Friday

Another week down.

As I was waiting for the hospital shuttle this morning at dawn, one of the women in my cohort came up and, by way of greeting, said, "I can't." I said, "You only have to make it to August." And she said, "Seventy-eight days."

Turns out when we started the program, she started a countdown to the keep track of the lenght of the program to the day. Every day she looks at her calendar and marks off the day. I had to laugh at that because that is not my style at all. Time and I do not get along and so I try to pay it as little attention as possible. (I'm convinced that this is the strategy--ignoring time--that all long-term insomniacs hit on to avoid tallying up lost hours of sleep--but then it spreads to encompass whole days, months, seasons, years, sometimes even decades. I don't pay attention to time on a grand scale. And it shows: A couple of days ago, it took me an embarrassingly long time to remember what month it is, and, once I had figured it out, I asked the woman I was talking to, "Is it the 8th? 9th?" and she looked at me strangely and said, "It's the 23rd.")

Last night, I got to bed around 8:30 p.m. and woke up at 1:30 a.m. Then I was just up for the day. Don't get me wrong: I tried to get back to sleep. That worked about as well as it normally does. I got out of bed at 4:07 a.m. and made coffee and got into the shower. My morning was more leisurely than yesterday and I still ended up getting to the hospital early.

I had an exciting day today. I skipped out of the ICU and went to work in wound care. I got to see--and smell--and help take care of--some really ugly wounds. Gunshots and bed sores and all kinds of things. Fun day. (I really mean that.)

One of the students in my clinical group is very hyped up about this being our last semester and that we're level five students at the university rather than at the community college. I'll explain: The associate's degree program runs for four levels, all of which are done at the community college. My little cohortees and I are all heading for bachelor's degrees, so we do those four levels at the community college then we go another level at the university. (We're in an accelerated program so we only go one more level--fifteen weeks or so--to get bachelor's degrees, rather than having to go another couple of years, which the associately-degreed students will have to do if they want to get their bachelor's degrees). Anyway, the gist of it is that we are right now level five university students (though we still wear the same color scrubs as every other level, one through five). Being in level five and being university rather than community college students is a big deal to some people (like the woman in my clinical group). I don't care one way or another (I've had my big-man-on-campus college experience getting my earlier degrees), but I did have a kind of funny level-related interaction while I was doing wound care today.

Another student (not in my cohort, I've never met her before) came into the room while we were working and during a lull in the conversation she said to me in a kind of condescending manner, "What level are you?" And I said, "Five." She got a bit quiet after that, so I said, "How about you?" She said, more subdued, "Four." I wanted to--but didn't--laugh.

The level four students get used to thinking of themselves at the top of the heap because in the usual run of things (this being their last term before graduation), they would be. There are around 120 level four students this term, but there are only 17 of us level five students We're a rare breed and this little level four student has probably never run into one of us in the wild. I guess she thought she was going to smoke me senority-wise, but she got smacked down. (I was super nice; I almost always am.) Anyway, she was not so condescending after that.

At the same time, me and all the other little loud-mouthed, overachiever level fives are exhausted. I'm older by decades than some of the students in my cohort, but the exhaustion is not age-related. Even the twenty-two year olds look like crap and complain about being tired all the time.

Anyway, I was glad to get away from the ICU for a bit. Every day I'm in the ICU, I feel wholly inadequate. It's a tough feeling to wrestle with, that. And it feels like so many situations in the ICU are losing battles. That is also a tough feeling. Everyone I've talked to who works or has worked in the ICU says that it's not a place where you work your whole career. It pays well but it is a high burnout job. I could do it, but I don't know for how long.

After I left the hospital, I stopped for a fizzy drink and then I came up to Judi's. Dave's last day of his current job was today, so he worked from Judi's in the morning and then went off to the office in the afternoon. A couple of his coworkers planned on taking him to happy hour, so they're off doing that now while I hang out with Buzz. It's too hot for poor Buzzy outdoors--90 degrees today--so we've been playing tug-of-war and fetch inside with some of his toys. Dave figured out yesterday that if you sing a sustained high note, Buzz goes a bit crazy and races around the house. I wonder what gets triggered in his little puppy brain.

Dave starts his new job on June 4, so he has a bit of time off. We don't have the chance--between my school and Buzz-sitting--to do much of anything, but the downtime should be nice for him.