Paradoxically

Friday Litany

Ah, Friday. I made it through another week. Only two more weeks to go.

I started clinical rotation this week and took care of two patients with MRSA, which kicked my particular mix of paranoia and hypochondria into overdrive. I spend the days wrestling into and out of protective equipment, yellow gowns too small for me, purple gloves. Today when I was suited up, one patient told me I looked like a Minion. When I come home each day, I leave my shoes outside. I strip down just inside the front door and hang my uniform outside. I wipe down my stethoscope and other equipment with bleach wipes after each patient and again before leaving the hospital and I douse them with alcohol when I get home. I shower after each shift.

I had an amazing but temporary mentor today--we change depending on who's working the shift--who let me do as much as possible. I followed him around like a puppy. When it came time to do things that I'm not technically supposed to do without the unreliable, oft-disappearing clinical instructor looking over my shoulder, my new BFF would instruct me while keeping an eye out for the instructor so that I wouldn't get in trouble.  (Yesterday I got in trouble for doing something that I wasn't told I wasn't supposed to do until after I had done it, which is the kind of bullshit that enrages me.) But today, with the help of my new BFF, I got to do a lot more than the other students did. I was sorry to say goodbye to him at the end of the day. I hope I get to work with him again next week.

On clinical days, I get up at 4 a.m. I could get up at 4:30 and still be on time but because I'm already exhausted, I paradoxically have to get up earlier, cutting back on my sleep so that The Exhausted Brain has more time in the morning to slowly and meticulously grind itself through the morning routine with as few misfires as possible.

The other morning, on a not-clinical day, I got to school and realized I had put my scrub pants on backwards.

I am not a fan of careless mistakes.

On clinical days I try to leave the house by 5:40 a.m. because I have to park about a mile from the hospital, in a remote parking lot down a partially paved road. At that hour, it's still dark out, but the parking lot is already filling up and the shuttles that run continuously from the lot to the hospital are never empty. No one chats on the shuttle, but as we make our way into the hospital and go our separate ways, people I don't know and who I have never seen before in my life remind me to have a good day. I am touched by this for some reason.

On the first day of clinicals, I did something to my foot, stepped on it wrong or something. Now I have a sharp pain that radiates up from the ball of my foot through my instep and into my ankle. Hour after hour on my feet haven't helped it, surprisingly enough. At home, I limp around on it, babying it, but at the hospital, no. I never, but never take pain meds. Not aspirin. Not ibuprofen. But I've had to the last couple of days.

The ear pain that has been plaguing me on and off for months flared up with a vengeance this week and spread to the sinus above my eye. I went to urgent care on Thursday afternoon and got a scrip for an antibiotic that is currently tearing up my gut. It's not pretty. I'll be living on yogurt and kefir and probiotic capsules while that sorts itself out.

On Thursday, one of the vets who helped to take care of Saba sent us a small cypress tree and a card. Dave put it on the kitchen counter and I have to, when I am getting ready in the morning, consciously not look at it. I can't. I can't start the day off in tears. I know our fierce and serious little puppycat made a big impression on them and the tenacity with which we pursued all avenues on her behalf did too. But I can't let go of her yet. I don't know that I will ever will.

Today my new BFF was taking care of four patients and although my attention was mainly focused on my one, I helped with the others, too, just so that I can get as much experience as possible.  One of his patients is in terrible shape, has lived through--is living through now--the kind of situation you pray that you or the people you love will never be in. She is on the ward while she waits for a bed in hospice care to become available. Her husband sleeps by her side all night in a chair designed for a half-hour visit. Her elderly mother comes to relieve him in the morning. A daughter comes in the afternoon and stays with her through the early evening until the husband arrives again. On the bedside table there is a fan in the shape of a pink flamingo--the husband explains to me that he gave it to her as a birthday present a couple of weeks ago--and two bottles of nail polish, one vivid red, one a dark mauve. Today the woman's nails are dark red.

The woman's elderly mother is fierce, which I respect. Today she explained the family's schedule and she said to me of her daughter, "She will never be alone. She will never be alone, ever. Ever. Ever."

I had only one patient and he was down in x-ray, so I had all the time in the world to stay and listen to the husband and mother. They want someone to bear witness to this dying woman's life and all the objectively amazing things she's done in her own small way, so I do, and even though she is largely uncommunicative, I listen and I speak to her as though she were perfectly able to communicate.

There is no real way to quantify the good we do in our lives, is there? I know that whatever good we do radiates outward, touching one person and then the next, through them. This woman has actually done that, though, in a real way, and her family want me to know that and want her to know that, too. So I listen to them and I tell them that I do know that. I thank her and I thank them, too, for that.

I do that and then I check on my patient who has been brought back from x-ray and I make sure he is as comfortable as he can be under the circumstances and I take off my protective gear and I wipe my stethoscope with bleach wipes and I leave the hospital at the end of the day and I ride the shuttle to my car and I come home and I strip off my paranoia-contaminated clothes and I hang them outside and I come inside and I get in the shower and I cry.