Saturday, May 24, 2014

Contrary to how I might sound here,

I am rarely in a mood to authentically injure somebody.

Yesterday was different.

We've had staffing changes and new responsibilities added and a whole bunch of other bidness I won't go into; suffice to say that things have been tense and difficult for the last couple of weeks.

It was 1430. I'd spent three hours trying to keep an insufficiently-sedated patient from crawling out of an MRI tube, then gotten gut-punched. People on ventilators, even if they're sedated, can come up with a surprising amount of will and strength and coordination.

I wanted a cup of coffee. Correction: I was dying for a cup of coffee. The floor manager had recently cleaned out our station, preparatory to The Great And Terrible Joint Commission coming for a visit. I figured, since I keep my coffee pods in a cabinet that's designated for personal effects, that they wouldn't go anywhere.

Our floor manager is great. She's skilled, hard-working, empathetic, and determined. We're very lucky to have her. I admire her a lot.

But she moved my coffee. I opened up the cabinet, saw that it was gleaming, clean, and empty, and immediately said, "I will shank the bitch who moved my coffee."

After looking for the coffee pods for fifteen minutes, I gave up and had a cup of the elderly, stewed stuff in the breakroom. (Is there some physical law that prevents breakroom coffee from ever being fresh?)

Note to everybody, everywhere: You don't just move a woman's coffee without warning. Doing so might invoke disciplinary action, up to and including termination. With extreme, undercaffeinated prejudice.

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Oh, hai.

It's been. . .a month? Six weeks? Seven weeks?

God, who knows. All I know these days is getting up in the dark, working under artificial lights, going home in the dark, and praying for the sweet, sweet release of death.

Not really. But close.

In the time since I last caught up with you guys, I have survived The Annual Music Festival That Makes My Commute Home Even More Unpleasant, three more checkups with various CANSUH doctors (all clear!), and a staffing reduction.

Because when you win awards and have fantastic patient outcomes and get featured in advertising campaigns, with pictures and everything, that's how you're rewarded: with staffing cuts.

And it's rained a couple of times, which is kind of a big deal, because our county usually breaks up and dissipates large thunderstorms. I think it's a function of having so much hot air here every couple of years, when the Legislature is in session.

But anyway, yeah: Manglement decided that we were just too damned efficient and fantastic, and so cut our staffing by a third. One of our nurses is out taking care of an aging/sick/dying parent, so that meant that I worked, like, all the time. I barely had time to eat something that wasn't fast food, let alone write.

It's frustrating to be managed by a person who has no critical-care experience. It's equally frustrating to be managed by somebody who hasn't laid paws on a patient in, oh, at least fifteen years--and it's worst of all when those two people are combined into one. I feel sort of like a character from "Savage Chickens"--there's this robot with a board with a nail sticking out of it who comes around whenever somebody Important is about to tour the facility, but otherwise never shows up.

So we're all trying to focus on the positive. Two of our nurses recently had babies, which is always nice if you like babies, and I am, so far, not going to have to have more surgery to chop malignancies out of my head. Boyfiend's foot-drop has completely resolved. The cats and dog are making a habit of cuddling together, a la A Peaceable Kingdom. Nobody's tried to punch me lately. (Well, they tried, but they didn't connect. Much.)

I have a couple good stories to tell. I also have some eyebrows to pluck. You can tell, by looking at my eyebrow game, which takes priority today. Tonight, I will be dining on white wine and scrambled eggs and biscuits with sausage gravy, oh fuck yeah.