Nursing Struggles

Cold hot chocolate aka chocolate milk

Cold coffee

My mom is also a nurse and she has both witnessed AND personally experienced bullying from her fellow nurses. My dad is a nurse as well and has had his own coworkers try to sabatoge him.

“One of the students in my school’s nursing program got kicked out because she was bullying her own patient.” Yeah, that’s the fucking issue right there. It’s not that they backstab each other, it’s that they abuse the patients and they do it constantly. It is not a rare occurrence and rarely are they even reprimanded for it let alone kicked out of a program.

Do you know how viscerally upsetting it is to have been subjected to years and years of ableist abuse from someone just to hear that they’re entering patient care? Do you know what it’s like to have a high school bully walk into your hospital room with a big fake smile on her face? I do.

My cousin used to “play” with me when she was 16 and I was newly diagnosed with POTS at 11 years old by triggering fainting episodes and then laughing about it. She is an RN now and at every holiday she shit talks her patients, often outright breaking HIPPA to do it. She calls them liars and exaggerators. She did it every year until we got disowned. I’m sure she still does. I used to have to leave early because I knew that if I had to endure one more second of it and I would rip her throat out.

The peers that mocked and abused me daily, calling me a faker and a liar for having an invisible disability, going into nursing is way more upsetting to me as a potential patient than them being catty with each other. It’s way more scary to me to have someone who never believed that I was ill in charge of my care than thinking about them fighting over a promotion does.

But there’s a world of difference between doing what you love for you, and doing what you love for a paycheck. 

I went to undergrad for graphic design and 3-D design–art and more art, I usually say–and I loved it. You know what I didn’t love? Trying to collect my fees from clients. Trying to meet unrealistic, over-simplified or over-specific briefs from people who didn’t know what they were talking about. Coming home, having worked creatively all day, with no creative juice left for the things I wanted to do.

You know what I would tell you instead? Do something that you can be interested in, with people you like.

You don’t have to love it. Loving your work can be a lot, and it often means you have to live in your job 24/7. Some people can do that. Not everyone can, or should.  But if you can find work that’s interesting enough that it doesn’t feel tedious, and people you can enjoy spending your 9-5 with, and you can make money, that’s great! It means you can do the things you love for you.

I’m in law school now. It’s interesting work, and difficult, and I like doing it. I like how complicated it gets, and I like the stories it tells. But I don’t come home and read law journals for fun. I come home, and I sculpt, and I draw, and I paint, and I read. I do these things for me.

I’ve tried, tried, tried and I’ve tried even more I’ve cried, cried, cried and I can’t recall what for I’ve pressed, I’ve pushed, I’ve yelled and begged in hope of some success But the inevitable fact is that it never will impress

I’ve no more fucks to give, my fucks have runneth dry, I’ve tried to go fuck shopping but there’s no fucks left to buy I’ve no more fucks to give, though more fucks I’ve tried to get, I’m over my fuck budget and I’m now in fucking debt

I strive, strive, strive to get everything done I’ve played by all the rules but I’ve very rarely won, I’ve smiled, I’ve charmed, I’ve wooed, I’ve laughed, alas to no avail I’ve run ‘round like a moron to unequivocally fail

I’ve no more fucks to give, my fuck fuse has just blown, I’ve been hunting for my fucks all day, but they’ve upped and fucked off home, I’ve no more fucks to give, my fuck rations are depleted, I’ve rallied my fuck army but it’s been fucking defeated!

The effort has just not been worth the time or the expense I’ve exhausted all my energy for minimal recompense The complete lack of acknowledgement has now begun to gall And I’ve come to realise that I don’t give a fuck at all!

I’ve no more fucks to give, my fucks have flown away, My fucks are now so fucked off, they’ve refused to fucking stay! I’ve no more fucks to give, my fucks have gone insane They’ve come back ‘round and passed me while they’re fucking off again!

I’ve no more fucks to give, my fucks have all dissolved, I’ve planned many projects but my fucks won’t be involved! I’ve no more fucks to give, my fucks have all been spent, They’ve fucked off from the building and I don’t know where they went!

Caricatures of the Spectre of Influenza

So I put off getting my flu shot in 2018…

Y’know, I ain’t around these parts too much anymore (Yahoo can go huff a dong), but I just wanted to tell y’all my tale of the 2018/2019 holiday season…

December 17-20: Got the flu (later confirmed to be one of the strains protected by this season’s vaccine). Felt shite, took cold meds, still felt shite but not so much that I could justify not starting the Q1 spreadsheets at work.

Dec 21: Knew the crackles in my lungs were pneumonia. Couldn’t keep my blood oxygen above 90%. Went to the ER that night. They wanted to send me home. I said “I know something is wrong, I would be very uncomfortable going home.” They managed to find a bed in the hospital, said “fine, we’ll give you observation until tomorrow.”

Dec 22: Decompensated quickly. Parents apparently came up north, though I don’t remember seeing them before I woke up again. Couldn’t get aortic O2 saturation above 65% so I ended up intubated.

Late Dec 22-Early Dec 30: Completely unconscious, with the first two days on paralytics so that the ventilator did 100% of my breathing. The 36 hours on either side of my sedation are completely blank in my memory.

At some point my secondary infection (which was never discerned, though extensive testing for bacteria and fungi was done) caused me to become critically ill, and there were preparations made to fly my to Mayo for ECMO. Thankfully, the high-dosage steroid treatment they gave me when I started getting worse helped, and I began improving slowly.

Dec 31: I start to see the world again. My first “memories” are strange delusions brought on by the anesthetics. I thought I had been in a coma for 6 years, and that I was in Cleveland. Why the fuck would I be in CLEVELAND?

I remember seeing the news, something about New Year’s Eve. I fell back asleep, into Seroquel dreams.

Jan 1: My memories start genuinely coming back. I discovered I was too weak to extend my arm fully, and too shaky to eat Jell-O. The Jell-O DID get delightfully wobbly, though.

Jan 2: Little Raven’s Birthday. Finally get out of ICU. Moved up to the general wards. Still can’t breathe easily. Food is vile-tasting. Can barely eat. Choke down a lemon bar and cry about how much better Brendan’s were and how much I miss my brother and how I refuse to make my parents go through that again.

Jan 3: Manage my first wobbly steps with a walker. The floor hurts my knees and feet. The blood in my eyes is finally being cleared by my body.

Jan 3-5: Slow improvement. Slow for an otherwise-healthy young adult, at least. It feels like forever. My dad and I watched an unbearable amount of cross-country ski qualifying races for the Olympic teams. There’s a terrifying night-vision cam in my hospital room, which wouldn’t bother me if it didn’t have a creepy smiley face.

Jan 5-9: Transitional care, getting physical and occupational therapy. I finally got home to my apartment (and cat!) that afternoon. I spent the next week regaining my strength and seeing specialists to try and find out why I got so sick. Consensus so far is “flu sucks and you’re unlucky?” I’m hoping to have better answers next month at my secondary follow-ups.

I aged my husband and parents about a decade during my hospital stay. I missed a month of work and am still fixing problems that arose with the backlog.

My Christmas dinner was a 10% dextrose solution, since I was still paralyzed and couldn’t have anything down my NG tube yet. New Year’s Eve drinks? “GIVE ME SOME FUCKING WATER!” - but not being able to have any, because I was still overloaded with fluid due to the standard protocol to prevent hypoperfusion when someone goes into septic shock.

Just to make it clear: I would not have survived without the tens of thousands of hours of training and practice that my medical team devoted their lives to acquiring. I would not have survived without the millions of hours of research and trials that allowed the machines that kept me monitored, cooled when my fever continued to spike, and breathing in a life-sustaining way when my lungs weren’t able to exchange gasses.

I am a fat bitch, but I am physically active, eat fairly decently, and don’t smoke or drink excessively. I am not someone who “should” be threatened by deadly complications due to influenza-caused pneumonia. Yet I was. 

And YOU could be, too. Get yer flu shot, if you can. If you can’t, yell at others until they do.