resolutions...

i wanted to post today on the new year, where i see myself going, and how
i'm going to get there. but first i'm going to complain for a second. one
of my resolutions, always, is to be a less negative person. let things roll
off my back, focus on the positive, and stop complaining so much to other
people. it always works, too, for about 30 seconds. so now i'm thinking
that maybe if i complain on my blog (aka to the 2-3 people who occasionally
check it--thanks friends) i'll get it off my chest. call it resolution #1:
write it, don't whine it.
i moved in october into a new apartment with two friends from church. i was
excited about our new apartment, first and foremost (i get my own bathroom,
and a walk-in closet), but also about starting a new apartment with these
two friends. we had been great at communicating with each other in our
friendship, we talked about our ideas for an apartment, the place was brand
new, untouched, we could decorate and bake and throw parties and have game
nights...
right. so what i have realized during these past three months is that what
i really want is to live alone. i like having roommates, occasionally, but
it's not worth all the annoying things i don't like about having roommates.
like how the brita is not always full enough for both my morning coffee and
a cup of water. and how sometimes when i get home at 1:30 on a trash night
(after working) the dishwasher is still full of the clean dishes that i
washed in the morning, and the trash is still heaping and needing to be
taken out, even though someone has been home all night.
today is my third in a string of days off. i have to go back to work
tomorrow. i dragged myself out of bed earlier than i had the past two days
in an effort to be productive, only to find out that a roommate had called
in sick. still, i brought my magazine and book to the living room to read.
she got up, came into the living room, and proceded to start talking about
the weather, the dvd she just bought, the tv show that was on... which was
not so different from last night when i was reading and she read aloud her
catalog to me. i decided to make breakfast, headed to the kitchen, and
started sauteeing mushrooms. shortly, she came into our tiny kitchen to
start making her breakfast. we're doing the dance, moving back and forth
every couple of seconds to avoid crashing into each other with hot plates,
when i'm plating my breakfast and she reaches directly across from me to use
the microwave. i step back, saying "ok, no problem, i'll wait." at which
point she (and this was the moment i decided to write a blog post about it)
stops what she is doing and starts picking lint off her sweatshirt. she is
blocking half of my bagel and sauteed mushrooms to pick the lint off her
sweatshirt.
ok, so maybe so far this post seems cruel, out of character, out of line,
and against everything that i believe about blogging. keep in mind, though,
that she has no idea i have a blog. what it mostly represents is what i
said at the top. i no longer like living with roommates. all of the little
nuances wouldn't annoy me if i wanted to share space with a roommate, but as
it turns out, i don't. so for now, i might complain to my blog every once
in a while, just to spare my friends the boredom of hearing yet another "and
then she did..." story.
on to new years. i am currently brainstorming how i can make my current
schedule work in the way it is supposed to. that is, i only work 3 days a
week. but my job is so crazy, so busy, so unbelievably exhausting that i
usually need a day to recover after working a couple of days in a row. by
the time i have taken that day, the next day i usually sleep in too. then i
get some stuff done on the third day, and it's back to work again. i feel
like all i do is work, sleep, and sit catatonically watching tv or reading.
but i have plans, ideas, to do lists. i have a gym membership, groceries to
buy, and above that, i want to pursue something. i want to have a passion
outside my job--one of the millions of things i have always talked about
learning. i think if i have scheduled things on my days off, it might get
me out of bed sooner and maybe set the tone for the day. unfortunately,
before i can drop money on anything significant, i have to get my debt under
control. in order, that means paying off my mom, my bed, credit card #1,
and credit card #3. student loans i can deal with. i'm hoping my tax
return this year helps. for now, i'm going to go to the grocery store--one
of the perks of my roommate being home is it helps me motivate to leave the
house.

everyone's a little bit racist...

sometimes...right? The other day I went to the bank to get some cash. A
Black guy standing in the vestibule opened the door for me. I said thank
you, then immediately started thinking about whether or not I had change for
him, and then feeling guilty and at the same time dreading the end of my
transaction when he would ask me for change and I would have to apologize
and say I didn't have any. The guy at the left atm finished his withdrawal,
and I started forward to use it. So did the man who opened the door for me,
because he wasn't one of the people who hang out in banks opening doors for
people in exchange for money, but rather just a guy in line for the atm.
Damn. I hate that I made that assumption.
On a drastically different note, I had a board games night with friends the
other night, didn't win a single game, and still had fun. So at least I am
growing in some areas.
I (much like always) have more to say, but I'm tired and busy. I'm going to
try to put something else up tomorrow, which may outline how I plan to
structure my time to involve more posting. Hopefully it will work out.

snowflakes, or anthrax?

so, it's been warm here for a while, and then suddenly this week the weather
turned to freezing. i was walking to the gym yesterday morning (yes, i've
returned to the gym--hired a personal trainer and all) and there were a few
flurries coming down from the only slightly cloudy sky. i should qualify my
next thought with: i was nearly drunk tired. i had dragged myself out of
bed after three days on to go meet with my new personal trainer. had i not
had an appointment with her i could have slept for hours more. i wouldn't
have trusted myself behind the wheel, or doing anything that required any
mental skill. anyhow, as i noticed the flurries, i thought "hmm...that's
beautiful. but i wasn't really expecting flurries...maybe it's ash. or
anthrax spores. did i really just think that? well (on the next block now)
there are still flurries over here, so it must be snow...it just seems weird
to be flurrying..hmm..." so there you have it, direct from the mind of one
overly exhausted, apparently paranoid, emergency department nurse.

just a job...

this weekend i worked three days in a row. i also agreed to go in two hours
early on my last day because they were anticipating being severely short
staffed. not the end of the world, but by midnight on sunday, i was dead
tired. there was this guy i had been working with for most of the night who
required a lot of attention. the oxygen saturation of his blood without any
supplemental oxygen was pretty low, so they had him on a machine that forced
air into his lungs every time he breathed in. pretty fancy stuff. anyhow,
he was hungry, so i would let him take it off for a few minutes at a time to
eat, and wipe off the dried spit around his mouth at the same time. he told
me i was one of the "nice nurses," when it was taking a long time to get him
a bed on one of the units (due to a clerical error) we joked that he just
wanted to stay downstairs with us. when his iv came out, i found him a
nurse who was better at iv's than me so he wouldn't have to be stuck more
than once. at the end of the night, i went over to the other side of the
emergency department to wash my hands and find the head nurse to see who my
relief was going to be. as i was walking out, i said "i'll be right back."
in my exhaustion, as soon as i found the head nurse, i found the guy who was
relieving me, said goodnight, and left. when i was gone, i remembered that
i never said goodbye. if i've spent a lot of time with a patient, i usually
like to wish them well, either when i leave or when they go up to the floor.
i felt horrible. not because i think that i held any great place in this
person's life, but because i feel like when i stop saying hello and goodbye
to patients, i start dehumanizing them. "they" collectively become my job,
not people who are having a rough day, are not well, and need help. it's
just not the kind of nurse i want to be. i think i've figured out while
working at this hospital that i am more interested in public health and
policy than in bedside nursing, but at the same time i certainly don't want
to treat this like a stepping stone. we'll see...

sweet...

i went back to work today after having 6 days off. it was, oddly, good to
be back. i loved having time off, but at the same time i like to fill my
days with something. when i am not working i am often overwhelmingly
tempted by "drama in the daytime" on tnt, and the gilmore girls on abc
family. i love that stuff.
anyhow, one of the aspects of working in my emergency department is that we
are often crazy busy. the smart, older doctors have mostly figured out that
if they hand us orders, call us their "favorite nurse" and tell us a little
about the patient it is far more likely that the medications will be given
sooner, the iv will be placed stat, and the labs sent right away. one of
our attendings has been there for more than 30 years, and i can never turn
him down. i don't know how anyone can--he just cares that much. anyhow, he
pretty much has me in the palm of his hand, and as long as i stay aware of
that i'm comfortable with it. tonight, i was going to call up to one of the
units and give report on the patient he had been working with all day. i
stopped him to ask him if it was ok to transport her without oxygen. before
i could ask, he stopped me with "i have been off since 8:00 pm and i'm still
here." basically, don't talk to me. then (i think he felt bad) he asked
what my question was. realizing it was something simple, he fell over
himself for the next 10 minutes apologizing, telling me that i help him a
lot, and i can always ask him things like that, and making sure that i knew
that he didn't mean i shouldn't ask him things. it was actually really
sweet. i've known for a while that some doctors have me wrapped around
their little fingers, but it's nice to get a little recognition back and an
effort on their part to make my life a easier.
on that note i am sufficiently wound down, and i am going to go to sleep so
i can get up and go to work tomorrow.

tis the season...

to be disappointed. every year my friends and i have a holiday party. we
started it when most of us were in college, when we couldn't bear the
thought of the holidays without one another. i always made the turkey,
someone else was responsible for mashed potatoes, broccoli casserole,
stuffing, cranberry sauce, and dessert. some years we got fancy, some years
we didn't. it evolved over the years from an event with the people we saw
frequently to the one time we all got together every year. this year, for
the first time in 7ish years, we aren't doing it. i work two weekends out
of every month, and there is no time when enough of the key players can make
it that i also have off. i was excited, too, becuase i was to be hosting. i
am more upset, though, because of two things. one, it took so long to find
a date because my job held on to our december schedules until last friday
(the schedule started on sunday). that's obnoxious. two, when i finally
knew that i could do it, and i sent out the e-mail to everyone who usually
comes, only two people responded. i understand that people are busy, and i
totally get that this is late notice. i'm more upset about the job schedule
thing. it's just that my roommates and i were also looking for a day to do
a housewarming, and since everything was so delayed (first my schedule, then
peoples' response) the one day that we could have done it is no longer a
possibility, so we are going to have to transfer it to january.
the moral of this long "i want to have a party!" rant is that it's hard to
work weekends and maintain a life. i feel lonely. i do stuff on my days
off, but i miss my friends. i love working only three days a week, but i
have a hard time motivating myself on the other days. and on the days that
i work, i only work. i am too exhausted to do anything else.
this was long and whiny. i might write more about work and positive things
tomorrow.

wow...it's been a long time

and i can barely prop my eyes open with toothpicks, but i had to do
something to jump over the threshold of blogging and not blogging. i wonder
if threshold is supposed to have two h's. oh well...sorry to my 2-3 friends
who used to occasionally check my blog and who i'm sure have long since
forgotten the address. it got crazy busy there.
i have many, many, many things i want to write about, including my job, my
new apartment, my new twenty year plan, and my thoughts on cockroaches in
hospital emergency room's (i guess in new york, it comes with the territory)
but right now i have to go to sleep. 37 hours in 3 days is no joke. i know
people do it all the time, but i am so, so not used to it. but i really,
truly, am going to return to the blogging. i can't wait. maybe tomorrow.

Represent

Today we signed our papers to be represented by a union. There was a video,
and our union rep gave us a bunch of information, but people were talking
during the video and she was talking while I was filling out
papers--unfortunately, I don't multitask well. I think I should feel
excited to be part of the long tradition of labor organization and
collective bargaining, but currently I'm just annoyed that they take $37 out
of every paycheck and I have to go through this huge hassle to get
reimbursed for my dentist visits.
I have been insanely, crazily, unspeakably tired lately. I have no idea
what is causing it. I feel like I am seeing things through a veil, like I
have earplugs in, or like I am always slightly drunk. I should clarify that
this is not when I am actually in the clinical area, but when I am at home,
on the train, in the classroom, and pretty much anywhere that is not my
hospital's emergency room. I have no idea what is causing this, but if I
had to guess I'd say probably mono. Or I am just spending all of my alert
time on the floor. Either way I'd like a little more energy, please. I've
started eating better. At some point I'd like to exercise again, but
currently I am too tired.
I found an apartment. I love it, mostly, but I am also sort of convinced
that it sucks and I might hate it. I hope the former is the truer
sentiment. I have been fantasizing about vases, flowers, plants, and
candles. I love to decorate. Our landlord is a little crazy and doesn't
want us to put anything up on the walls except for with these weird hanging
kits, but I kind of don't mind paying for any damages. I want my house to
be pretty.
It's almost the season of the many new years, so I've been thinking about
resolutions. Last year I worked on myself mentally, and I think I've gotten
to a pretty stable, happy state. This year, with money, I think I am going
to work on taking care of myself better. That is, when I have paid back
some people, and I have some money in the bank, I'd like to get a massage, a
personal trainer, some accupuncture, and maybe take a pottery class. Maybe
if I had more restorative activities, I wouldn't be so tired.
Alright, I think I have stayed awake long enough and can go to sleep without
waking up every hour on the hour throughout the night.