Tag Archives: hospital

SO I AM EATING AGAIN

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I am eating again, consuming, filling a void, filling in time, keeping awake.  It is marvelous how good it feels.  The night is endless.

I’ve often wondered how healthy our profession is for us….nurses, the caretakers of bodies and souls.  How conscious are we?  We care for our patients, but do we care for ourselves?  Do we eat properly, get enough sleep and exercise?  Are we kind to each other and our love ones?  Do we have a life and friends outside of work?

Sometimes I am afraid to think about these things and answer truthfully.  I just live with this uneasiness that things are not quite right and somehow the world has left me behind.  Sometimes I am lonely for those days before I entered the world of hospital corridors, bedpan alleys, and twelve hour shifts.  It is disturbing that I feel relief and a sense of homecoming when I enter the underground parkade of RUH.  It is scary.  I am like a rat in a maze!

So these are my ramblings this morning after a twelve hour night shift.  I probably sound crazed and senseless.   It is good that I am in my sun room.  I am surrounded by windows.  I can look out and see the wintry sun peeking through the evergreen trees.  Are those snow flurries, or is it just my tired eyes?  I’m feeling a bit hungry so I’m going to eat….again.

SIGNS, SIGNS, EVERYWHERE SIGNS

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Do you realize that no matter where we are, we are surrounded by signs….man-made or in nature.  Quite often, we are oblivious to them, walking right by, paying no attention.  That’s how we are, always in a hurry to the next event, even though we have a million and one ways of saying we should stop and smell the coffee.

We rush on by  not wanting to be left behind, not wanting to miss something important.  But we miss the sign to paradise.

And it is so for myself, too.  I am also guilty of being blind to the many signs around me.  It is difficult sometimes to finally see and admit that a change is necessary.  And so we delay and delay and justify and justify….afraid to let go.

I am seeing so clearly now.  There are so many signs to show me the way…. that    work is not fulfilling me, that it is not healthy for me to continue at the present mode.  I see that in the patients that we have been getting in the last few weeks.  They are truck drivers even younger than myself.  They all present the similar symptoms – overweight, diabetic, poor circulatory systems…in short – heart attacks on wheels.  And there are good reasons for their conditions…long hours behind the wheel, eating to keep awake, eating at truck stops, etc., etc. They have to make a living.

All those things are applicable to my profession, too.  I am often too tired from 12 hour shifts, from night shifts.  I am often too stressed to do even necessary things or things for enjoyment.  At other times, I’m so used to be stressed and tired, I’m uncomfortable being rested and not stressed.  Try to understand that!  And lately, I’m coming home angry.  Sometimes I need a big fat example of what I could become to get the message.  There’s a life outside hospital corridors.  There’s a whole wide world out there.  There’s other ways of serving.  Thirty plus years are enough.

LIFE WITHOUT STRESS

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I have now come to the conclusion that life without stress is like asking for jello without gelatin.  It is not possible!  It is now day one post three 12-hour shifts of work on your not so typical hospital ward.  I am not complaining that the work is not satisfying.  I am just saying that it is very challenging to be in a caring profession where you are immersed in peoples.  You are in a cesspool of human interactions as well as being up to your elbows in human feces sometimes.  It is very well to start the day with good intentions and noble goals, but soon those fall with the patients or your first confrontations with your coworkers.  I’ve been told that I have high standards and though I try not to hold others to them, I do.  But…here I am, intact after three days of headache and gut burning angst.

I felt quite badly about myself during those three days.  I’m thinking I am such a terrible person to have all these negative feelings burning and churning inside.  But then this 92 year old patient told me that I’m very pleasant and so happy.  She enjoyed me very much.  She told me that every day of those three days.  I did thank her but I will have to learn not to discount myself by telling her that it was a facade.

Then her nephew came to visit her.  He recognized me as soon as I walked into the room.  He greeted me exuberantly.  I was very puzzled as I did not recognize him at all.  I told him he must have me mixed up with someone else.  No, he knew me.  He held up his finger and ask me how many do I see.  He was quite enjoying himself.  It didn’t work.  I still did not know him.  So he pointed straight ahead and ask me which is better, this or that.  Well, that failed too and I was starting to feel that one of us must be crazy!

He told me his name.  I said: No!  You don’t look like you.  You don’t sound like you!  We had such a good laugh and a good visit.  It was as if God knew that I needed something to lighten my day and sent him.  The nephew was my first ever optometrist when I came to live in the city.  I was his patient from age 19 to 42! And I left him because he could not fit me with contact lens anymore.  I had to show my appreciation by telling him that he always had good bedside manners.  That produced some good laughs from his relatives.  Well, he did!  He was very patient.  When he moved to a new office, I had a hard time finding it.  He gave me directions and told me he would wait outside so I could see where he was.  Well, I took too long and he had to go inside, but I did eventually find his new office.

I did not remind him of my last appointments when nothing went right!  I became frustrated and found tears trickling down my face after many fittings for my contact lenses. I have a high prescription and Asian eyes so my lids are tight making it difficult.  He was very kind, saying that we cannot continue our session with tears.  He would cancel his other appointments the next day and give me the whole afternoon.  How many optometrists would do that?

I did have to part company eventually but I could obviously see that I had left a good impression with him.  And I’m thinking that I am not a bad person…..not as bad as I have been thinking and feeling about myself anyways.  I am all talked out now.  The burning in my stomach is gone.  I am rested and at ease.  Sometimes you need a little stress so you can appreciate the jello.  Raindrops are falling gently on the roof of  this special private space.  Life is good.