Seven

I have a few minutes (while waiting for my mother to come and pick me up for lunch) to start an entry.

It’s been quite a week.

This week I worked with the upper age-range of patients who come into the hospital. As the news filled with stories of mass shootings, I was working with the people who you might see on the news associated with those kinds of shootings. They were mixed with patients who, rather than wanting to end their pain by ending the lives of others, wanted to end their pain by ending their own lives.  You don’t have to imagine much to know that that is a hard group of people to work with. It’s especially difficult for me because I lost a dear friend to suicide when I was about the same age as these children and I know from experience that it can be frightening and confusing to wrestle with those feelings.

I worked with those children for two days and then on the third day of my week, I went to a class to learn how to do holds and transfers on out-of-control patients. And in that class, I was injured. (Because I was the largest woman in the class, I was paired with two enormous security guards, one of whom, while playing the patient, was being more physical than he needed to be in order to, I guess, make it seem more “real”) and I wrenched my elbow. It hurt right after class (feels like tendonitis), so I reported it to the instructor and then I went home and iced it and took a nap. When I woke up from my nap, it hurt worse, so I emailed the instructor. Then this morning, I emailed my supervisor (who I’ve met three times) and another supervisor to ask them how to handle it. It is feeling slightly better, as long as I am careful with how I move it.

I broke a mirror yesterday, too, in the morning while I was getting ready for work. I have a hand mirror that I use while I sit on the edge of the bed and put on makeup, and I left it on the edge of the bed and it slipped and fell off and shattered. Which sucks. I’m not superstitious much (I’m more paranoid, which covers the superstitious basis in many ways as well), but I couldn’t help but feel like maybe there won’t be seven years of bad luck, but there might be seven hours of bad luck, or seven days. Even seven minutes would be too much for me right now.

That just reminded me, too, of talking with the instructor during lunch break yesterday. I saw one of the therapists walk in with a paper coffee cup and asked her if they had made coffee in the admin building. She said, no, she had used one of the cups to make oatmeal for lunch. I said, the coffee was probably pretty old by now (they make it at 6:30 or so in the morning and it was noon, and it sits on a burner plate that is cranked to high). The instructor chimed in that it gets gross and burnt after a couple of hours, but that a few days ago, the coffee had tasted strange to her just after it had been made. She said that she tasted it and then started to think that maybe someone had put something in the coffee, some drug or something, as revenge to make us all fail our drug tests. I was, like, I thought *I* was the only one who had thoughts like that.

For me, I don’t drink that coffee, but I have similar thoughts about water bottles. We have sixteen-ounce bottles of water for the kids and ourselves and when we hand them out, we label them with a sharpie. When I get one, I put a B on the lid, but then if I leave it anywhere outside of the office where I chart on patients, I start to think: Did one of the patients who knows it’s my bottle do something to it? Spit in it or worse? So I end up pouring it down the sink and getting a new one. I know it’s a waste, but that’s The Brain for you.

Later: I got back from lunch awhile ago. I came in, did dishes, took out the trash, swept, and started cleaning the bathroom. That’s enough housecleaning for the moment. I think it might be time to crank up the AC and nap for awhile.