet mother,
rest.
it is time.
--For Inez and her mother, who died of ovarian cancer.
Lazarus
lazarus
we have
raised you
up again.
you are
justly
ungrateful.
mute,
your eyes
tell me this
much.
peeling
callouses
off your
black feet
i am no
mother
to you.
nor am
i sister
changing
the linen,
tending to
your raw
wounds.
still we
look at
one another
humbled
by the
profane.
wrapped
around
your bird
thin
wrist:
st jude,
plastic
rosary
beads,
corazon
de jesus.
and I think
how cruel
to leave
your
prayer
unanswered.
For J.M., who died virtually alone after being hospitalized for months. He was only twenty four years old.
we have
raised you
up again.
you are
justly
ungrateful.
mute,
your eyes
tell me this
much.
peeling
callouses
off your
black feet
i am no
mother
to you.
nor am
i sister
changing
the linen,
tending to
your raw
wounds.
still we
look at
one another
humbled
by the
profane.
wrapped
around
your bird
thin
wrist:
st jude,
plastic
rosary
beads,
corazon
de jesus.
and I think
how cruel
to leave
your
prayer
unanswered.
For J.M., who died virtually alone after being hospitalized for months. He was only twenty four years old.
Ode to Mr. S.
eighty year old white male,
chief complaint vague.
maybe it is simply
old age,
weariness,
something doctors
will name more fully
later,
perhaps.
past medical history
significant for
everything
and nothing.
diagnoses now mean
as much
as talk of cures
ground from
mortar and pestle;
small mercies encased in
glass and metal
syringes.
in those bleak blue rooms
antiseptic curtains drawn
against the day,
silence stirs once more,
history comes unbidden:
can you tell me who I am?
i can not remember.
am i having a good day?
i can no longer tell.
what is happening to me?
i no longer know.
--For Mr. S. and others I have taken care of like him.
chief complaint vague.
maybe it is simply
old age,
weariness,
something doctors
will name more fully
later,
perhaps.
past medical history
significant for
everything
and nothing.
diagnoses now mean
as much
as talk of cures
ground from
mortar and pestle;
small mercies encased in
glass and metal
syringes.
in those bleak blue rooms
antiseptic curtains drawn
against the day,
silence stirs once more,
history comes unbidden:
can you tell me who I am?
i can not remember.
am i having a good day?
i can no longer tell.
what is happening to me?
i no longer know.
--For Mr. S. and others I have taken care of like him.
Back by popular demand!
Another nursing haiku, for the delectation of those of you whose noble and unsung profession it is to dole out bedpans and benzos alike, placate nutjobs, bring the ungrateful dead back to life, do everyone else's work for them and pretend not to be insulted by the pithy amount of their net paycheck:
line up all the old
thirty thousand dollar op
body bag comes free
line up all the old
thirty thousand dollar op
body bag comes free
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Grease
Okay, so I am the World's Most Hypocritical Nurse.
First of all, until a fellow nurse friend of mine totally guilted me into filling my prescriptions, I had totally gone off my po antibiotics, because man oh man, who needs to put up with explosive diarrhea, especially when contemplating going back to work as early as tomorrow?!
Besides, Flagyl sucks ass, in that it makes you feel like you've been drinking molten copper and can't get the taste out of your mouth. Nor can you drown the taste with alcohol, because this devil drug actually acts as Antabuse. In other words, unless I want to spend the rest of the week upchucking mercilessly, I have to go off the sauce. Not that alcohol sounds like fun at this point. In fact, "fun" means sleeping and feeling damned sorry for myself at present. Okay, so maybe that's not fun.
I have discovered that being NPO (nothing by mouth) for 72 hours is counterproductive if you've been trying to maintain your weight (okay, body mass for you physics purists and sticklers for word meaning out there). I also discovered another corallary to this annoying illness: it makes me hanker for British food. No joke.
I stopped at an Arthur Treacher's this morning and argued lamely with the cashier about substituting coleslaw for hushpuppies, which gross me out. She argued even more lamely that the cole slaw was more expensive, ergo, they couldn't substitute same.
Excuse me?! It's made of cabbage and mayonnaise, two of the cheapest and most plentiful foodstuffs in North American cuisine for Chrissake! I was too tired and put out to argue the point further, and besides, was distracted by simultaneously trying to identify the weird smell in the restaurant, which wasn't fried lard or fish, oddly enough, but which I assumed was probably... malt vinegar? Tartar sauce? Stray dogs used in the hush puppy batter? I shuddered, and made a resolution next time to find a more reputable establishment from which to purchase my British fare fix.
Any way, I was determined to wreck more havoc on my intenstines (which is frankly why people like me need to be hospitalized, because at least it sets limits on our unpredictable and self-damaging behavior). I am the village idiot, but who cares, I've got antibiotics now to offset any potential damage. (God forbid I ever really get sick, incidentally).
Meanwhile, I had these wonderful dreams last night about discussing applications of Kantian morality to medical ethics with a much admired old professor of mine. The great thing about dreams is you wake up thinking you've had all sorts of brilliant never-before-thought-of-ideas when really in your dream you were probably saying something like, "The turkey's aboslute power of rationality supercedes that of the greatest common denominator of fish and chips baloney liver sauce noumenal transcendental intuitions."
Kind of like reality. You think you have a great job where you "help people" when in reality what you have is a lousy job where you enable every other employee in the hospital to do a lousy job and get paid for it. (Bitter, who's bitter?!)
Meanwhile, starting to feel foggy headed again. I do believe it's naptime for the convalescing amongst us.
First of all, until a fellow nurse friend of mine totally guilted me into filling my prescriptions, I had totally gone off my po antibiotics, because man oh man, who needs to put up with explosive diarrhea, especially when contemplating going back to work as early as tomorrow?!
Besides, Flagyl sucks ass, in that it makes you feel like you've been drinking molten copper and can't get the taste out of your mouth. Nor can you drown the taste with alcohol, because this devil drug actually acts as Antabuse. In other words, unless I want to spend the rest of the week upchucking mercilessly, I have to go off the sauce. Not that alcohol sounds like fun at this point. In fact, "fun" means sleeping and feeling damned sorry for myself at present. Okay, so maybe that's not fun.
I have discovered that being NPO (nothing by mouth) for 72 hours is counterproductive if you've been trying to maintain your weight (okay, body mass for you physics purists and sticklers for word meaning out there). I also discovered another corallary to this annoying illness: it makes me hanker for British food. No joke.
I stopped at an Arthur Treacher's this morning and argued lamely with the cashier about substituting coleslaw for hushpuppies, which gross me out. She argued even more lamely that the cole slaw was more expensive, ergo, they couldn't substitute same.
Excuse me?! It's made of cabbage and mayonnaise, two of the cheapest and most plentiful foodstuffs in North American cuisine for Chrissake! I was too tired and put out to argue the point further, and besides, was distracted by simultaneously trying to identify the weird smell in the restaurant, which wasn't fried lard or fish, oddly enough, but which I assumed was probably... malt vinegar? Tartar sauce? Stray dogs used in the hush puppy batter? I shuddered, and made a resolution next time to find a more reputable establishment from which to purchase my British fare fix.
Any way, I was determined to wreck more havoc on my intenstines (which is frankly why people like me need to be hospitalized, because at least it sets limits on our unpredictable and self-damaging behavior). I am the village idiot, but who cares, I've got antibiotics now to offset any potential damage. (God forbid I ever really get sick, incidentally).
Meanwhile, I had these wonderful dreams last night about discussing applications of Kantian morality to medical ethics with a much admired old professor of mine. The great thing about dreams is you wake up thinking you've had all sorts of brilliant never-before-thought-of-ideas when really in your dream you were probably saying something like, "The turkey's aboslute power of rationality supercedes that of the greatest common denominator of fish and chips baloney liver sauce noumenal transcendental intuitions."
Kind of like reality. You think you have a great job where you "help people" when in reality what you have is a lousy job where you enable every other employee in the hospital to do a lousy job and get paid for it. (Bitter, who's bitter?!)
Meanwhile, starting to feel foggy headed again. I do believe it's naptime for the convalescing amongst us.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Basic Instinct
Okay, so turns out it was a very good thing indeed that my nursing instinct told me to go to the doctor last Saturday a.m.
Because one thing that definetely is downer to one's career is having a life threatening bowel perforation requiring immediate surgery in the middle of a shift.
I'm dramatizing, of course, but it could have very well happened if I had ignored my "Uh oh" barometer, as well as my "Oh crap!" indicator.
As it was, I ended up hospitalized over the weekend receiving massive doses of super antibiotics and "resting my bowel" which sounds like my intenstines won a free vacation to ClubMed but in reality is a typically arcane medical way of saying "We're not feeding you. At all." I spent most of the weekend and my entire Labor Day curled in a small, painfully hunched-up ball watching hours and hours and hours of Law and Order reruns and getting down with Kyra Sedgwick's earthy, southern Deputy Chief Brenda Johnson on TNT's mysteriously titled The Closer.
If I weren't busy retching my guts out (which was quite a feat, considering I hadn't anything to eat or drink except for contrast dye since Friday night) I would have tried to figure out what the hell the name of the show is supposed to mean, but I had more important business at hand--namely, keeping my cookies--or at least bile salts--where they belonged.
(Sidebar: I thought it was a bang-up good series, except I think they made a mistake by naming it something so esoteric you can't figure out what the show is about. Is it an abbreviation for "the closer to solving the crime, my dearie"? Just some postmodern corporate think tank's idea since easy titles like Cops and Law and Order are already taken? I must research answers to these questions. Some day, when I can walk more than a block without feeling nauseated and like my insides are going to collapse any second.)
Any hoo.
Suffice it to say I never want to be hospitalized ever again, and if I need it, someone please just throw me off a very tall building so as to negate the need for meaningful medical intervention.
For one, illness aside, sharing your room with a fussy little old lady who whimpers piteously and clears her throat every five minutes at night/if family is not in the room is not exactly restful or conducive to healing. Of course, neither is puking up your toes, but I digress. Secondly, when you've spent the night puking up your toes, the last thing you want the next day is The Entire Family Clan parading in and out of the room the entire day starting at 6:30 a.m. til 8:00 at night to visit Grandma, who could have gone home on Monday but played the invalid card so as to stay a day longer.)
And then there's the 3 a.m. urosepsis admission the next door over, who screams for an hour before settling down, having scared the shit out of the rest of us, even those battle hardened nurses such as myself. (If I was wigged out by the noise, I can only imagine how terrifying it must have been for everyone else.)
And the not-eating-or-drinking-thing.
And the whole sharing-a-bathroom thing, which frankly grosses me out.
I could go on, but I have to go back to being a proper invalid, eating oatmeal and toast. (I gimped through the supermarket this a.m. after hospital discharge and finally got a true window view into being ninety-five-years-old. I've decided to circumvent living that long and would be happy to go at the ripe old age of eighty. Thank you.)
Because one thing that definetely is downer to one's career is having a life threatening bowel perforation requiring immediate surgery in the middle of a shift.
I'm dramatizing, of course, but it could have very well happened if I had ignored my "Uh oh" barometer, as well as my "Oh crap!" indicator.
As it was, I ended up hospitalized over the weekend receiving massive doses of super antibiotics and "resting my bowel" which sounds like my intenstines won a free vacation to ClubMed but in reality is a typically arcane medical way of saying "We're not feeding you. At all." I spent most of the weekend and my entire Labor Day curled in a small, painfully hunched-up ball watching hours and hours and hours of Law and Order reruns and getting down with Kyra Sedgwick's earthy, southern Deputy Chief Brenda Johnson on TNT's mysteriously titled The Closer.
If I weren't busy retching my guts out (which was quite a feat, considering I hadn't anything to eat or drink except for contrast dye since Friday night) I would have tried to figure out what the hell the name of the show is supposed to mean, but I had more important business at hand--namely, keeping my cookies--or at least bile salts--where they belonged.
(Sidebar: I thought it was a bang-up good series, except I think they made a mistake by naming it something so esoteric you can't figure out what the show is about. Is it an abbreviation for "the closer to solving the crime, my dearie"? Just some postmodern corporate think tank's idea since easy titles like Cops and Law and Order are already taken? I must research answers to these questions. Some day, when I can walk more than a block without feeling nauseated and like my insides are going to collapse any second.)
Any hoo.
Suffice it to say I never want to be hospitalized ever again, and if I need it, someone please just throw me off a very tall building so as to negate the need for meaningful medical intervention.
For one, illness aside, sharing your room with a fussy little old lady who whimpers piteously and clears her throat every five minutes at night/if family is not in the room is not exactly restful or conducive to healing. Of course, neither is puking up your toes, but I digress. Secondly, when you've spent the night puking up your toes, the last thing you want the next day is The Entire Family Clan parading in and out of the room the entire day starting at 6:30 a.m. til 8:00 at night to visit Grandma, who could have gone home on Monday but played the invalid card so as to stay a day longer.)
And then there's the 3 a.m. urosepsis admission the next door over, who screams for an hour before settling down, having scared the shit out of the rest of us, even those battle hardened nurses such as myself. (If I was wigged out by the noise, I can only imagine how terrifying it must have been for everyone else.)
And the not-eating-or-drinking-thing.
And the whole sharing-a-bathroom thing, which frankly grosses me out.
I could go on, but I have to go back to being a proper invalid, eating oatmeal and toast. (I gimped through the supermarket this a.m. after hospital discharge and finally got a true window view into being ninety-five-years-old. I've decided to circumvent living that long and would be happy to go at the ripe old age of eighty. Thank you.)
Saturday, September 02, 2006
The Sickness Unto Death
Pain is waking up at night, turning over on your belly and realizing with a yelp that, "Hey! That hurts!"
Pain has also localized to the RLQ (right lower quadrant) of the abdomen, not that the rest of my stomach feels so hot, either.
For one, I haven't been able to eat anything without regretting it miserably afterwards, so I've stopped eating, although it's sad, because now I look at food and think, "So. hungry. but. so. much. pain. if. I. eat."
It's so much pain if I don't eat, actually.
You all must think I am a big wuss. And perhaps, I am.
A bigger woman would have gone to work this a.m., without eating or drinking, and done her 12 hour shift.
I am thankfully, not that woman, and chose instead to have a battle with my Moral Conscience for two hours before calling in sick at 4 a.m. this morning. I even did my own little nursing assignment, complete with listening to bowel sounds (hyperactive) and doing percussion (at which I suck) and noting extreme tenderness in the RLQ. I don't know if any of these findings are significant, but they were in tune with "Reasons why I feel like ass at 3 a.m."
I did say I was going to the doctor and would call at 11 a.m. if I could come in, because I felt very guilty about calling out sick. (The sicker I am, the guiltier I feel about calling out).
Meanwhile, I feel as if someone is drilling a hole in my right side, and gnawing away doggedly at my epigastrum.
Pepto Bismol, Elixir of Life, for once, you have failed me!
I weep, and gnash my teeth.
Because this shit hurts, for real.
Pain has also localized to the RLQ (right lower quadrant) of the abdomen, not that the rest of my stomach feels so hot, either.
For one, I haven't been able to eat anything without regretting it miserably afterwards, so I've stopped eating, although it's sad, because now I look at food and think, "So. hungry. but. so. much. pain. if. I. eat."
It's so much pain if I don't eat, actually.
You all must think I am a big wuss. And perhaps, I am.
A bigger woman would have gone to work this a.m., without eating or drinking, and done her 12 hour shift.
I am thankfully, not that woman, and chose instead to have a battle with my Moral Conscience for two hours before calling in sick at 4 a.m. this morning. I even did my own little nursing assignment, complete with listening to bowel sounds (hyperactive) and doing percussion (at which I suck) and noting extreme tenderness in the RLQ. I don't know if any of these findings are significant, but they were in tune with "Reasons why I feel like ass at 3 a.m."
I did say I was going to the doctor and would call at 11 a.m. if I could come in, because I felt very guilty about calling out sick. (The sicker I am, the guiltier I feel about calling out).
Meanwhile, I feel as if someone is drilling a hole in my right side, and gnawing away doggedly at my epigastrum.
Pepto Bismol, Elixir of Life, for once, you have failed me!
I weep, and gnash my teeth.
Because this shit hurts, for real.
Friday, September 01, 2006
G.I. (bleed) Jane (Jamie)
Oooow! It burns!
So I've (once again) self diagnosed myself with a peptic ulcer secondary to overzealous NSAID use in an attempt to keep my back pain at bay these last two weeks.
Now I'm left with epigastric pain which increases after eating and doesn't respond to "the pink stuff" which I've been guzzling.
I'm hungry, I'm hunched over in pain, and I have to go to work tomorrow. I feel like arse!!
I'm sooooo not going through a barium swallow (or worse yet, endoscopy!) to prove my theory, and there's really nothing to be done except start taking H-2 blockers and keep drinking Pepto and hope I haven't burned a hole in my stomach in the meantime. Because peritonitis = bad. GI bleed = bad.
Poor me.
Off to tempt fate with some food, even as I clutch my stomach and grimace.
So I've (once again) self diagnosed myself with a peptic ulcer secondary to overzealous NSAID use in an attempt to keep my back pain at bay these last two weeks.
Now I'm left with epigastric pain which increases after eating and doesn't respond to "the pink stuff" which I've been guzzling.
I'm hungry, I'm hunched over in pain, and I have to go to work tomorrow. I feel like arse!!
I'm sooooo not going through a barium swallow (or worse yet, endoscopy!) to prove my theory, and there's really nothing to be done except start taking H-2 blockers and keep drinking Pepto and hope I haven't burned a hole in my stomach in the meantime. Because peritonitis = bad. GI bleed = bad.
Poor me.
Off to tempt fate with some food, even as I clutch my stomach and grimace.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
I should be doing stuff.
Worked yesterday, came home TIRED as per usual.
Same psycho husband that refused to pick up his wife the day before (despite having the time to "visit" her that same day) made an ugly scene at the nurses station about my discharge instructions. Mind you, this was a sample of the discharge instructions prior to his complaint:
Same psycho husband that refused to pick up his wife the day before (despite having the time to "visit" her that same day) made an ugly scene at the nurses station about my discharge instructions. Mind you, this was a sample of the discharge instructions prior to his complaint:
JAMIE:
[doing her friendly little teaching spiel]
So the visiting nurse will call tomorrow morning before she comes.
[doing her friendly little teaching spiel]
So the visiting nurse will call tomorrow morning before she comes.
Husband:
[hostile]
Well, she has a cardiologist appointment tomorrow. What are we supposed to do about that?!
JAMIE:
[caught off guard]
Umm... I guess I'm going to have to leave it to your good judgment to make arrangements as you see fit.
Husband:
[ignoring my reply, now raising voice even more]
WE HAVE A CARDIOLOGIST APPOINTMENT TOMORROW.
JAMIE:
[silently wishing she had a less stressful job, like air traffic controller or double agent]
[hostile]
Well, she has a cardiologist appointment tomorrow. What are we supposed to do about that?!
JAMIE:
[caught off guard]
Umm... I guess I'm going to have to leave it to your good judgment to make arrangements as you see fit.
Husband:
[ignoring my reply, now raising voice even more]
WE HAVE A CARDIOLOGIST APPOINTMENT TOMORROW.
JAMIE:
[silently wishing she had a less stressful job, like air traffic controller or double agent]
It was as if were speaking English, and he were speaking English, and yet one of us was being so incomprehensibly rude as to make it seem as if a puppet show might have been more effective teaching. Or maybe not, since the husband in his misdirected hostility would have probably ended up attacking and mutilating the poor puppets.
Any way, charge nurse/rest of nursing staff had a good laugh about him after he left, because everyone knew how ridiculous he was being (as opposed to the hellhole managerial style at my old hospital, where I would have probably been forced to go home with the psycho couple and manage their life in order to satisfy the ridiculous "customer service" initiative.)
Meanwhile, I feel like my days off are spent endlessly cleaning the house (which mysteriously seems to go to hell on my days off), doing laundry and running errands. I inadvertantly slept in until 1000 this a.m., and now can't be bothered to go anywhere. I'm tuckered out. Maybe later on tonight I"ll get my second wind.
Any way, charge nurse/rest of nursing staff had a good laugh about him after he left, because everyone knew how ridiculous he was being (as opposed to the hellhole managerial style at my old hospital, where I would have probably been forced to go home with the psycho couple and manage their life in order to satisfy the ridiculous "customer service" initiative.)
Meanwhile, I feel like my days off are spent endlessly cleaning the house (which mysteriously seems to go to hell on my days off), doing laundry and running errands. I inadvertantly slept in until 1000 this a.m., and now can't be bothered to go anywhere. I'm tuckered out. Maybe later on tonight I"ll get my second wind.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
O tempora! O mores!
Today's Adventure In Pointlessness, by Jamie, with apologies to Cicero for the title.
Jamie:
[to patient]
Well, the PA says you can go home today, isn't that great?
Patient:
[freaking out, flailing limbs]
Oh no! I cannot! My husband, he cannot come! Nor can my daughters!
Time passes.
Jamie:
[startled to see "the husband who couldn't pick up the patient," now in room visiting leisurely]
You know, your wife can go home today, since you're here...
Husband of patient:
[as if this settles everything]
No, I don't have time to bring her home. I have meetings. Tomorrow will be fine.
Jamie:
[backs out of room quietly and checks Reality Barometer, which apparently isn't working today]
[to patient]
Well, the PA says you can go home today, isn't that great?
Patient:
[freaking out, flailing limbs]
Oh no! I cannot! My husband, he cannot come! Nor can my daughters!
Time passes.
Jamie:
[startled to see "the husband who couldn't pick up the patient," now in room visiting leisurely]
You know, your wife can go home today, since you're here...
Husband of patient:
[as if this settles everything]
No, I don't have time to bring her home. I have meetings. Tomorrow will be fine.
Jamie:
[backs out of room quietly and checks Reality Barometer, which apparently isn't working today]
Monday, August 28, 2006
You Look Happy and Proud
Make of it what you will, that's what my fortune cookie said. (Personally I think spammers get their subject heading ideas from fortune cookies.)
Notice the ambiguity: you look happy and proud. (The flip side of the coin: In reality, you are sad and demoralized.)
Notice the ambiguity: you look happy and proud. (The flip side of the coin: In reality, you are sad and demoralized.)
Equus.
I read somewhere, not to long ago, something that I wish to purge from my mind completely, but can't seem to.
So, there was an interview with the Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe. In that interview, he was talking about a play, Equus and how he'd been offered the role of the boy (you know, the one who gouges out the eyes of all his horses, or however it goes).
Then I went on to read that the play is traditionally played in the nude, and how Radcliffe went on to say he'd probably honor that tradition, because who was he to flout theatrical tradition?
And all I could think was, Ewwwww! Oh for the love of God and small children who idolize Harry Potter movies, please flout theatrical tradition!
Dude, the prefect bathroom scene with a lecherous Moaning Myrtle in Goblet of Fire was creepy enough.
I suppose first characters are a terrible thing for child actors to get over, and I suppose few transfer to adult roles--or adulthood, for that matter--without some difficulty (read: lots of drugs and alcohol).
Because, poor kid, it's going to be awhile before people stop mentioning his Harry Potter career. Imagine being his first real-life girlfriend, and all her friends shrieking, "Oh my God! You're dating Harry Potter?!"
So, there was an interview with the Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe. In that interview, he was talking about a play, Equus and how he'd been offered the role of the boy (you know, the one who gouges out the eyes of all his horses, or however it goes).
Then I went on to read that the play is traditionally played in the nude, and how Radcliffe went on to say he'd probably honor that tradition, because who was he to flout theatrical tradition?
And all I could think was, Ewwwww! Oh for the love of God and small children who idolize Harry Potter movies, please flout theatrical tradition!
Dude, the prefect bathroom scene with a lecherous Moaning Myrtle in Goblet of Fire was creepy enough.
I suppose first characters are a terrible thing for child actors to get over, and I suppose few transfer to adult roles--or adulthood, for that matter--without some difficulty (read: lots of drugs and alcohol).
Because, poor kid, it's going to be awhile before people stop mentioning his Harry Potter career. Imagine being his first real-life girlfriend, and all her friends shrieking, "Oh my God! You're dating Harry Potter?!"
Hair.
This morning I finally realized I'm Doomed.
Okay, so this is the 4,576,489,000 time I've realized, over the course of my life, that I'm Doomed.
The reason I'm now presently Doomed is ostensibly a fairly superficial one: my short hair cut has gone from Natalie Portman chic (okay, so pseudo-you-wish-it-was- Natalie Portman chic) to tangled-mop-of-disillusioned-feed-the-
orphans-Harry-Potter-perpetually-untidy tousle in the last few months. It looks like chicken feathers most of the time! It's ungodly!
And, as short as it is, it's going to take the next five million years or so to grow out, during which time I will just have to resign myself to looking goofy/like a crack ho.
This is the part where wish my life had that fantastic one-episode-for-every-month-of-on-screen-pregnancy phenomenon dear to producers of old school night soaps like Dynasty, except less about pregnancy and more about hair growth. Okay, so no pregnancy and all about hair growth.
Don't ask, but this summer before I moved, I got hooked on Dynasty. Don't laugh--it was an insidious process! Okay, laugh. It is kind of ridiculous. First you think, aw, well, at least I'm keeping mom company. And then you start laughing at the eighties hairdos and overacting. And pretty soon, you're actually listening when mom explains how Joan Collins' Alex and her on screen daughter Farron are plotting to undo Crystal Carrington's life. And then you think! Good God! I know their names! What's next, researching Soap Digest back issues to find out more?
I no longer watch Dynasty, of course, and it's a relatively easy addiction to shake off, unlike the loss of Court TV, of which I'm still in sulky withdrawal over. I patently refuse to believe my life has been better off without nightly episodes of Dale' Hinmon's Cold Case Files and Dominic Dunne's "Power, Privilege and Justice." It pains me how I used to get my fix from mere basic cable programming, and now I'd have to buy the Super Deluxe Cable Package for approximately $1,000 dollars a month just to have my fix.
Any way, if I want to grow out my hair (and I'm not sure it's worth the bother) it's going to take at least a year just to get it all the same length, and then another year for any length. WTF?! I'll be thirty two then! That's practically retirement age! (Just kidding. But I wish it was, some days.)
I suppose, on the other hand, that I don't want to be one of those scary forty-year-old women you see working behind the counters of gas stations in rural highway stops, sucking on a cigarette, in a halter top and flipflops, with a mane of limp hair hanging resignedly down their back. You know the kind I'm talking about. With the croaky frog voice that says "Hand over the cash, sweetheart--me and my malignant lung tumors don't got all day." (However, if I continue in the nursing profession, this pathetic vision well may be a window into my future if I don't get my act together pretty soon).
Alas, someone in my gene pool (and we won't say who that person is, because well, frankly, we don't know) endowed me curly hair, and I will never aspire to that cool sheet of ebony silk-like mane you see on most Asian women who also happen to be on Pantene commercials. I am somewhat embittered by this fact, because no matter what I do, once I grow out my hair, it loses its curl and hangs like a frizzy triangle around my face. Not so attractive. I can't even put it up properly when it's long, because the front part breaks off and won't stay in a hair clip. Its like, the "Ha ha! Fuck you, you'll never be able to style it properly!" hair texture from hell.
The hair thing makes me realize, in my slippery-slope, free-association way, that I've lost touch with pop culture and thus, with the majority of youth culture. Not that that's a bad thing, because I don't think of myself as a touchy-feely sort of person even on my best, most personable days. And youth culture has gotten a little freakishly grown up these days.
It also makes me feel slightly panic-struck, because am I not supposed to be working on retirement already, and not broke and still eating ramen noodles for dinner? Shouldn't I know how to host and cook elaborate holidays meals for a dozen? Shouldn't I have a PhD in something by now, instead of collecting stool samples and measuring the amount, color and consistency of vomit? Shouldn't I have a house with a yard, and maybe a kid or two?
This adulthood gig is about as confusing and exhausting as being a kid, in my opinion. It's a big myth that grown ups have all the answers, and one day, when we're past the glasses, braces and pimples, we'll have it all figured out too. Most of my young adult life has been spent in utter cluelessness, fumbling around and screwing stuff up, which is frankly not how the teenage-me envisioned the adult-me. And as for becoming a senior citizen... well, I've seen old age, and believe me, about the only blessing is that you eventually lose your mind and aren't too fussed about getting it back.
Okay, so this is the 4,576,489,000 time I've realized, over the course of my life, that I'm Doomed.
The reason I'm now presently Doomed is ostensibly a fairly superficial one: my short hair cut has gone from Natalie Portman chic (okay, so pseudo-you-wish-it-was- Natalie Portman chic) to tangled-mop-of-disillusioned-feed-the-
orphans-Harry-Potter-perpetually-untidy tousle in the last few months. It looks like chicken feathers most of the time! It's ungodly!
And, as short as it is, it's going to take the next five million years or so to grow out, during which time I will just have to resign myself to looking goofy/like a crack ho.
This is the part where wish my life had that fantastic one-episode-for-every-month-of-on-screen-pregnancy phenomenon dear to producers of old school night soaps like Dynasty, except less about pregnancy and more about hair growth. Okay, so no pregnancy and all about hair growth.
Don't ask, but this summer before I moved, I got hooked on Dynasty. Don't laugh--it was an insidious process! Okay, laugh. It is kind of ridiculous. First you think, aw, well, at least I'm keeping mom company. And then you start laughing at the eighties hairdos and overacting. And pretty soon, you're actually listening when mom explains how Joan Collins' Alex and her on screen daughter Farron are plotting to undo Crystal Carrington's life. And then you think! Good God! I know their names! What's next, researching Soap Digest back issues to find out more?
I no longer watch Dynasty, of course, and it's a relatively easy addiction to shake off, unlike the loss of Court TV, of which I'm still in sulky withdrawal over. I patently refuse to believe my life has been better off without nightly episodes of Dale' Hinmon's Cold Case Files and Dominic Dunne's "Power, Privilege and Justice." It pains me how I used to get my fix from mere basic cable programming, and now I'd have to buy the Super Deluxe Cable Package for approximately $1,000 dollars a month just to have my fix.
Any way, if I want to grow out my hair (and I'm not sure it's worth the bother) it's going to take at least a year just to get it all the same length, and then another year for any length. WTF?! I'll be thirty two then! That's practically retirement age! (Just kidding. But I wish it was, some days.)
I suppose, on the other hand, that I don't want to be one of those scary forty-year-old women you see working behind the counters of gas stations in rural highway stops, sucking on a cigarette, in a halter top and flipflops, with a mane of limp hair hanging resignedly down their back. You know the kind I'm talking about. With the croaky frog voice that says "Hand over the cash, sweetheart--me and my malignant lung tumors don't got all day." (However, if I continue in the nursing profession, this pathetic vision well may be a window into my future if I don't get my act together pretty soon).
Alas, someone in my gene pool (and we won't say who that person is, because well, frankly, we don't know) endowed me curly hair, and I will never aspire to that cool sheet of ebony silk-like mane you see on most Asian women who also happen to be on Pantene commercials. I am somewhat embittered by this fact, because no matter what I do, once I grow out my hair, it loses its curl and hangs like a frizzy triangle around my face. Not so attractive. I can't even put it up properly when it's long, because the front part breaks off and won't stay in a hair clip. Its like, the "Ha ha! Fuck you, you'll never be able to style it properly!" hair texture from hell.
The hair thing makes me realize, in my slippery-slope, free-association way, that I've lost touch with pop culture and thus, with the majority of youth culture. Not that that's a bad thing, because I don't think of myself as a touchy-feely sort of person even on my best, most personable days. And youth culture has gotten a little freakishly grown up these days.
It also makes me feel slightly panic-struck, because am I not supposed to be working on retirement already, and not broke and still eating ramen noodles for dinner? Shouldn't I know how to host and cook elaborate holidays meals for a dozen? Shouldn't I have a PhD in something by now, instead of collecting stool samples and measuring the amount, color and consistency of vomit? Shouldn't I have a house with a yard, and maybe a kid or two?
This adulthood gig is about as confusing and exhausting as being a kid, in my opinion. It's a big myth that grown ups have all the answers, and one day, when we're past the glasses, braces and pimples, we'll have it all figured out too. Most of my young adult life has been spent in utter cluelessness, fumbling around and screwing stuff up, which is frankly not how the teenage-me envisioned the adult-me. And as for becoming a senior citizen... well, I've seen old age, and believe me, about the only blessing is that you eventually lose your mind and aren't too fussed about getting it back.
Who wants to be a recluse?
I wish I could invent a gameshow called "Who wants to be a recluse?" I could be the only one to show up and win the grand prize, which of course, is being a recluse (because if you want to be a recluse, you're probably not going to try out for a gameshow in front of a lot of people, and then go on national t.v.)
Any way, I went to the bookstore today, and rediscovered how much I dislike crowds. I also thought, "Either there's a lot of people who do shift work or work part time, or a lot of people played hooky from work today." I mean, come on people, it's Monday. No reason why you couldn't have boarded the Metro like everybody else and push paper at the Pentagon, or whatever other people do for a living around here. There were simply too many people in the shopping center, and I almost got run over by a car backing out of a parking spot. I mean like my person, not my car. I thought maybe if it had happened, it would take my mind off of my back pain, which has me feeling like an arthritic old lady lately.
Back to my nice, quiet apartment where from my window I can sit and watch the mechanics in the car shop sit and take their cigarette breaks just down the knoll from the parking lot, listen to the faint rumble of the Metro in the distance, and the ever-present squeak and protesting clatter of the stupid parking lot gate, which is completely pointless because there are other, very obvious ways into the apartment complex, and since when did gates stop serial killers?
I did see copies of D'Aulieres Book of Greek Myths (with the orange cover, and I think, Athena on the cover) which I read avidly as a second grader (I read everything back then, and no, it wasn't for school). I love the children's sections of bookstores, because it reminds me of my fondness for reading, when said reading is not peppered with words like "postmodern deontological perspectives" and "Derrida."
I also tried reading Harry Potter in Spanish, and then realized I don't read Spanish, but it was fun any way.
Meanwhile, back at the farm, the dog and the rabbit continue in some bizarre form of inter-species sibling rivalry. Bunny now likes to "ask" to go outside on the porch and then "asks" to come inside (when she wants to come in, she hops over the sliding glass door and stares inside balefully. If that doesn't get my attention, she starts scratching on the glass. Honest to God). Rabbit eats dog food whenever she can, so dog has retaliated by stealing and eating bunny's hay/vegetables. Dog doesn't realize hay gets stuck in his whiskers--a tell-tale sign he's been at it. Both of them now beg for treats when I go into the kitchen, and I often feel as if I'm mother of two naughty little children who follow me around the house and pout if they don't get their way.
Off to fish out the ibuprofen--back starting to go again... Ninety, here I come!
Any way, I went to the bookstore today, and rediscovered how much I dislike crowds. I also thought, "Either there's a lot of people who do shift work or work part time, or a lot of people played hooky from work today." I mean, come on people, it's Monday. No reason why you couldn't have boarded the Metro like everybody else and push paper at the Pentagon, or whatever other people do for a living around here. There were simply too many people in the shopping center, and I almost got run over by a car backing out of a parking spot. I mean like my person, not my car. I thought maybe if it had happened, it would take my mind off of my back pain, which has me feeling like an arthritic old lady lately.
Back to my nice, quiet apartment where from my window I can sit and watch the mechanics in the car shop sit and take their cigarette breaks just down the knoll from the parking lot, listen to the faint rumble of the Metro in the distance, and the ever-present squeak and protesting clatter of the stupid parking lot gate, which is completely pointless because there are other, very obvious ways into the apartment complex, and since when did gates stop serial killers?
I did see copies of D'Aulieres Book of Greek Myths (with the orange cover, and I think, Athena on the cover) which I read avidly as a second grader (I read everything back then, and no, it wasn't for school). I love the children's sections of bookstores, because it reminds me of my fondness for reading, when said reading is not peppered with words like "postmodern deontological perspectives" and "Derrida."
I also tried reading Harry Potter in Spanish, and then realized I don't read Spanish, but it was fun any way.
Meanwhile, back at the farm, the dog and the rabbit continue in some bizarre form of inter-species sibling rivalry. Bunny now likes to "ask" to go outside on the porch and then "asks" to come inside (when she wants to come in, she hops over the sliding glass door and stares inside balefully. If that doesn't get my attention, she starts scratching on the glass. Honest to God). Rabbit eats dog food whenever she can, so dog has retaliated by stealing and eating bunny's hay/vegetables. Dog doesn't realize hay gets stuck in his whiskers--a tell-tale sign he's been at it. Both of them now beg for treats when I go into the kitchen, and I often feel as if I'm mother of two naughty little children who follow me around the house and pout if they don't get their way.
Off to fish out the ibuprofen--back starting to go again... Ninety, here I come!
As I Lay Dying
So, bear with me.
Sometime last night, I was thinking about stuff, and counting on my fingers (because I can't do real math. If I could, I'd be a scientist. Or maybe a mad scientist. Wait, if I was a mad scientist, I wouldn't need to do real math. Wait! I can be a mad scientist now! Splendid!)
So I realized it's been five whole years since I graduated college. Of course, that realization begged the question: What have you been doing all this time? And then I thought: oh yeah, grad school. Then some more grad school. Then taking nursing boards and getting a job that nearly killed me.
Oh yeah. All that stuff.
But still, who cares? (Hint. Answer: No one).
The sad thing is, I do feel older (saying "mature" sounds too pompous for this occasion). Work has had a lot to do with that feeling. Watching people die slow and painful deaths, putting up with life-and-death stress, managing pscyho patients and placating even more psychotic family members, dealing with dismissive and rude--not to mention sometimes downright negligent--attendings, cleaning up poo off the floor and walls because "housekeeping won't do it, it's not their job" and dealing with every piece of petty rubbish no one else wants to... it's taken its toll.
I do feel "older." Seeing a basically dead, already necrotizing kid in multi-system organ failure having also suffered a massive brain stroke, kept on a ventilator and max pressors for a week before his power-of-attorney decides to withdraw care... it'll do that to a person.
Caring for that kid when he was conscious was almost worse, because you knew no matter what you did, the kid was going to die. His name should have been Lazarus, he'd been coded so many times. I said to a nurse, "You know this is going to end in one of two scenarios: Either the kid codes and dies on our floor, or we transfer him back to ICU again and he codes and dies there." Turns out his course of death chose door number two, except he didn't really code, because we hadn't left anything viable enough to code.
I remember pulling thick, leathery calluses of dead skin off of his sore-ridden, rotting feet and thinking, 'Jamie, what in the hell are you doing?! It's not like he's ever going to get out of bed again."
But I felt I had to, because what mother would want to see her son's feet like that, all corpse like? And then I remembered, he was rumored to be an illegal immigrant, and as far as I know, no blood relative ever came to visit him the entire hospital stay, and it was months. (It's a bad sign when, during report, the ICU nurse says, "Don't write the length-of-stay history down; we've got it all on a calendar we'll send over with the patient's chart.")
That's the kind of stuff that can get down inside of you and whittle away every bit of faith you have in humanity, let alone a Being greater than yourself.
I can't remember what it was like to be naiive of this kind of suffering. The conversations I had in divinity school about "human and divine suffering" sound even more artificial and arrogant than they did back before my daily job description often involved dealing with situations of moral and mortal peril.
Ironically, the other day a patient's son said to me, "God is good!"
He obviously hadn't met the daughter of a patient who was in that same room two days later, whose husband was diagnosed with a cancer that was stage four by the time he felt ill, and died a few months before their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Both were young, in their forties, with teenage children. They were planning a vow renewal ceremony this summer. Her mother told me all this, sadly, when her daughter had left the room after a painful, stilted visit. I could sense bitterness and hurt radiating from the daughter, but couldn't think of why until her mother told me the backstory.
I have no idea what to make of all this, and can only look to "The Roots" lyrics for inspiration:
The crack can only kill you if you let it.
Sometime last night, I was thinking about stuff, and counting on my fingers (because I can't do real math. If I could, I'd be a scientist. Or maybe a mad scientist. Wait, if I was a mad scientist, I wouldn't need to do real math. Wait! I can be a mad scientist now! Splendid!)
So I realized it's been five whole years since I graduated college. Of course, that realization begged the question: What have you been doing all this time? And then I thought: oh yeah, grad school. Then some more grad school. Then taking nursing boards and getting a job that nearly killed me.
Oh yeah. All that stuff.
But still, who cares? (Hint. Answer: No one).
The sad thing is, I do feel older (saying "mature" sounds too pompous for this occasion). Work has had a lot to do with that feeling. Watching people die slow and painful deaths, putting up with life-and-death stress, managing pscyho patients and placating even more psychotic family members, dealing with dismissive and rude--not to mention sometimes downright negligent--attendings, cleaning up poo off the floor and walls because "housekeeping won't do it, it's not their job" and dealing with every piece of petty rubbish no one else wants to... it's taken its toll.
I do feel "older." Seeing a basically dead, already necrotizing kid in multi-system organ failure having also suffered a massive brain stroke, kept on a ventilator and max pressors for a week before his power-of-attorney decides to withdraw care... it'll do that to a person.
Caring for that kid when he was conscious was almost worse, because you knew no matter what you did, the kid was going to die. His name should have been Lazarus, he'd been coded so many times. I said to a nurse, "You know this is going to end in one of two scenarios: Either the kid codes and dies on our floor, or we transfer him back to ICU again and he codes and dies there." Turns out his course of death chose door number two, except he didn't really code, because we hadn't left anything viable enough to code.
I remember pulling thick, leathery calluses of dead skin off of his sore-ridden, rotting feet and thinking, 'Jamie, what in the hell are you doing?! It's not like he's ever going to get out of bed again."
But I felt I had to, because what mother would want to see her son's feet like that, all corpse like? And then I remembered, he was rumored to be an illegal immigrant, and as far as I know, no blood relative ever came to visit him the entire hospital stay, and it was months. (It's a bad sign when, during report, the ICU nurse says, "Don't write the length-of-stay history down; we've got it all on a calendar we'll send over with the patient's chart.")
That's the kind of stuff that can get down inside of you and whittle away every bit of faith you have in humanity, let alone a Being greater than yourself.
I can't remember what it was like to be naiive of this kind of suffering. The conversations I had in divinity school about "human and divine suffering" sound even more artificial and arrogant than they did back before my daily job description often involved dealing with situations of moral and mortal peril.
Ironically, the other day a patient's son said to me, "God is good!"
He obviously hadn't met the daughter of a patient who was in that same room two days later, whose husband was diagnosed with a cancer that was stage four by the time he felt ill, and died a few months before their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Both were young, in their forties, with teenage children. They were planning a vow renewal ceremony this summer. Her mother told me all this, sadly, when her daughter had left the room after a painful, stilted visit. I could sense bitterness and hurt radiating from the daughter, but couldn't think of why until her mother told me the backstory.
I have no idea what to make of all this, and can only look to "The Roots" lyrics for inspiration:
The crack can only kill you if you let it.
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Better Than College Girls Gone Wild. I promise.
So work was suckage this past weekend, and when I mean suckage, I mean SUCKAGE.
Yesterday I was in a better mood, even though I had the immense pleasure to have, as part of my assignment, a forty-year-old domestic violence survivor with her jaw wired shut (yeah, it's like, figure out how that one got on a cardiac surgery stepdown unit. Because the jaw, you know, is, uh... kind of near the heart. Sort of. Hint: the magic word is: CHEST PAIN. These days, even if it's totally fake chest pain, it'll still buy you a tele bed.)
Hint: Just remember those two sweet little words, in case you hate being slated for a medical floor as much as the nurses there despise working on one. It's like, insta-tele bed! I'm totally gonna have to remember that when I come in for my fake "pre-syncopa"l episode--which also oddly enough seems to warrant telemetry admissions--if I don't get a tele bed to start with and they're thinking about putting me on some crappy medical floor, I'm going to start talking about my 11/10 chest pain and "EKG changes" from a previous physical. And if I don't like my roommate, I'm going for the "I had MRSA when I was hospitalized in Taipei last year," comment just so I can get my own private room. (Yeah, she tried a version of that one, too.)
Said patient was, nonetheless, able to somehow scream--albeit in a muffled, lispy sounding way--at staff (meaning me) for a couple of hours regarding what she thought was insufficient pain control, despite multiple pushes of IV narcs in the ER that would have had Andre The Giant--were he alive, bless his gentle, bonecrushing soul--down for the count for the rest of the week.
Also, curiously enough, even with her jaw wired shut she managed to have ETOH positive labs, which makes me think dear God, she had drink to her beer/vodka/rubbing alcohol with a straw.
That, my friends, is what I call desperation.
You know you're becoming a crotchety old hag of a nurse when, at seven thirty in the morning, you're doing the whole fake therapeutic response psych crap they taught you in nursing school is the way to handle angry, abusive patients in ETOH withdrawal, while secretely wondering if your patient isn't that same chic you saw on last night's episode of Cops.
Yeah, that shit doesn't bother me any more. I'm so used to crazy patients I could go in a room and talk to any one short of a psychotic serial killer and come out a minute later and just laugh my ass off because, dude, did that guy really just call us "a bunch of fucking quacks?" (If you're not a nurse, you probably think I just made that part up. But I didn't. Seriously.)
I feel obligated to tell the general public that if you ever do go into a hospital and your nurse/doctor/whomever is more than six weeks off of orientation, when we walk into your room with that great big phony smile on our face and forced air of calm, what we're really thinking is, "Okay, here's another potential nutjob. Wonder what interesting new street vocabularly and bodily substance I'm gonna have flung at me today."
Just kidding. Not really.
Yesterday I was in a better mood, even though I had the immense pleasure to have, as part of my assignment, a forty-year-old domestic violence survivor with her jaw wired shut (yeah, it's like, figure out how that one got on a cardiac surgery stepdown unit. Because the jaw, you know, is, uh... kind of near the heart. Sort of. Hint: the magic word is: CHEST PAIN. These days, even if it's totally fake chest pain, it'll still buy you a tele bed.)
Hint: Just remember those two sweet little words, in case you hate being slated for a medical floor as much as the nurses there despise working on one. It's like, insta-tele bed! I'm totally gonna have to remember that when I come in for my fake "pre-syncopa"l episode--which also oddly enough seems to warrant telemetry admissions--if I don't get a tele bed to start with and they're thinking about putting me on some crappy medical floor, I'm going to start talking about my 11/10 chest pain and "EKG changes" from a previous physical. And if I don't like my roommate, I'm going for the "I had MRSA when I was hospitalized in Taipei last year," comment just so I can get my own private room. (Yeah, she tried a version of that one, too.)
Said patient was, nonetheless, able to somehow scream--albeit in a muffled, lispy sounding way--at staff (meaning me) for a couple of hours regarding what she thought was insufficient pain control, despite multiple pushes of IV narcs in the ER that would have had Andre The Giant--were he alive, bless his gentle, bonecrushing soul--down for the count for the rest of the week.
Also, curiously enough, even with her jaw wired shut she managed to have ETOH positive labs, which makes me think dear God, she had drink to her beer/vodka/rubbing alcohol with a straw.
That, my friends, is what I call desperation.
You know you're becoming a crotchety old hag of a nurse when, at seven thirty in the morning, you're doing the whole fake therapeutic response psych crap they taught you in nursing school is the way to handle angry, abusive patients in ETOH withdrawal, while secretely wondering if your patient isn't that same chic you saw on last night's episode of Cops.
Yeah, that shit doesn't bother me any more. I'm so used to crazy patients I could go in a room and talk to any one short of a psychotic serial killer and come out a minute later and just laugh my ass off because, dude, did that guy really just call us "a bunch of fucking quacks?" (If you're not a nurse, you probably think I just made that part up. But I didn't. Seriously.)
I feel obligated to tell the general public that if you ever do go into a hospital and your nurse/doctor/whomever is more than six weeks off of orientation, when we walk into your room with that great big phony smile on our face and forced air of calm, what we're really thinking is, "Okay, here's another potential nutjob. Wonder what interesting new street vocabularly and bodily substance I'm gonna have flung at me today."
Just kidding. Not really.
Saturday, August 19, 2006
Pimp My Med Student, or Why I Love Poor Med Students
Or at least feel desperately sorry for them.
More on that later.
First: I had a bad day. So bad, that hands down, the least of the bad things that happened was that my stethoscope fell (bell/diaphragm first, not the earpieces, thank GOD) into a container of stale urine sitting in a commode.
I need a new stethoscope.
I don't even want to mention the other bad things that happened today, because I am beginning to enjoy my beer buzz, and if I dwell on it any longer, I'm going to stop enjoying my beer buzz, which might possibly be THE WORST THING EVER to happen, despite the sheer suckiness of my day.
Okay.
Back to Med Students, and Why I Pity Them.
There is this med student (discernable by the short white coat apparel) who has a rotation with the vascular group's residents. I've seen him around before, not paid much attention to him, actually, because hey, he's a med student, whatever. But today I got to work early, and there he was, poor thing, being all earnest and trying so hard to be nice... while his resident/intern mercilessly "pimped" him. I sat on the other side of the charts and scowled irritably at the resident, who was being a general all around prick to the kid, who was so flustered he kept looking like a buffoon--not that his intern was giving him anything but a rope with which to hang himself.
"Pimping," in the land of medical argot, means "riding your med student/intern/resident's ass so hard at the end of the day they look like they've been rode hard and put up wet." It's the whole "brass balls" shitty medical model of training--generations of ego and militaristic garbage hazing which is so incredibly counterproductive it's astounding they haven't done evidence based research that it's not a very effective method.
His intern/resident was so cruel to this poor kid I wanted to say something to him like, "Hey, asshole, give the kid a break; he's trying really hard!" but I"m sure that only make the kid's life harder, not better. It's not character building and it doesn't make you a better future doctor to be constantly told you're a worthless piece of shit, fit only to write notes (on patients you don't even get to see--so what's the point?!) The poor med student was like, "So I can go in the room, right?" and the intern said, "Ummm, no, you don't get to go in the room, I do. You can stay out here and write my notes [read: do my scutwork, bitch!}" Like, okay, I'm just a stupid nurse not fit to lick even a med student's toes, but uh, how's he supposed to learn if he can't go in rooms and see the assessment, dumbass?!
So His Highness got to swish around in his long white coat, going into the rooms doing his "history and physical" (I've read some of their notes and orders, and believe me, howeverly lordly and medical savvy they may seem to med students (who don't know any better); we nurses laugh when they try to write orders for the first time as an MD. And groan. And point it out to them, so they don't kill the patient). Then the resident, who I was beginning to believe was related to the Marquis de Sade, started torturing the kid by not letting him take notes on his dictated report. It was like watching that scene in Schindler's List. You know, the one in Auschwitz, when the poor souls are being led to the gas chambers, and the others are watching them wondering what their fate is.
It was sad, people. My heart bled for this kid, and I don't even think he's a "kid". I think he's probably older than me. Or he looks it, any way.
The only bit of solidarity I could offer (being one of the Untouchable class myself, as a dumb nurse) was to whisper to him, "Don't worry, it'll get better [translation: one day you get to do the pimping]" and addressograph some progress notes for him, something I would never do for an attending or resident unless she had treated me like a human being rather than a slavish troll, which practically none of them do.
I remember what it was like to be a scared shitless student, and a scared shitless new nurse. Hell, I know what it's like to be scared shitless and have some experience! If I didn't have understanding, caring teachers who taught me how to overcome my fear, I would have probably dropped out of nursing, and never had the pleasure of oozing stool and suctioning sputum. And what a tragic loss that would have been, n'est pas?
No seriously, to paraphrase that John Mayer song, "Interns be good to your med students.. They become interns, who turn into residents, so residents be good to your interns, too!"
More on that later.
First: I had a bad day. So bad, that hands down, the least of the bad things that happened was that my stethoscope fell (bell/diaphragm first, not the earpieces, thank GOD) into a container of stale urine sitting in a commode.
I need a new stethoscope.
I don't even want to mention the other bad things that happened today, because I am beginning to enjoy my beer buzz, and if I dwell on it any longer, I'm going to stop enjoying my beer buzz, which might possibly be THE WORST THING EVER to happen, despite the sheer suckiness of my day.
Okay.
Back to Med Students, and Why I Pity Them.
There is this med student (discernable by the short white coat apparel) who has a rotation with the vascular group's residents. I've seen him around before, not paid much attention to him, actually, because hey, he's a med student, whatever. But today I got to work early, and there he was, poor thing, being all earnest and trying so hard to be nice... while his resident/intern mercilessly "pimped" him. I sat on the other side of the charts and scowled irritably at the resident, who was being a general all around prick to the kid, who was so flustered he kept looking like a buffoon--not that his intern was giving him anything but a rope with which to hang himself.
"Pimping," in the land of medical argot, means "riding your med student/intern/resident's ass so hard at the end of the day they look like they've been rode hard and put up wet." It's the whole "brass balls" shitty medical model of training--generations of ego and militaristic garbage hazing which is so incredibly counterproductive it's astounding they haven't done evidence based research that it's not a very effective method.
His intern/resident was so cruel to this poor kid I wanted to say something to him like, "Hey, asshole, give the kid a break; he's trying really hard!" but I"m sure that only make the kid's life harder, not better. It's not character building and it doesn't make you a better future doctor to be constantly told you're a worthless piece of shit, fit only to write notes (on patients you don't even get to see--so what's the point?!) The poor med student was like, "So I can go in the room, right?" and the intern said, "Ummm, no, you don't get to go in the room, I do. You can stay out here and write my notes [read: do my scutwork, bitch!}" Like, okay, I'm just a stupid nurse not fit to lick even a med student's toes, but uh, how's he supposed to learn if he can't go in rooms and see the assessment, dumbass?!
So His Highness got to swish around in his long white coat, going into the rooms doing his "history and physical" (I've read some of their notes and orders, and believe me, howeverly lordly and medical savvy they may seem to med students (who don't know any better); we nurses laugh when they try to write orders for the first time as an MD. And groan. And point it out to them, so they don't kill the patient). Then the resident, who I was beginning to believe was related to the Marquis de Sade, started torturing the kid by not letting him take notes on his dictated report. It was like watching that scene in Schindler's List. You know, the one in Auschwitz, when the poor souls are being led to the gas chambers, and the others are watching them wondering what their fate is.
It was sad, people. My heart bled for this kid, and I don't even think he's a "kid". I think he's probably older than me. Or he looks it, any way.
The only bit of solidarity I could offer (being one of the Untouchable class myself, as a dumb nurse) was to whisper to him, "Don't worry, it'll get better [translation: one day you get to do the pimping]" and addressograph some progress notes for him, something I would never do for an attending or resident unless she had treated me like a human being rather than a slavish troll, which practically none of them do.
I remember what it was like to be a scared shitless student, and a scared shitless new nurse. Hell, I know what it's like to be scared shitless and have some experience! If I didn't have understanding, caring teachers who taught me how to overcome my fear, I would have probably dropped out of nursing, and never had the pleasure of oozing stool and suctioning sputum. And what a tragic loss that would have been, n'est pas?
No seriously, to paraphrase that John Mayer song, "Interns be good to your med students.. They become interns, who turn into residents, so residents be good to your interns, too!"
Sunday, August 13, 2006
I now own more theology books than God
I'm sure I have you all wondering, "What do geeks do for fun?"
Well, I am about to tell you.
They unpack years worth of theology books from divinity school and undergrad, lovingly caressing each cover with utmost tenderness, squealing in delight when they come across a long lost collection of Kirkegaard's works, and sighing in affection at a bunch of paperback works of George Eliot.
Then, they arrange their collection according to theme, and find they can't quite rid themselves of Milbank's "Truth in Aquinas" even though they think radical orthodoxy is a load of dragon dung, and the book should probably be placed on the list of Banned Books and used instead as a interrogation technique when confronting captured spies. (Make me read the damn thing again and you'd have me spilling my guts in about ten seconds flat, five if you make me discuss it with PhD candidates).
Any way, I wonder if God every reads the stuff that's been written about Him. If He does, I'll bet he chuckles and says, "My, they've really gotten that part all wrong!" and "Hey, St. Paul, come over here! You've got to see what David Tracey wrote this time. And that Graham Ward--he cracks me up! What a joker! Cities of God, indeed..."
Well, I am about to tell you.
They unpack years worth of theology books from divinity school and undergrad, lovingly caressing each cover with utmost tenderness, squealing in delight when they come across a long lost collection of Kirkegaard's works, and sighing in affection at a bunch of paperback works of George Eliot.
Then, they arrange their collection according to theme, and find they can't quite rid themselves of Milbank's "Truth in Aquinas" even though they think radical orthodoxy is a load of dragon dung, and the book should probably be placed on the list of Banned Books and used instead as a interrogation technique when confronting captured spies. (Make me read the damn thing again and you'd have me spilling my guts in about ten seconds flat, five if you make me discuss it with PhD candidates).
Any way, I wonder if God every reads the stuff that's been written about Him. If He does, I'll bet he chuckles and says, "My, they've really gotten that part all wrong!" and "Hey, St. Paul, come over here! You've got to see what David Tracey wrote this time. And that Graham Ward--he cracks me up! What a joker! Cities of God, indeed..."
Monday, August 07, 2006
Various and Asundry
Okay, so time to cram in a few more random observations, kind of like Dumbledore's Pensieve, except less detailed and a lot more pointless.
1) Somewhere along the lines, my friend Katy mentioned on her blog the ridiculousness of SPAM headers, said silliness prompting the rational thought, "Why on earth would I be compelled to open a piece of mail from someone I don't know, the subject header of which is entirely incomprehensible and so obviously SPAM it's pathetic?"
Ever since then, I've taken an informal survey of Random SPAM headers that seem to pile up in my university e-mail account with an alarming regularity. My favorite from last week? "Enormous Chignon." I'm thinking there must be a postmodern SPAM generator working overtime out there somewhere in the internet galaxy, generating infinite amounts of random word permutations just as somewhere, a computer infinitely spits out the sequence of pi. Or they've got a bunch of monkeys/high school drop outs trained to type nonesense on computers. (Hint: monkeys are cheaper to employ, and more reliable/intelligent than most humans).
2) Why do people call the hospital after they're discharged and ask questions about their discharge? We specifically ask you at the time of discharge whether or not you have any questions, and you're so busy trying to get the hell out of there you say "no." Does it ever occur to you that once you're discharged, your chart leaves our floor, and we are no longer legally responsible for your care? Does it ever occur to you that we aren't omniscent mind readers when you call for your spouse two weeks after discharge and say, "My husband was a patient there two weeks ago and he was supposed to get some test as an outpatient? Do you know what test that is?"
Or that when you don't understand that there's a generic name for a prescription and that it's the same drug as the brand name, and you call five hours after being discharged and tie up a nurse on the phone for fifteen minutes saying "You just don't understand" that maybe it's time to um... talk to a pharmacist and stop freaking out?
3) Okay, so slam me for this one if you will. I know it's a cultural thing, but sometimes I think men really take advantage of the "cultural thing" swinging in their favor. Yesterday I had this young guy from a conservative culture. And when I say young, I don't mean fifty. I mean within five years of my age. He was married to a pretty wife who looked even younger than he was, and she was about five to six months pregnant by the look of he tummy. He had a minor surgery, and was basically doing just spiffy, getting around on his own, independent as all get-out.
Well, in theory.
He wouldn't wash up until "his wife got there" and when he got dressed for discharge, she dressed him. She took his prescriptions and discharge instructions and acted as if she was his personal assistant/secretary instead of his wife.
It's one thing when you're dressing your elderly spouse/relative with some motor limitations who's just gone through a debilitating surgery. But a guy barely out of his twenties with full command of all of his faculties?! And his wife is pregnant and in need of some TLC herself? HUH?!
Like, okay, I said it before, I know this is a cultural thing for these folks and who am I to judge. I have to say that because I was indoctrinated in the bullshit culture of political correctness.
But I have to say, it makes me glad I'm not obligated to that kind of mollycoddling, because unless my spouse was in a full body cast or was actively dying, I'd be like, wash your own damn self, boyfriend!
I suck at being someone's slave, I guess.
4) Why do attendings ask you how the patient is doing if they don't want to even pretend to listen to you, and walk so fast you practically have to run to keep up with them, until you realize he's probably thinking about his golf game later on that afternoon, but he certainly hasn't been listening to you?
That shit pisses me off, because you know, I had better things to be doing with my time than flapping my mouth to a useless attending who asked a question he obviously didn't want answered in any detailed meaningful way.
This is one of the reasons why I prefer working at a teaching hospital. Interns/residents tend to be easier to work with on the whole, PAs and NPs are usually godsends, and I'd be out of my fur at the end of the day if I had to page out-of-house attendings the entire shift.
5) I"m getting hungry. I wonder what starch products I can rustle up for lunch.
1) Somewhere along the lines, my friend Katy mentioned on her blog the ridiculousness of SPAM headers, said silliness prompting the rational thought, "Why on earth would I be compelled to open a piece of mail from someone I don't know, the subject header of which is entirely incomprehensible and so obviously SPAM it's pathetic?"
Ever since then, I've taken an informal survey of Random SPAM headers that seem to pile up in my university e-mail account with an alarming regularity. My favorite from last week? "Enormous Chignon." I'm thinking there must be a postmodern SPAM generator working overtime out there somewhere in the internet galaxy, generating infinite amounts of random word permutations just as somewhere, a computer infinitely spits out the sequence of pi. Or they've got a bunch of monkeys/high school drop outs trained to type nonesense on computers. (Hint: monkeys are cheaper to employ, and more reliable/intelligent than most humans).
2) Why do people call the hospital after they're discharged and ask questions about their discharge? We specifically ask you at the time of discharge whether or not you have any questions, and you're so busy trying to get the hell out of there you say "no." Does it ever occur to you that once you're discharged, your chart leaves our floor, and we are no longer legally responsible for your care? Does it ever occur to you that we aren't omniscent mind readers when you call for your spouse two weeks after discharge and say, "My husband was a patient there two weeks ago and he was supposed to get some test as an outpatient? Do you know what test that is?"
Or that when you don't understand that there's a generic name for a prescription and that it's the same drug as the brand name, and you call five hours after being discharged and tie up a nurse on the phone for fifteen minutes saying "You just don't understand" that maybe it's time to um... talk to a pharmacist and stop freaking out?
3) Okay, so slam me for this one if you will. I know it's a cultural thing, but sometimes I think men really take advantage of the "cultural thing" swinging in their favor. Yesterday I had this young guy from a conservative culture. And when I say young, I don't mean fifty. I mean within five years of my age. He was married to a pretty wife who looked even younger than he was, and she was about five to six months pregnant by the look of he tummy. He had a minor surgery, and was basically doing just spiffy, getting around on his own, independent as all get-out.
Well, in theory.
He wouldn't wash up until "his wife got there" and when he got dressed for discharge, she dressed him. She took his prescriptions and discharge instructions and acted as if she was his personal assistant/secretary instead of his wife.
It's one thing when you're dressing your elderly spouse/relative with some motor limitations who's just gone through a debilitating surgery. But a guy barely out of his twenties with full command of all of his faculties?! And his wife is pregnant and in need of some TLC herself? HUH?!
Like, okay, I said it before, I know this is a cultural thing for these folks and who am I to judge. I have to say that because I was indoctrinated in the bullshit culture of political correctness.
But I have to say, it makes me glad I'm not obligated to that kind of mollycoddling, because unless my spouse was in a full body cast or was actively dying, I'd be like, wash your own damn self, boyfriend!
I suck at being someone's slave, I guess.
4) Why do attendings ask you how the patient is doing if they don't want to even pretend to listen to you, and walk so fast you practically have to run to keep up with them, until you realize he's probably thinking about his golf game later on that afternoon, but he certainly hasn't been listening to you?
That shit pisses me off, because you know, I had better things to be doing with my time than flapping my mouth to a useless attending who asked a question he obviously didn't want answered in any detailed meaningful way.
This is one of the reasons why I prefer working at a teaching hospital. Interns/residents tend to be easier to work with on the whole, PAs and NPs are usually godsends, and I'd be out of my fur at the end of the day if I had to page out-of-house attendings the entire shift.
5) I"m getting hungry. I wonder what starch products I can rustle up for lunch.
Monday, monday.
Well, it's Monday. The rest of the work-a-day world has gone off to the rat race, while I, lowly nurse, have already spent my time "on the inside" and now I sit... uh... inside the house, wondering why I have to be broke and still in debt.
It was a nasty feeling to realize last night, "Hey! All I have is a pizza and mac 'n cheese to eat until I get paid on Friday." And then realize, "Hey! At least pizza is like, five meals worth of food!"
Then I found out I didn't care for the pizza I had bought at Trader Joe's, and remembered I had Trader Joe naan bread in the freezer, but that was like eating pizza without the sauce, so I just went to bed.
Any way. I've become quite regimented in my third decade of life. Well, kind of. Not really. What I mean to say by that bit of tish-tosh is that I automatically wake up on my day off and robotically scrub the house and do laundry. Perhaps this is occurring now because I'm not suicidally depressed about my working conditions, and thus can actually manage to do more with my sorry ass life than actively plot my imminent, tragic demise by my own hand. Or else I'm just too poor to do anything else, but hey, I've got cleaning products!
Whatever the impetus, the house is cleaner as a result, and we're all happy about that.
Otherwise, I'm kind of in a weird social limbo right now. Work is a friendly place to be, but it takes me a while to meet good friends. And I'm kind of shy, when you get right down to it. Yeah, I'll gibber on and on and on here, in the privately public/ publically private internet sphere of blog, but that's different than actually wanting to leave the comfort of my home and do something.
I'm a Cancer, you see. No one's going to pull me out my shell without a good fight! (Likewise, I have the bad habit of hanging on to stuff until it's the equivalent of a vented vegetable no one wants to pull the plug on, for fear of engendering bad otherworldly vibes. I have a stuffed animal that is nearly thirty years old, for example. This is what I consider a Priceless Heirloom Possession and others call a useless piece of old shit. If, however, I had the choice between saving a $10,000 diamond ring and ragged old Puppy Love from a burning building--well, I suppose I can scavange through the rubble later for the ring. I laugh to think my kids are going to inherit old shitty stuffed animals, books every one else has scanned into their electronic library, and old-fashioned moth-ridden, half finished knitting projects. No doubt this will drive my future kids nutty, especially when they realize I've left all my money to a trust fund for the dog.)
I'm so going to end up abandoned in a nursing home when I'm old.
It was a nasty feeling to realize last night, "Hey! All I have is a pizza and mac 'n cheese to eat until I get paid on Friday." And then realize, "Hey! At least pizza is like, five meals worth of food!"
Then I found out I didn't care for the pizza I had bought at Trader Joe's, and remembered I had Trader Joe naan bread in the freezer, but that was like eating pizza without the sauce, so I just went to bed.
Any way. I've become quite regimented in my third decade of life. Well, kind of. Not really. What I mean to say by that bit of tish-tosh is that I automatically wake up on my day off and robotically scrub the house and do laundry. Perhaps this is occurring now because I'm not suicidally depressed about my working conditions, and thus can actually manage to do more with my sorry ass life than actively plot my imminent, tragic demise by my own hand. Or else I'm just too poor to do anything else, but hey, I've got cleaning products!
Whatever the impetus, the house is cleaner as a result, and we're all happy about that.
Otherwise, I'm kind of in a weird social limbo right now. Work is a friendly place to be, but it takes me a while to meet good friends. And I'm kind of shy, when you get right down to it. Yeah, I'll gibber on and on and on here, in the privately public/ publically private internet sphere of blog, but that's different than actually wanting to leave the comfort of my home and do something.
I'm a Cancer, you see. No one's going to pull me out my shell without a good fight! (Likewise, I have the bad habit of hanging on to stuff until it's the equivalent of a vented vegetable no one wants to pull the plug on, for fear of engendering bad otherworldly vibes. I have a stuffed animal that is nearly thirty years old, for example. This is what I consider a Priceless Heirloom Possession and others call a useless piece of old shit. If, however, I had the choice between saving a $10,000 diamond ring and ragged old Puppy Love from a burning building--well, I suppose I can scavange through the rubble later for the ring. I laugh to think my kids are going to inherit old shitty stuffed animals, books every one else has scanned into their electronic library, and old-fashioned moth-ridden, half finished knitting projects. No doubt this will drive my future kids nutty, especially when they realize I've left all my money to a trust fund for the dog.)
I'm so going to end up abandoned in a nursing home when I'm old.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Hot Town, Summer in the City
This heat wave has got to stop... umm... waving quite so much.
And heating, for that matter.
I mean, what gives?! It was 91 degrees Farenheight at 12:01p.m. today, and got all the way up to 101 F today. That's just wrong this far north of the Mason-Dixon line.
Luckily, lazy people like myself aren't to be bothered with the out-of-doors at its most hellaciously infero-esque. I kept my errands at a priority minimum this a.m.: get my PPD (my agency has been very, uh... vigiliant about reminding me it's due now! the sky is falling! the sky is falling!) and buy some groceries at Trader Joe's. One of my friends at work turned me on to Trader Joe's Garlic Naan bread and well, I had to have some. That, and New York Style Cheesecake. I was appalled to find out that a quarter of the cake = 420 calories, all of which, no doubt, derive from fat, because what is a cheese cake if not blubber calories.
Fortunately for me, a quarter of a cheesecake is a simply an unthinkably large portion, and I contented myself with a 1/32 slice of cake.
Meanwhile, I've sunk to a new low in slothfulness and taken to buying hay for the rabbit on ebay. In order to offset the can't-get-off-my-ass-in-this-heat factor, I've decided buying on ebay is cheaper, even with shipping. Also, there's something particularily postmodern about buying farm-fresh hay off the internet, but I digress...
Also, for the record, I've noticed a general overall decline in the quality of my blog. It's not nearly as funny as before (not that lamenting about how my former place of employment kept killing its clientele is all that amusing, but it at least gave me something to whine at length about) and it's... well, pictureless. Which isn't a bad trait, necessarily, but pictures do jazz things up a bit when the Interesting Stuff goes mysteriously missing.
Apologies all around. If you've been with me this long, you're likely to have realized many moons ago that my life is rather dull and not worth blogging about, really. You read my blog to humor me, and probably, subconsciously, to make yourself feel better about your life because geez, at least it doesn't suck like Jamie's, poor thing.
I also regret to inform my readers that my digital camera has bitten the dust and has past the point of any kind of troubleshooting options available to me, the technologically retarded. (Said troubleshooting options comprise of all of two: one, turn the device off and then back on again and hope for the best, and two, buy a new one. In my present incarnation as America's Model Child for the Working Poor, option two is more of a fantasy as opposed to a real alternative, so you do the math as to why there haven't been any pictures on this blog yet).
Back to knitting an endless array of baby blankets for unspecified Pregnant People that seem to all decide to have their babies wherever I see fit to become gainfully employeed...
And heating, for that matter.
I mean, what gives?! It was 91 degrees Farenheight at 12:01p.m. today, and got all the way up to 101 F today. That's just wrong this far north of the Mason-Dixon line.
Luckily, lazy people like myself aren't to be bothered with the out-of-doors at its most hellaciously infero-esque. I kept my errands at a priority minimum this a.m.: get my PPD (my agency has been very, uh... vigiliant about reminding me it's due now! the sky is falling! the sky is falling!) and buy some groceries at Trader Joe's. One of my friends at work turned me on to Trader Joe's Garlic Naan bread and well, I had to have some. That, and New York Style Cheesecake. I was appalled to find out that a quarter of the cake = 420 calories, all of which, no doubt, derive from fat, because what is a cheese cake if not blubber calories.
Fortunately for me, a quarter of a cheesecake is a simply an unthinkably large portion, and I contented myself with a 1/32 slice of cake.
Meanwhile, I've sunk to a new low in slothfulness and taken to buying hay for the rabbit on ebay. In order to offset the can't-get-off-my-ass-in-this-heat factor, I've decided buying on ebay is cheaper, even with shipping. Also, there's something particularily postmodern about buying farm-fresh hay off the internet, but I digress...
Also, for the record, I've noticed a general overall decline in the quality of my blog. It's not nearly as funny as before (not that lamenting about how my former place of employment kept killing its clientele is all that amusing, but it at least gave me something to whine at length about) and it's... well, pictureless. Which isn't a bad trait, necessarily, but pictures do jazz things up a bit when the Interesting Stuff goes mysteriously missing.
Apologies all around. If you've been with me this long, you're likely to have realized many moons ago that my life is rather dull and not worth blogging about, really. You read my blog to humor me, and probably, subconsciously, to make yourself feel better about your life because geez, at least it doesn't suck like Jamie's, poor thing.
I also regret to inform my readers that my digital camera has bitten the dust and has past the point of any kind of troubleshooting options available to me, the technologically retarded. (Said troubleshooting options comprise of all of two: one, turn the device off and then back on again and hope for the best, and two, buy a new one. In my present incarnation as America's Model Child for the Working Poor, option two is more of a fantasy as opposed to a real alternative, so you do the math as to why there haven't been any pictures on this blog yet).
Back to knitting an endless array of baby blankets for unspecified Pregnant People that seem to all decide to have their babies wherever I see fit to become gainfully employeed...
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Dream Date
I woke up this morning at quarter after five, feeling all warm and fuzzy and happy inside.
In my dream, I had been in an art museum, and Liam Neeson was my date. I think we were in the hall with the Romantic paintings, of which frankly I could care less, except Carvaggio was next on the agenda. Liam was saying something witty and informative, and bent to kiss my hand, for some reason. I was in delighted geek mode, because... oooo! Carvaggio! Sexy!
Yeah, that was like, the entire dream. Me. Liam. Museum. Then me, waking up, thinking, "Dude, what a great dream... I really need to visit the Smithsonian!"
Perhaps tonight I'll dream about Adrian Brody, and we'll tour The Library of Congress and get stuck in the section on Continental Philosophy, and by the time I'm through reading up on the latest Kant scholarship, Adrian will be all dead and mummified at my feet.
And tomorrow, I'll wake up, and have turned into Miss Marple, or else find I'm eighty years old and like to watch Miss Marple on PBS BBC, while knitting Red Heart acrylic kleenex box covers for my church's annual Christmas bazaar.
In my dream, I had been in an art museum, and Liam Neeson was my date. I think we were in the hall with the Romantic paintings, of which frankly I could care less, except Carvaggio was next on the agenda. Liam was saying something witty and informative, and bent to kiss my hand, for some reason. I was in delighted geek mode, because... oooo! Carvaggio! Sexy!
Yeah, that was like, the entire dream. Me. Liam. Museum. Then me, waking up, thinking, "Dude, what a great dream... I really need to visit the Smithsonian!"
Perhaps tonight I'll dream about Adrian Brody, and we'll tour The Library of Congress and get stuck in the section on Continental Philosophy, and by the time I'm through reading up on the latest Kant scholarship, Adrian will be all dead and mummified at my feet.
And tomorrow, I'll wake up, and have turned into Miss Marple, or else find I'm eighty years old and like to watch Miss Marple on PBS BBC, while knitting Red Heart acrylic kleenex box covers for my church's annual Christmas bazaar.
Monday, July 31, 2006
Dispelling Theological Rumors
For the record:
As a telemetry nurse, I think I can safely say I've seen enough of human nature to make me very suspcious about theological claims regarding Jesus loving everyone.
If He does Love Everyone, I'd like to know how the hell He does it, because I for one, think there are some really objectively unlovable fuck ups in this world, that anyone, even a Christian deity, who claims to love said persons is lying through His pearly-as-the-gates-of-heaven teeth.
I say this after a day of floating to a medical telemetry floor (and we all know medical telemetry is code for "Bill and Ted's Totally Bogus Telemetry Admission, but whatever, we can charge more for the bed this way/Fraud, who said fraud?!") Dude, two of my patients weren't even on telemetry, and of all five patients I had today, only one of them really needed the telemetry for you know, an actual arrhythmia.
Compared to Old Floor/Old Hospital, though, I would still have to say the assignment pain-in-the-ass scale (with 0 being no pain-in-the-ass and 10 being the worst-pain-the-ass I've ever had) would have only been a 2, and that was including an exceedingly unpleasant Etoh withdrawal chap who enjoyed cursing at me the entire day and refusing essential things like IV access (who needs that crap on a telemetry floor?! being his brilliant rationale), and a Jerry Springer smackdown of family members on a patient who wasn't even mine.
I mean, DUDE, does my badge say, "Hello random people I've never met before in my life, how may I let you bitch slap me today?"
What a bunch of assholes.
Hmmm... maybe my neuro nurse friend is on to something when she says she likes her patients intubated and sedated.
Meanwhile, I'm hoping the census on our floor is back to normal tomorrow, because I've had enough of floating for awhile, thank you.
As a telemetry nurse, I think I can safely say I've seen enough of human nature to make me very suspcious about theological claims regarding Jesus loving everyone.
If He does Love Everyone, I'd like to know how the hell He does it, because I for one, think there are some really objectively unlovable fuck ups in this world, that anyone, even a Christian deity, who claims to love said persons is lying through His pearly-as-the-gates-of-heaven teeth.
I say this after a day of floating to a medical telemetry floor (and we all know medical telemetry is code for "Bill and Ted's Totally Bogus Telemetry Admission, but whatever, we can charge more for the bed this way/Fraud, who said fraud?!") Dude, two of my patients weren't even on telemetry, and of all five patients I had today, only one of them really needed the telemetry for you know, an actual arrhythmia.
Compared to Old Floor/Old Hospital, though, I would still have to say the assignment pain-in-the-ass scale (with 0 being no pain-in-the-ass and 10 being the worst-pain-the-ass I've ever had) would have only been a 2, and that was including an exceedingly unpleasant Etoh withdrawal chap who enjoyed cursing at me the entire day and refusing essential things like IV access (who needs that crap on a telemetry floor?! being his brilliant rationale), and a Jerry Springer smackdown of family members on a patient who wasn't even mine.
I mean, DUDE, does my badge say, "Hello random people I've never met before in my life, how may I let you bitch slap me today?"
What a bunch of assholes.
Hmmm... maybe my neuro nurse friend is on to something when she says she likes her patients intubated and sedated.
Meanwhile, I'm hoping the census on our floor is back to normal tomorrow, because I've had enough of floating for awhile, thank you.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Cold Mountain
So I have a crappy cold.
I have been treating it with liquid Benadryl/Tylenol remedies which has the effect of making me sleep most of the day, subjecting myself to daymares and waking up feeling just as log-headed and foggy as I did before the consumption of pharmaceutical wonder products.
Meanwhile, I'm thinking of the many good uses to which I could put lottery money to use, so if any one wants to clue me in on the winning numbers, I'd be much obliged.
I have been treating it with liquid Benadryl/Tylenol remedies which has the effect of making me sleep most of the day, subjecting myself to daymares and waking up feeling just as log-headed and foggy as I did before the consumption of pharmaceutical wonder products.
Meanwhile, I'm thinking of the many good uses to which I could put lottery money to use, so if any one wants to clue me in on the winning numbers, I'd be much obliged.
Bunny Tales
This morning I witnessed something quite droll.
I let my lop-eared rabbit, Flip-flop, out of her cage for a morning cavort as I had to clean the house.
In what I imagine is a faintly ironic twist of inter-species sibling rivalry, the first thing she does when freed from her cage is to run over and nose into the dog bowls, because maybe he's got something she doesn't, like tap water(!), or dog food, which she has been known to munch on contentedly until I figure out it's the rabbit eating the dog food and hoist the bowl up and out of reach.
Sure enough, ignoring the perfectly okay tap water in her space age vacuum water bottle, she hopped over to a freshly poured bowl of delectable dog water, butted the dog out of the way and started to drink.
And drink and drink and drink (mostly I think to piss off the dog, who was standing there waiting for her to finish.)
Meanwhile, the dog was giving me a puzzled, "Help me!" look, and started whining piteously (confrontation is apparently not his strong suit, even when dealing with a prey species).
I have photographic proof of this late and great Bunny Tale but alas, no way to upload it onto the blogger.
I let my lop-eared rabbit, Flip-flop, out of her cage for a morning cavort as I had to clean the house.
In what I imagine is a faintly ironic twist of inter-species sibling rivalry, the first thing she does when freed from her cage is to run over and nose into the dog bowls, because maybe he's got something she doesn't, like tap water(!), or dog food, which she has been known to munch on contentedly until I figure out it's the rabbit eating the dog food and hoist the bowl up and out of reach.
Sure enough, ignoring the perfectly okay tap water in her space age vacuum water bottle, she hopped over to a freshly poured bowl of delectable dog water, butted the dog out of the way and started to drink.
And drink and drink and drink (mostly I think to piss off the dog, who was standing there waiting for her to finish.)
Meanwhile, the dog was giving me a puzzled, "Help me!" look, and started whining piteously (confrontation is apparently not his strong suit, even when dealing with a prey species).
I have photographic proof of this late and great Bunny Tale but alas, no way to upload it onto the blogger.
A Nursing Fairy Tale
Once upon a time, in a galaxy far far away, on a planet much like our own, in a kingdom of darkness and cold, there lived a poor Graduate Nurse who unfortunately passed her boards and was thus gainfully employed by a hospital run by rich, evil Kings and Queens who cared not a whit about their patient population, but only money, and how much of it they could stuff into their deep and bottomless, soul-sucking pockets.
This poor graduate Nurse came to work under a particularily vicious Evil Stepmother of one of the Wicked Kings and Queens. The cruel Evil Stepmother made the graduate nurse and her fellow slaves-in-nursing work night and day, toiling endlessly, with out eating or resting, for mere scraps. Whenever any one was foolish enough to ask for the slightest compensation for their hard, endless work, the Evil Stepmother made certain that nurse would get the exact opposite of what she had asked for, and seemed to delight in making everyone completely miserable. Some times, the poor nurses were publicly humiliated by the Evil Stepmother, and it was widely rumored amongst the land that some nurses were even tortured into insanity. Many nurses became ill and withered away, never to be heard from again.
Then one day, the poor graduate Nurse found she was not a happy, smiling graduate nurse any more, but a bitter, cranky and half-crazed staff nurse who was quickly losing her ability to cope with anything more complex than getting out of bed in the morning. Without warning, she Ran Away from the Evil Kingdom of Hospital Doom, never to be seen again by the Evil Stepmother or her co-slaves.
She ran and ran, and when she could run no more, she found herself a job in another Hospital Kingdom. This time, however, she worked for a Fairy Godmother instead of an Evil Stepmother, who treated her nurses kindly and with respect.
And lo, the nurse believed she was having a psychotic break. And lo, her medical insurance hadn't kicked in yet, so she couldn't get a psych consult and a script for Seroquel just to cover her bases.
The mutual admiration went on and on, leading the Nurse to feel that perhaps she had mixed up her tale with that of Sleeping Beauty, and that she had fallen into a long, deep slumber and dreamt endlessly a reverie in which her job was pleasant and her boss respected her employees.
Then one day, the Nurse had an argument with a Snotty Princeling Attending So-and-So who had surronded himself with a court of Knaves and Jesters known as residents, because he was too gormless to face a skinny woman weighing less than a sack of potatos by himself. The nurse used her Super Ninja Jedi Mind Tricks--and hot temper and loud mouth--to great effect, and vanquished the Evil Princeling from her castle. The nurses lauded her for her ability to smite the Snotty Prince, and for her unwittingly sending the Snotty Prince's patients off to another castle to be cared for, at least for awhile.
And lo, the Fairy Godmother chuckled at the plucky resourcefulness of her nursing staff and said in commendation, "So, I see you've met our resident Napolean with a God complex! He's an asshole, isn't he?!"
And the nurse, who rejoiced and sent e-mails documenting the miraculous event far and wide to her ex-colleaugues still living under the frightful rule of the most Frigid Stepmother on the planet, lived happily ever.
The End.
This poor graduate Nurse came to work under a particularily vicious Evil Stepmother of one of the Wicked Kings and Queens. The cruel Evil Stepmother made the graduate nurse and her fellow slaves-in-nursing work night and day, toiling endlessly, with out eating or resting, for mere scraps. Whenever any one was foolish enough to ask for the slightest compensation for their hard, endless work, the Evil Stepmother made certain that nurse would get the exact opposite of what she had asked for, and seemed to delight in making everyone completely miserable. Some times, the poor nurses were publicly humiliated by the Evil Stepmother, and it was widely rumored amongst the land that some nurses were even tortured into insanity. Many nurses became ill and withered away, never to be heard from again.
Then one day, the poor graduate Nurse found she was not a happy, smiling graduate nurse any more, but a bitter, cranky and half-crazed staff nurse who was quickly losing her ability to cope with anything more complex than getting out of bed in the morning. Without warning, she Ran Away from the Evil Kingdom of Hospital Doom, never to be seen again by the Evil Stepmother or her co-slaves.
She ran and ran, and when she could run no more, she found herself a job in another Hospital Kingdom. This time, however, she worked for a Fairy Godmother instead of an Evil Stepmother, who treated her nurses kindly and with respect.
And lo, the nurse believed she was having a psychotic break. And lo, her medical insurance hadn't kicked in yet, so she couldn't get a psych consult and a script for Seroquel just to cover her bases.
The mutual admiration went on and on, leading the Nurse to feel that perhaps she had mixed up her tale with that of Sleeping Beauty, and that she had fallen into a long, deep slumber and dreamt endlessly a reverie in which her job was pleasant and her boss respected her employees.
Then one day, the Nurse had an argument with a Snotty Princeling Attending So-and-So who had surronded himself with a court of Knaves and Jesters known as residents, because he was too gormless to face a skinny woman weighing less than a sack of potatos by himself. The nurse used her Super Ninja Jedi Mind Tricks--and hot temper and loud mouth--to great effect, and vanquished the Evil Princeling from her castle. The nurses lauded her for her ability to smite the Snotty Prince, and for her unwittingly sending the Snotty Prince's patients off to another castle to be cared for, at least for awhile.
And lo, the Fairy Godmother chuckled at the plucky resourcefulness of her nursing staff and said in commendation, "So, I see you've met our resident Napolean with a God complex! He's an asshole, isn't he?!"
And the nurse, who rejoiced and sent e-mails documenting the miraculous event far and wide to her ex-colleaugues still living under the frightful rule of the most Frigid Stepmother on the planet, lived happily ever.
The End.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
thirtysomething
Friday was my birthday. No, I didn't spend the day snorting crack off my dog's rump (too furry, for starters). Yes, I did (predictably) go home. Because I am a sad, very broke individual with no friends my age living within a 600 mile radius of my person.
I spent My Birthday with my mom, doing Post Move errands. Basically I drove her around Jacksonville, because she's been up for about three weeks straight, Moving Stuff, Packing Stuff and Unpacking Stuff. You see my parents bought this Rilly Nice New House, and they just moved in, so I went to visit them and watch my mother Put Away Stuff all weekend long. That was pretty much my birthday entertainment.
Oh, that and:
I finished another baby kimino from Mason Dixon Knitting for Pregnant Person #3 on my unit (quit. procreating. people.) and two washcloths, both of which went to the New House. I also had a margararita and a Corona (on different days).
I'm telling you, I lived large this weekend.
So yey, thirty. You're predictable, boring and live with your parents. Or aspire to, at any rate.
I spent My Birthday with my mom, doing Post Move errands. Basically I drove her around Jacksonville, because she's been up for about three weeks straight, Moving Stuff, Packing Stuff and Unpacking Stuff. You see my parents bought this Rilly Nice New House, and they just moved in, so I went to visit them and watch my mother Put Away Stuff all weekend long. That was pretty much my birthday entertainment.
Oh, that and:
I finished another baby kimino from Mason Dixon Knitting for Pregnant Person #3 on my unit (quit. procreating. people.) and two washcloths, both of which went to the New House. I also had a margararita and a Corona (on different days).
I'm telling you, I lived large this weekend.
So yey, thirty. You're predictable, boring and live with your parents. Or aspire to, at any rate.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Kerplunk and Kerplooey.
So today was my official veg-out day. Yesterday being a clusterf---k of a day at work (and my last of three-in-a-row twelves), I didn't have a lot of energy today to go out into the meltingly hot summer weather and join the rest of the greater NoVA population in chewing up the ozone in my gas-guzzling vehicle.
I also had a sinus headache when I woke up and felt very put-upon about having to clean the house when i just did it last week, man! I nonetheless spurred myself into action and have achieved a tidy living space as a result.
I like to think of myself as being a crepuscular creature; rising at dawn to forage for food and clean out the old warren, then sleeping in said warren for the rest of the hot, crappy day, and coming out again only at dusk to forage for more food.
Since I've been getting in touch with my inner- Victorian age recluse today, I really haven't much of an update, except a Handy Life Tip: grooming the family dog's fur aided and abetted only with a small child-size craft scissors is a thankless job, indeed.
I also had a sinus headache when I woke up and felt very put-upon about having to clean the house when i just did it last week, man! I nonetheless spurred myself into action and have achieved a tidy living space as a result.
I like to think of myself as being a crepuscular creature; rising at dawn to forage for food and clean out the old warren, then sleeping in said warren for the rest of the hot, crappy day, and coming out again only at dusk to forage for more food.
Since I've been getting in touch with my inner- Victorian age recluse today, I really haven't much of an update, except a Handy Life Tip: grooming the family dog's fur aided and abetted only with a small child-size craft scissors is a thankless job, indeed.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Dude, Where's My Hematoma?
So today I had a patient who was two days post-op from a fem-pop bypass. Yesterday, vascular service decided to leave his old, yucky bandage on--breeding God knows what filth--whilst today, a vascular resident came by, took down the dressing, assessed the wound, and bandaged him back up without however, cleaning the incisions.
Then the resident advanced him from clear liquids to solid food, without the intermediate full liquid trial. I don't know for 100% sure since I haven't done any research on evidence-based practice on this matter, but I'm sure there's something to advancing the diet slowly after surgery, so that one's sleepy GI tract doesn't go all wacky-tabacky and vomit waffle chunks all over his nurse.
Luckily, I was in the room assessing the patient as the tray came. I had asked the resident earlier if it was alright to advance the diet and he'd said yes, so I was fully anticipating an order for full liquids. Soooo... apparently no one mentioned to residents that "advance diet" from clears does not mean "give waffles and syrup straight away!"
Anyhoo.
Later on in the afternoon, the patient had an incontinent episode, soaking his leg dressings. Being a dutiful nurse, I took down the dressings, washed them properly, assessed the sites, and redressed the incisions.
In the course of doing so, I noticed a small hematoma on the patient's right thigh. I was quite sure the surgical resident hadn't said anything about a hematoma (I was there when he assessed the patient and dressed the wound) and I didn't remember reading anything in the chart in the attending's note, either. It wasn't a very big hematoma, and I thought it rather unlikely to be much to be bothered about, but, having found it, I now had to deal with it, especially since the family (very lovely, by the way) was standing right there during the dressing change.
I went and dug through the chart--no mention of any small hematoma there, and the resident conveniently hadn't left a note. The attending didn't mention it either. So then I looked for an H/H to see what his blood count was doing; nothing ordered.
So Jamie pages the attending online with a nifty little text message (because he wasn't on CV surgery service and I didn't have any SuperCool Anytime You Need Me Physician Assistants on the flor for this guy) to mention the hematoma and ask for an H/H.
Then the resident advanced him from clear liquids to solid food, without the intermediate full liquid trial. I don't know for 100% sure since I haven't done any research on evidence-based practice on this matter, but I'm sure there's something to advancing the diet slowly after surgery, so that one's sleepy GI tract doesn't go all wacky-tabacky and vomit waffle chunks all over his nurse.
Luckily, I was in the room assessing the patient as the tray came. I had asked the resident earlier if it was alright to advance the diet and he'd said yes, so I was fully anticipating an order for full liquids. Soooo... apparently no one mentioned to residents that "advance diet" from clears does not mean "give waffles and syrup straight away!"
Anyhoo.
Later on in the afternoon, the patient had an incontinent episode, soaking his leg dressings. Being a dutiful nurse, I took down the dressings, washed them properly, assessed the sites, and redressed the incisions.
In the course of doing so, I noticed a small hematoma on the patient's right thigh. I was quite sure the surgical resident hadn't said anything about a hematoma (I was there when he assessed the patient and dressed the wound) and I didn't remember reading anything in the chart in the attending's note, either. It wasn't a very big hematoma, and I thought it rather unlikely to be much to be bothered about, but, having found it, I now had to deal with it, especially since the family (very lovely, by the way) was standing right there during the dressing change.
I went and dug through the chart--no mention of any small hematoma there, and the resident conveniently hadn't left a note. The attending didn't mention it either. So then I looked for an H/H to see what his blood count was doing; nothing ordered.
So Jamie pages the attending online with a nifty little text message (because he wasn't on CV surgery service and I didn't have any SuperCool Anytime You Need Me Physician Assistants on the flor for this guy) to mention the hematoma and ask for an H/H.
ATTENDING:
[curtly cutting across my spiel]
Yeah, I got your page about the hematoma; I saw it this morning and it wasn't very impressive.
JAMIE:
[doggedly, as she knows this particular attending probably thinks she and all nurses are syphillitic whores]
Uh, okay. He doesn't have an H/H, would you like to get one?
ATTENDING:
[Sounding like teenager saying "Whatever"]
Yeah, sure, that will be fine.
So dude. The funniest part about this story, and the reason I'm even mentioning it at all, is that yesterday the attending came in at 8:00a.m. all huffy because the guy's leg wasn't elevated (it had been, but you know, sleeping and stuff at night shifts stuff around). Any way, he went on and on about it, implying I was a shitty, stupid nurse because clearly, I somehow didn't comprehend the importance of elevating extremeties (just as somehow, his residents don't get how to properly order advance diet and dress and assess surgical wounds, but whatever).
That's not all.
I asked the patient twice just to make sure, "Hey, did the attending take down your dressing at all today?"
And the patient, alert and oriented as you and I said, "Nope. Just looked at. Never took it down at all."
Hmmm....
I ask you: Now who's the stupid syphillitic fibbing whore?!
[curtly cutting across my spiel]
Yeah, I got your page about the hematoma; I saw it this morning and it wasn't very impressive.
JAMIE:
[doggedly, as she knows this particular attending probably thinks she and all nurses are syphillitic whores]
Uh, okay. He doesn't have an H/H, would you like to get one?
ATTENDING:
[Sounding like teenager saying "Whatever"]
Yeah, sure, that will be fine.
So dude. The funniest part about this story, and the reason I'm even mentioning it at all, is that yesterday the attending came in at 8:00a.m. all huffy because the guy's leg wasn't elevated (it had been, but you know, sleeping and stuff at night shifts stuff around). Any way, he went on and on about it, implying I was a shitty, stupid nurse because clearly, I somehow didn't comprehend the importance of elevating extremeties (just as somehow, his residents don't get how to properly order advance diet and dress and assess surgical wounds, but whatever).
That's not all.
I asked the patient twice just to make sure, "Hey, did the attending take down your dressing at all today?"
And the patient, alert and oriented as you and I said, "Nope. Just looked at. Never took it down at all."
Hmmm....
I ask you: Now who's the stupid syphillitic fibbing whore?!
Thursday, July 13, 2006
National Treasure
No, I'm not in Philadelphia flapping around the back of a van at top speeds with The Declaration of Independence rolled up in a cannister (God I can't believe I watched that crappy movie).
However, yesterday I hopped on the Metro and headed into DC to see The National Zoo. (I seriously think I missed my calling as a veterinarian, because I really like animals. So much so that I consent to slogging around a confinement camp for exotic animals in a park like setting meant for children under the age of ten).
The Zoo was free, but it was hot and muggy, so taking longer-than-necessary reprieves inside The Reptile House, for instance, soon became top priority. The abundance of screaming spoiled children quickly became a nerve-shredder as well. Don't parents teach their children to use their "inside voice" any more? What happened to corporal punishment and going to bed without supper? And incidentally, whatever happened to common courtesy, as in Shut Your Kid The F--- Up so that other patrons can watch the adorable little gibbons eat lice off each others' heads? Some of us need silence for these kinds of contemplative activities.
From the Irony Defined Corner: while I was walking through the Outdoor Monkey Preserve (or whatever it was), I witnessed the following conversation between two youths about age eight who were hanging over the guardrail trying to catch a glimpse of that elusive, mysterious creature that obviously inhabits not the space-age world of Xbox and MTV videos, the... oh well, never mind, here you go:
However, yesterday I hopped on the Metro and headed into DC to see The National Zoo. (I seriously think I missed my calling as a veterinarian, because I really like animals. So much so that I consent to slogging around a confinement camp for exotic animals in a park like setting meant for children under the age of ten).
The Zoo was free, but it was hot and muggy, so taking longer-than-necessary reprieves inside The Reptile House, for instance, soon became top priority. The abundance of screaming spoiled children quickly became a nerve-shredder as well. Don't parents teach their children to use their "inside voice" any more? What happened to corporal punishment and going to bed without supper? And incidentally, whatever happened to common courtesy, as in Shut Your Kid The F--- Up so that other patrons can watch the adorable little gibbons eat lice off each others' heads? Some of us need silence for these kinds of contemplative activities.
From the Irony Defined Corner: while I was walking through the Outdoor Monkey Preserve (or whatever it was), I witnessed the following conversation between two youths about age eight who were hanging over the guardrail trying to catch a glimpse of that elusive, mysterious creature that obviously inhabits not the space-age world of Xbox and MTV videos, the... oh well, never mind, here you go:
KID NUMBER ONE:
[to another kid]
Oh my God! Did you see that squirrel?!
KID NUMBER TWO:
Whooooa! Coool! Quick, take a picture!
KID NUMBER ONE:
[snaps shutter on $300 digital camera]
Wow. That was like, totally awesome!
[to another kid]
Oh my God! Did you see that squirrel?!
KID NUMBER TWO:
Whooooa! Coool! Quick, take a picture!
KID NUMBER ONE:
[snaps shutter on $300 digital camera]
Wow. That was like, totally awesome!
No, I'm not hyperbolizing. Yes, I'll wait a moment until the richness of the irony has set in fully with you, gentle reader.
(Sidebar: They actually saw a chipmunk but let's not confuse American youth with genus/species scientific nomenclature now, okay? Because clearly attempting to educate kids these days isn't working so why meddle with the system now?)
If that conversation isn't a sign of our times, nothing is.
Rend thy tunics and beat thy bosoms, future educators of America. For this is the raw material with which you will have to work.
May I suggest a moment of silence?
(Sidebar: They actually saw a chipmunk but let's not confuse American youth with genus/species scientific nomenclature now, okay? Because clearly attempting to educate kids these days isn't working so why meddle with the system now?)
If that conversation isn't a sign of our times, nothing is.
Rend thy tunics and beat thy bosoms, future educators of America. For this is the raw material with which you will have to work.
May I suggest a moment of silence?
Sunday, July 09, 2006
Arm[s] and the Man
Today I helped another nurse do a wet-to-dry sterile dressing on a poor guy who had a right arm fasciotomy. The wound was so deep, you could see the bone!
Any way, previously, I thought I would never be able to stomach trauma, but now I think maybe I might be able to give it a whirl someday. Sure, the guy was on a Dilaudid PCA (read: the good stuff) and had basically lost sensation in that arm any way (did I mention you could see the bone?) but it wasn't nearly as stomach-turning as I thought it might be. The smell wasn't even that noxious (thank God, because bad smell = infection = uh oh.)
The thing that impressed me the most was how nice the guy was about us changing his dressing. He acted as if we were doing this tremendously brave, noble thing and deserved riches and glory. Such a nice guy. Because if I were him, I'd be all cranky and whiney, and start wincing theatrically even if I couldn't feel jack. Instead, this guy was offering to take us out to dinner for being such brave soldiers. What a nice patient!
Meanwhile, I need to figure out what the hell is wrong with me. I mean, shouldn't lifting up a dead looking flap of skin, and packing sterile gauze into someone's mangled , bloody flesh bits make me nauseated, instead of thinking, "Wow! Dude! This is sooooo cool! I can't wait to tell my friends about this when I get home!"
Somewhere, just over the rainbow, my guardian angel is smacking her forehead with her own halo sighing, "Sweet baby Jesus, where did we go wrong with this one?"
Any way, previously, I thought I would never be able to stomach trauma, but now I think maybe I might be able to give it a whirl someday. Sure, the guy was on a Dilaudid PCA (read: the good stuff) and had basically lost sensation in that arm any way (did I mention you could see the bone?) but it wasn't nearly as stomach-turning as I thought it might be. The smell wasn't even that noxious (thank God, because bad smell = infection = uh oh.)
The thing that impressed me the most was how nice the guy was about us changing his dressing. He acted as if we were doing this tremendously brave, noble thing and deserved riches and glory. Such a nice guy. Because if I were him, I'd be all cranky and whiney, and start wincing theatrically even if I couldn't feel jack. Instead, this guy was offering to take us out to dinner for being such brave soldiers. What a nice patient!
Meanwhile, I need to figure out what the hell is wrong with me. I mean, shouldn't lifting up a dead looking flap of skin, and packing sterile gauze into someone's mangled , bloody flesh bits make me nauseated, instead of thinking, "Wow! Dude! This is sooooo cool! I can't wait to tell my friends about this when I get home!"
Somewhere, just over the rainbow, my guardian angel is smacking her forehead with her own halo sighing, "Sweet baby Jesus, where did we go wrong with this one?"
Friday, July 07, 2006
Icecream, you scream...
So I'm sitting here on Friday afternoon trying to figure out if there's a way to make "pita bread, hummus, a chunk of chocolate, doritos and a can of diet coke" into a balanced meal. My initial thought is: probably not, but then again, who cares?!
We've had a pleasant reprieve from that four-letter-word known as "rain," and some of the humidity has left the area, resulting in very pleasant weather, the kind that makes me wish I wasn't a lazy ass and enjoyed things like camping, hiking, and walking from my front door to my car. For a staunch urbanite like myself, "outdoor recreation" means rolling the window down in the car--which I hate, because of the sound of wind rushing--or opening the apartment windows to let the breeze in. But not for long, because it's noisy outside, and too much fresh air consumption is bound to cause the other kind of consumption.
Why, you ask, didn't I join a comtemplative religious order and sit in a locked, windowless room for hours staring at a wall, or something? Ah, but you forget, my dear grasshoppers, I did that. And lo, it was called grad school. And lo, I'm not doing that again, either.
Oh dear. The Scary IceCream Truck is making its daily summer rounds. Not only does it have the World's Most Annoying Canned Music--a tune which sounds like a "It's a Small World" rip off--but it also has this creepy voice at the end of the jingle that says "Hello" in this vaguely pedophilic, robotic way. I'm sorry, but what conscientious parent in their right mind lets their children buy confections from a strange adult who has been exposed to hours of freaky looped carnival music whilst driving around neighborhoods at 5 mph in a big white lumbering van painted with pictures of dancing ice cream cones?! I suppose ice cream trucks aren't exactly the speediest of getaway vehicles, but still.
I mean, dude! Isn't the creepy weird music alone enough to tip you off to the Potentially Horrific Consequences, people?! It's like the audio-equivalent of the make-out scene in horror movies. You just know that all that on-screen adolescent lust is going to lead to Something Bad Happening. Well, likewise, I'm convinced people--and their offspring--should stay away from icecream trucks. Like clowns, there's just something vaguely unsavory about them.
We've had a pleasant reprieve from that four-letter-word known as "rain," and some of the humidity has left the area, resulting in very pleasant weather, the kind that makes me wish I wasn't a lazy ass and enjoyed things like camping, hiking, and walking from my front door to my car. For a staunch urbanite like myself, "outdoor recreation" means rolling the window down in the car--which I hate, because of the sound of wind rushing--or opening the apartment windows to let the breeze in. But not for long, because it's noisy outside, and too much fresh air consumption is bound to cause the other kind of consumption.
Why, you ask, didn't I join a comtemplative religious order and sit in a locked, windowless room for hours staring at a wall, or something? Ah, but you forget, my dear grasshoppers, I did that. And lo, it was called grad school. And lo, I'm not doing that again, either.
Oh dear. The Scary IceCream Truck is making its daily summer rounds. Not only does it have the World's Most Annoying Canned Music--a tune which sounds like a "It's a Small World" rip off--but it also has this creepy voice at the end of the jingle that says "Hello" in this vaguely pedophilic, robotic way. I'm sorry, but what conscientious parent in their right mind lets their children buy confections from a strange adult who has been exposed to hours of freaky looped carnival music whilst driving around neighborhoods at 5 mph in a big white lumbering van painted with pictures of dancing ice cream cones?! I suppose ice cream trucks aren't exactly the speediest of getaway vehicles, but still.
I mean, dude! Isn't the creepy weird music alone enough to tip you off to the Potentially Horrific Consequences, people?! It's like the audio-equivalent of the make-out scene in horror movies. You just know that all that on-screen adolescent lust is going to lead to Something Bad Happening. Well, likewise, I'm convinced people--and their offspring--should stay away from icecream trucks. Like clowns, there's just something vaguely unsavory about them.
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Freedom To/Freedom For
If you're ever took a philosophy course in undergrad, then at some point, you probably had the "freedom to/freedom for" discussion.
This being the Fourth of July here in America, I thought it would be a good time to have another Jamie's Undergrad Days Flashback Corner.
I remember this discussion, in one of the so-called "fishbowl" Hamilton center classrooms (affectionately known as "Ham center") during a course called Freedom in Christian Thought, in which I Faked Reading A Lot of Philosophy, including Cornell West's Prophesy Deliverance! with the end result that I screamed and pointed yesterday when I saw him on public access t.v. giving a sermon at some church (those lucky church going bastards!) but wouldn't be able to tell you anything important about his works, except I think I probably should have tried reading them.
Any way, one of my beloved professors from that Great Era of Jamie's Pseudo-Intellectual Life always had these funny little anecdotes. Like once, he was talking about Kantian moral agency in terms of a us all being on a "space vehicle" which was about to blow up. The one about freedom to/for involved free agency involved in him "becoming a Harlem Globetrotter." It was very funny, and we all laughed, and I'm sure, learned something from it.
Thus endeth my token Fourth of July reflections on Freedom. (Yeah, that's it. I didn't say there was going to be a point to any of it, just like apparently no one in the government promised that there would be a point to the war.)
My day was spent at work, making time and a half, with only three patients. Talk about heaven. Okay, so cleaning up vomit, urine and--extra special!--liquid shit twice in one day (once while the patient was in bed lying in said mess) was not exactly the most celestial of nursing duties. But it was a good day, because I got time enough to spend with my patients. A nurse-patient of mine (who revealed she was a nurse only at the end of my shift) said she spent forty years as an ortho-neuro nurse. Forty years. I'm not even that old yet. Any way, she called me an "excellent nurse." I blushed madly with pride and thought, Isn't this the best job ever?! even as I carefully bundled away sheets full of liquid yellow poop and carried them to the laundry bin.
I always get all stressed about work, and there are days when I'm just so f-ing tired I could just about cry, but this job is just so much better than my old job that on a regular day I walk around in some kind of daze like, "Wow, I really like my job. It doesn't suck to be a nurse! That's like, soooo friggin' cool!" But then I go home, have a couple days off, and the PTSD incurred from my old job comes back, and I get all afraid of going to work and having something horrible happen. Then I go to the new job, and it's like having a come-to-Jesus moment at work almost every single day. I mean, dude, the charge nurse asked me if I needed help with a code brown. At Old Hospital, you could barely get a charge nurse to help you with a real code.
Soo--Whooo! Fourth of July! America may suck, but making time-and-a-half today with a stellar patient load didn't.
This being the Fourth of July here in America, I thought it would be a good time to have another Jamie's Undergrad Days Flashback Corner.
I remember this discussion, in one of the so-called "fishbowl" Hamilton center classrooms (affectionately known as "Ham center") during a course called Freedom in Christian Thought, in which I Faked Reading A Lot of Philosophy, including Cornell West's Prophesy Deliverance! with the end result that I screamed and pointed yesterday when I saw him on public access t.v. giving a sermon at some church (those lucky church going bastards!) but wouldn't be able to tell you anything important about his works, except I think I probably should have tried reading them.
Any way, one of my beloved professors from that Great Era of Jamie's Pseudo-Intellectual Life always had these funny little anecdotes. Like once, he was talking about Kantian moral agency in terms of a us all being on a "space vehicle" which was about to blow up. The one about freedom to/for involved free agency involved in him "becoming a Harlem Globetrotter." It was very funny, and we all laughed, and I'm sure, learned something from it.
Thus endeth my token Fourth of July reflections on Freedom. (Yeah, that's it. I didn't say there was going to be a point to any of it, just like apparently no one in the government promised that there would be a point to the war.)
My day was spent at work, making time and a half, with only three patients. Talk about heaven. Okay, so cleaning up vomit, urine and--extra special!--liquid shit twice in one day (once while the patient was in bed lying in said mess) was not exactly the most celestial of nursing duties. But it was a good day, because I got time enough to spend with my patients. A nurse-patient of mine (who revealed she was a nurse only at the end of my shift) said she spent forty years as an ortho-neuro nurse. Forty years. I'm not even that old yet. Any way, she called me an "excellent nurse." I blushed madly with pride and thought, Isn't this the best job ever?! even as I carefully bundled away sheets full of liquid yellow poop and carried them to the laundry bin.
I always get all stressed about work, and there are days when I'm just so f-ing tired I could just about cry, but this job is just so much better than my old job that on a regular day I walk around in some kind of daze like, "Wow, I really like my job. It doesn't suck to be a nurse! That's like, soooo friggin' cool!" But then I go home, have a couple days off, and the PTSD incurred from my old job comes back, and I get all afraid of going to work and having something horrible happen. Then I go to the new job, and it's like having a come-to-Jesus moment at work almost every single day. I mean, dude, the charge nurse asked me if I needed help with a code brown. At Old Hospital, you could barely get a charge nurse to help you with a real code.
Soo--Whooo! Fourth of July! America may suck, but making time-and-a-half today with a stellar patient load didn't.
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