Middle Aged Man and Sister of Asystole Nurse

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

You know, with Mike Myers, and the jingle:

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

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

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

And then.

Then:

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah, he's that guy.

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

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

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

And this was the image:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

dumber and "dumberest"

Orientation, day two, was today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

vocabulary, people.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The mind spins madly.

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

for the love of dog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh wait, I am already.

and your little dog(s) too!

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

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

Can I suggest barbituates for the dogs?

Or a lethal dose of propofal?

glass half empty

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

I'm not in a very good mood today.

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

seen and not heard

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

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

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

no doubt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Caveat:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

dog days

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

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

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

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

concept of anxiety

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

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

So much for new news.

one fine day

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

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

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

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

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

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

cogito ergo sum

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

You know what?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2) Bye, bye Miss American Geekling

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

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

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

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

good night, and good luck.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

burnt by the sun

So. I was offered, tenatively, a job at Dream Hospital in Virginia, starting in April. CCU (coronary care unit) internship, which means more to learn, and more professional juju.

On the other hand, I was also offered a 41/hr travel job, but it's nights, and I don't know if I can do nights again. And I don't know if I want to gamble with a travel assignment that might end up as crappy as this one.
And, I'm really burnt out on nursing right now. So burnt out, I'm thinking of becoming a Cracker Barrel waitress (it's a service industry job without the unstable, coding people!) or a beer tub girl.

My fantasy job would be to blog for a living, and knit blankets for homeless orphans. And torture useless CEOs by making them lick the hospital floors in penance for screwing over their nurses so richly.

Maybe something good will happen, like the Magic Fairy Job Angels will grant me three wishes, and I'll be able to make money napping, or browsing the internet for more beer tub girl craigslist ads.

wild strawberries

Did any one else know that film director Ingmar Bergman was married five times, and had nine "recognized" or "acknowledged" children?

This makes me wonder about other, obscure Bergman progeny (would it be impolite to call them Bergman bastards?) floating around out there, but I digress.

My job lately has sucked ass. A lot of medical interventions smacking of, "Suddenly, nothing happened!" to quote Colin Hayes' tongue-in-cheek folksy, soulful piece, "Waiting for My Real Life to Begin." Just a lot of evil care, ranging from dastardly doltishness, eg of the Colonel Klink variety, to downright menacing madness, eg of the Colonel Kurtz variety ("The horror. The horror.")

The good news is Other Things in my life haven't sucked ass, and have actually been extremely pleasant and happy. Like this weekend, Someone gave me a big bouquet of flowers and freshly picked strawberries, apparently Just Because. And Someone walked Piper on a dog-friendly beach, apparently also Just Because.

Really, I couldn't ask for a nicer Someone, or a nicer weekend.

a jamie in winter

I wish humans would have evolved to hibernate (or estivate, depending on the climate. I'm an equal opportunity evolutionist that way).

Because sometimes, I think I need to hibernate. Just roll up in a little comfy ball in my bed, pull my down comforter over my head, sink my head into my feather pillow, and sleep for months and months.

I think this would be a good idea primarily because it would drastically cut down on the mental anguish and energy it takes to be me, and even I only got about four months of "not-thinking" a year, that would be one-third less psychic pain than I'm dealing with now!

Well, it's a thought.

nothing, honey.

Sometimes at work, I have moments with patients that absolutely humble me. They're these small, finite moments, almost inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, and the things I'm doing are usually just small favors, not big, life-and-death situations--washing someone's hair, or brushing someone's teeth for them.

This week, I was tucking a little old lady into bed--she was forgetful and kept trying to get up--and she was just as cute as a bug in a rug; a southern lady whose family hailed from Kentucky.

As I was pulling the covers over her, she suddenly sat up, and gave me a hug and kiss on the cheek and whispered in my ear, "Thank you so much; you are so kind and nice to me!"

I hate--and I mean truly hate--a lot of things about my job, but every once in awhile you receive gratitude from a patient that is so genuine it's almost heartbreaking.

Another gem: I had another patient this week, also elderly, who was a retired veterinarian. He was very chatty one particular night, and just kept talking and talking; about his wife, about his grandkids, about Wisconsin. He couldn't stop talking, it seemed.

I had to get some medication for him, so I said, "I'll be right back, honey."

Now, you have to understand, I call all my patients honey. Partially, it's because I can't remember their names at the time, because I'm too busy thinking of five things that need to be done simultaneously for five other patients. I don't mean anything offensive about it; it's kind of like being a waitress at the diner. Everybody's honey.

He said, "What did you just call me?"

I thought, Oh shit. Here we go. He's gonna get all pissed I didn't call him Mr. So-and-So.

I stammered, "Oh. I'm sorry. I don't mean anything by it; I call everybody honey. It's just... well, you know..."

He smiled, took my hand, squeezed it tightly and kissed it, then looked up at me and said in all sincerity, "Thank you so much for that; it's been so long since someone called me 'honey'."

This profession has such a curious way of pervading your soul--the good, and the bad. And it's an ironic, unexpected gift to find out what matters the most to people isn't that we caught a heart attack before it could get any worse or double and triple checked their orders; half the time, the life-saving things nurses do, no matter how critical to the patient's well being--such as catching a fatal med error before it gets to the patient or arguing with the attending to get appropriate orders--are completely irrelevant to their perception of the care that's being given.

And so we go in expecting people, if they thank us at all, will thank us for saving their lives, when in fact what they end up most grateful for isn't the medicine, or the science, it's simply making the effort to connect on a human level.

Patients probably have no idea how grateful and humbled we are by their gestures of gratitude.

I walk a thin line between love and hate every day I'm on the job. Eighty percent of the time I'm working with end-stage population, I lean towards getting the hell out of acute care nursing all together, but when a patient says thank you, and means it, well, crap, just pushes me right back over that line towards the bedside again.

I've come to believe a sincere "thank you" is a patient's way of telling me she thinks I belong at the bedside, even when I think I don't.

if it feels good... do it.

I'm sure everybody's done something completely gratuitous in their lives. Something you did not because you had to, but because you wanted to, and something, moreover, that didn't need to be done again.

This morning, I had two bagels, sesame, toasted just right: light brown. Crispy, with the crunchy goodness of sesame seeds, and slathered with artery-hardening margarine.

I didn't need two bagels. I just wanted two bagels. And I thought, "Why not? You never know when you might eat your last bagel."

The hell with my waistline, to hell with high cholesterol levels, transfats and heart disease. Nobody ever dies wishing they'd eaten one less bagel, or put less multi-colored sprinkles on a third scoop of icecream, or had one less afternoon of crazy-good sex, do they?

And, a corollary:

While there may be such a thing as "too much of a good thing," I'm convinced there's never too much happiness in the world.

Happiness is self-limiting, for one thing. Start to feel happy about one thing, and something else goes haywire. It's like, an unwritten law of the universe.

Also, I've never understood why people are always yammering on about the "mystery of life" and "mystery of love," but not the mystery of happiness.

Happiness, whatever else may be said about it, is mysterious. It works in subtle, almost magical ways at times. It isn't necessarily the same thing joy, or love, or hope... although it may be some of those things, some of the time. Happiness is a funny little gnome, really. If you look at it directly, it seems to disappear, and if you look at it indirectly, it always seems just a little further to your left--or right--than you expected. And when you try to explain happiness to someone else, they don't really understand what you're talking about, just the way I suspect no two people see color the same way.

But you know it when you feel it.

And if eating two bagels at five thirty in the morning is a good thing that makes you happy--I say, do it. After all, mysteries are rarely that easy to catch and solve, especially at dawn, when you're still tired and need to walk the dog.

no ordinary life.

Well, it's storming outside, in a freakish, icky way that makes me wish I didn't have to battle traffic--and geriatric drivers who, even in the most ideal of driving conditions, can't drive worth shit--to get to work tonight. It freaks the dog out--he's hated thunderstorms for awhile now--

I took the night off of work last night. For one, I haven't slept properly in two months, and I really haven't slept properly in about two weeks. I finally slept all day yesterday and last night, and woke up at 6 a.m. feeling mildly refreshed, and amused I wasn't going to bed at the time most people are getting up and getting ready for work.

It's been tougher than usual to be me lately--I blame a lot of it on sleep deprivation-burn out cycle. It's brutal! All I really want to do is get to the end of this assignment, take a couple of weeks off, sleep during the night and be awake during the day like my body and that of other diurnal creatures was meant to function, and get some perspective on what it means to be happy, and not hate yourself because you're so damned tired you can barely function.

And part of me wants to get done with this exercise in hell so I can have some time to reevaluate, rethink, and process a couple of issues that have come up in the past couple of months: like where I want to go with nursing, and if I really want to stay at the bedside forever. If the answer is no, do I really have enough stamina and money to go back to school? How long can I hang out at the bedside before I totally burn out on the system? How do I prevent myself from burning out?

Ideally, I'd work part time, or even per diem. I could be a saner, happier person if I was only committed to a couple days a week, or even three eight hour shifts. These twelve hour shifts are just too much for me, and for every brutal, back-breaking shift I encounter, I need a couple of days off just to get out of that stressed out, manic headspace.

After awhile, you start getting traumatized by even thinking about putting up with more bullshit at work; you start thinking, "Dude! I can't go to work and have another fucking shift like the one I just had, or I'm gonna lose it!" You're already physically and emotionally tired, and just the thought of going in, and having to put up with that bullshit one more day makes you want to pack it all in. When I get like that, I know I need a break.

It's not the kind of job where you can go in and be half-assed. Even if you are doing a half-assed job, it's not good for anybody. And even if you don't want to go in and be Super Nurse like usual, you know deep down inside that if you have a real, true emergency--or even five fakey, bullshit situations--that you can't just sit there and ignore it. You gotta get off your ass and deal with it.

And there are definitely some days when I wake up and think, "I can't be that person. I can't be a good nurse today." There are some days I wake up and think, "I've got to sleep, I've got to eat, and just today, I've got to have one day where I don't have to be The Nurse, or Your Nurse, or Anybody's Nurse. I have to take care of myself, today."

The problem is, I don't take care of myself every day. I can't. It's just too hard, and too much some days. So I don't sleep, or I don't eat properly, because I'm too stressed out, and so tired the thought of food nauseates me. I don't exercise, because I'm just too damn ass-dragging exhausted. But I still drag myself into work, and if I don't, I feel guilty, and worry about the money.

The sad thing is, no one thinks they're going to end up this way--work weary, beleaguered, wishing they had done something else with their life.

We all want to believe we are going to be happy, and have satisfying, fulfilling careers.

Sometimes you don't get everything. Actually, most of the time, you don't get everything, and most of what you do get is crap. But then there's that one thing that can make you feel human and real and capable of feeling again.

We spend most of our lives looking for that one thing, and the sad thing is, most of us haven't any idea what that one thing might be until it's far too late.

crispy critters

I know I'm sounding horribly tiresome, but I'm so burnt out on work, and not sleeping at night! This is the fourth night in a row I haven't gotten sleep at all, and the last two days, I've had off of work. I go back to work in about twelve hours, and I just don't know how I'm gonna make it.

I wish I had a better job, and I even went so far as applying for ICU positions at That One Good Hospital From Last Summer, where they had real evidence based medicine and practice, rather than, "Huh, it seems the attending flushed his pager down the toilet, so I can't give you anything for any of your emergent cardiac issues, anxiety attacks, profuse bleeding through a new dialysis port, dementia, or blinding pain!"

As I said to several of my nurse friends: it's hard to be a nurse who's better at being a nurse than the doctor is at being a doctor. Doctors should, in some respects, be better practitioners--they should be the people nurses trust to get appropriate and timely interventions ordered. There is rarely a time I call a doctor any more that I don't anticipate an order set, and unfortuately, at this particular institution, there is rarely a time I get exactly what it is I think the patient needs.

This isn't me being "too big for my professional britches." Believe me, I ask questions all the time of my colleagues. This is a case of doctors practicing indifferent, harmful medicine, and it scares the shit out of me, because that could well be me lying in the bed, close to death, without appropriate pain medicine, or whatever.

Sometimes I wish I did something less morally questionable with my life, and I know I need to get a job a hospital that is more in line with my own professional ideals and ethical standards.

I personally would think it less morally bankrupt, and a lot more dignified, if I worked at the local strip club as a cocktail waitress. I'd probably make more money, for significantly less stress and moral trauma. And I already get goosed on the ass by demented old men--what's the difference?

As one of my nurse friends said, "Who cares if we're selling our asses out on the street, we're all getting fucked [in the hospital] any way!"

(And we don't mean fucked in a pleasant, recreational way, either.)