blurring the edges

so, this has been me lately, yes?

just a bit of a blur. sunday, a friend was taking pictures, and i was a blur in every one of them. remember that silly-ass movie the ring? where people died after watching this one tape? there was a bit about how, the people that were marked to die, were blurry in pictures. or their faces were melt-y. whatever. i haven’t seen any weird tapes. the only movie i saw was cloverfield. i think i’m okay.

but dude… what do you think happened to marlena? heh. cecil’s totally going to hate me.

and as an aside… is anyone fidgety about what the happening will be about? i mean, i have knitting to distract me, and i don’t know how the rest of you cope. but i kinda like night’s movies.

anyway.

i don’t really talk about my job. sure, i talk about the stabbing, which is fun and entertaining. i mean that, which will possibly freak some people out. and there’s weird stuff afoot in terms of what i’ll be doing at the end of clinicals. but since it’s all a grey area, i choose not to discuss it.

but the stabbing is not my job just yet. as i explained to someone yesterday, i work in the lab for free. i get paid in knowledge. there was a bit of eye-rolling, but i’m sure y’all knew that.

there are things i deal with, on a day-to-day basis, that i don’t think you fine folks need to hear about. sure, there are some crazy-ass moments. like, when a bunch of alarms went off all at once, and it took us forever to quiet things down? at the end of that, i grabbed a newspaper and said, “okay, who am i right now?” i then tucked the paper under my arm, turned toward the restrooms, looked over my shoulder and said in my best husky voice, “i’ll be right back. gotta go drop the kids off at the pool.” everyone else erupted in laughter, because this guy we used to work with, joe, said that all the time. which is totally a guy thing, by the way. girls say they’re going to the restroom, and girls that work in healthcare can be creative in alerting their co-workers they are heading off to use the facilities (‘dude, my back teeth are floatin’. i’ll be back.’). but we, in general never annouce our, er, intentions, the way guys do.

but then, our jobs are all about poo and pee. so maybe there’s a need-to-know that i’m not aware of on a conscious level.

one thing i won’t miss will be suppositories. when i worked in long-term care, my patients used to call them ’silver bullets’, because they came in this foil packaging. they would casually say to one another, oh, i’ll be riding the silver bullet tonight. which… didn’t that used to be a beer commercial? it’s funny, in a weird way.

although, i will not be getting away from colons, apparently. last week i was in specimen processing (which was absolutely fascinating in a dorky kind of way), and i was called to the operating rooms to collect. i thought they wanted me to draw some blood, and i was a little confused. even more so when the nurse comes out of surgery with a plastic container, and hands it to me. the container was labeled ‘colon’.

i was holding someone’s ass in a bucket.

i also am willing to bet there will be fewer body bags in my new area of medical expertise. i mean, yes, there will be body bags. i have already assisted an orderly in getting a former patient into a bag. which, to tell the truth, doesn’t freak me out anymore. i don’t know if this means i’ve developed a callus over that part of my psyche or what. but, i think once you’ve worked in hospice, and watched someone’s descent into death a couple of times, you either learn to deal or you change jobs. i learned to deal and got a job at a hospital.

it’s also a little startling – as long as i’m talking about death – to provide someone’s care, and they’re suddenly more lucid than normal. the first time this happened, i didn’t really understand. but then the next day, that patient was gone. he had died a little while after i left. this is really only true for terminal patients; if you’re dealing with people that have dementia, they could think you’re their child. but now, when i see the eyes open, or light up, and the hands reach out, i don’t back away. some people do, which makes me want to slap them. i take their hands. i look in their eyes. i smile, and sometimes i ask them questions. yes? what do you see? that sort of thing. it’s not always the end, but… usually it is.

i’ve always thought i was in the right place, in terms of what i do for a living. i have… you know, i don’t even know what it is. i wouldn’t say i have empathy, because that’s not quite it. or sympathy, which will get you sucked into the swamp of sadness if you carry every emotion home with you. it’s something about my face and my personality. something about me makes people want to talk to me. this is great when i have little kids that were just in car wrecks, and i have to ask them where it hurts, and they just want mommy. this is also great when i have an elderly man who doesn’t understand what’s going on or why such-and-such is happening, and i need to know how many of this pill he swallowed.

it’s also pretty helpful when someone is scared of needles, and i ask them about the book i saw them reading. or the child’s picture in their wallet when they took out their insurance card.

i don’t really have a point. but it’s taken me a long time to realize that this is where i’m supposed to be. and there will always be opportunities for me to laugh at myself.

and deal with asses.

thanks for stopping by.