guilty as charged

My husband tells me, "You haven't blogged in, like, forever."


Ohhhhh.


Where do I start?


Well, I can tell you that I am an RN on my own. I started back on the night shift Thursday night, and though the following three shifts were supposed to be my last with my preceptor, I got a call Friday afternoon from the charge nurse:

"We had two RNs call out sick tonight. You think you can handle a full patient load on your own?"

me: "Well, I..."

"Fantastic! I'll give you your own assignment. Thanks SO much! See you tonight!"

(click)

Hmmmm. Well, it turned out just fine. Interesting, but fine.

One of my patients was an elderly lady from Jamaica, a feisty thing who spat out incomprehensible phrases in patois any time I had to come into the room. I guess I can't disagree with her: the poor lady was on neuro checks every hour, which meant that every hour, I was in her room, asking her what the date was, did she know where she was, etc. This might have been annoying, at best, during the day... but in the middle of the night, the last thing you want to do is be woken out of sleep and repeat for the umpteenth time, "yes, it's 2008" to anyone. At around 3am, I asked her if she knew where she was, and she just glared at me, hissed, and muttered something in a language unknown. I think a pretty safe translation would have been "Get. Bent."

Another patient was a young lady who had a pretty serious spinal injury and a very protective mother. My patient was in and out of sleep, and the mother only spoke Spanish. I ask my patient if she is having any pain, and no sooner does she start to mumble "mmpfff" than her mother starts rattling away in Spanish, wildly gesturing and making pathetic faces at me. I don't know what to make of it, so I find myself just sort of nodding at her and saying "okay, okay" without a single clue. Later, one of my coworkers (a Spanish-speaker) tells me that mom is not happy with me: apparently I am refusing to speak in Spanish to her. I think she was under the impression that my dark hair and the poor lighting in the room qualified me as Hispanic. How do you say, "white as a Florida cracker" in Spanish?

Overall, it was still a successful if not entertaining three nights. Normally, I can sleep just about any time of day, but for whatever reason - nerves, anticipation, or whatever - I hardly slept in the days in between my shifts. Sunday morning, I get off my last shift, change clothes, put on makeup like spackle to hide the dark circles under my eyes, and go to church. (Side note: for those of you who were there, getting to play Aerosmith at the end of the service made my whole weekend!) I made it through two services, even sang a solo without falling asleep, and then drove home at 1pm and collapsed. I woke up just long enough to eat a South Beach microwave pizza around 8pm, then fell back asleep and woke up at 10am this morning. I think I was tired.

I'm enjoying my day off, and I finally got the motivation to blog instead of lurking on everyone else's. I won't stay away so long this time...