Thank You for Being A Friend

I'm getting used to working graveyards (which they don't call graveyards at the hospital, for perhaps obvious reasons). I go in at 7 at night and I leave at 7:30 the next morning. It is a long shift. I love the night hours--love them literally, each and every one of them--but it is a long shift. I'm getting used to it though, and it is starting to require less caffeine to get me through.

I try to step out at dawn to greet the day. This moody, pastel sky greeted me back a couple of mornings ago. (It's oddly cropped to keep from showing any details about the hospital or its surroundings.)

 The busy hours are the early ones, when I take report and prep and administer medications and help get the kids what they need before their 9 p.m. bedtime. After that, there is a handful of hours eaten up by duties, then I have the rest of the night where I am available, but there are no particular duties to attend to. Some nights I walk the campus (carrying my hospital phone and walkie-talkie so that I can always be reached). Some nights I study, reviewing the commonly dispensed medications and hospital procedures. Some nights I work online on the continuing education credits that I need to amass to renew my license (which I don't have to do until next August).

The one thing I don't do is read in-depth patient histories. I look at their lab results and the orders that pertain to them. I look for medical issues that might arise. I look for the details that I need to know to care for them in the moment, whatever crops up, but I can't read about the horrific things that they've been through. I check to make sure that any abuse has been reported to the authorities and then I have to let it go. As I said to one of my co-workers, I can either know their histories or I can take care of them. I can't do both. The stories are horrific, some of them. Most of them. Kids don't land in the hospital where I work unless they're holding on by a thread. The abuse that many of them have gone through is horrific. It's some kind of miracle that some of them survive physically, much less mentally. But enough about that. I can't think about that hardly at all.

When I get home from work, I take off my scrubs at the door and get into the shower and have a snack and then bid Dave a good night (he bids me a good morning) and I go to sleep. I've been sleeping with my headphones on, listening to episodes of The Golden Girls in the background. It's such a hilarious show; I went ahead and just bought all seven seasons on Amazon, so that I can watch them again and again. I want to grow up to be Dorothy--or maybe Sophia, her mother. Someday...

What else is going on in my life?

Dave is sick. He's been sick for a few days now with a headache and cough. I've sidestepped it (hopefully for good, although there have been call-outs at work because there's something going around, and the other night at work I wiped down the office and kitchen area and all the doorknobs with bactericidal/antifungal/anti-everything wipes). Anyway, he didn't work Thursday and Friday, opting to stay in bed and rest, which is the best thing when one is sick, I think.

Last night, after I caught up on a bit of sleep during the day (since I had worked the night before), we decided that we had to get some errands done. We called for a pizza to pick up and then we went to the pet store to get Gray Kitty his special food (ridiculous, but it helps). After picking up food for the cat and for us, we stopped and mailed a letter that we've been driving around for about three days, then we came home and ate.

But a curious thing happened: I had ordered a salad, not my usual chicken salad, but one with pastrami and provolone on it and after a few bites, I started to have an allergic reaction. Like, my chest got tight and the inside of my nose swelled up. I stopped eating and it went away after a bit (I also took some Benadryl), but the rest of the salad had to go in the garbage. I have no idea, unless I'm reacting to the nitrates in the pastrami, what it is I'm allergic to. I don't typically eat preserved meats like hot dogs, pastrami, etc., so I've never noticed anything like that before. Strange, no? Anyway, it was a good excuse to eat some pizza.

Speaking of eating pizza: Since I started working, I've lost another three and a half pounds, bringing my total since the end of April to thirty-five and a half pounds. That's just since I had my FitBit; I've lost closer to sixty pounds in the last year. I had put on so much weight in school from the stress. It's crazy that carrying for children in a hospital is less stress than school, but there you go. Anyway, I've noticed that sugar has started to creep into my diet more and more, so I'm back to combating that. Also: The biggest thing that's helped is eliminating most dairy. I eat cheese rarely, rarely, like, less than once a week kind of rarely, which for me is a miracle. I also switched to soy yogurt. But, yeah. There it is.

What else?

I got online and ordered a bunch of fabric last night. I just...I haven't even touched the fabric I bought a month ago on my birthday, but I got onto one of the websites that I ordered from in the past and started looking and then suddenly my cart was full and I was putting in my credit card info. So. I got a bunch of butterfly fabric for a project I have in mind....maybe I'll post more about it later.

Today: Dave is still sleeping--it's only 8:40 and he needs the rest--but we're going to run an errand for my brother and then I need to get some things cleaned up around here. I've started already by doing the dishes and wiping down the counters in the kitchen, which gets neglected when I'm working. There's laundry to be done and part of the casita look like a fraternity house, which, ugh.

So that's the plan for the day.

It's been a long time since we've done any socializing, but everyone is wounded in one way or another and we don't want to spread any sick germs around to add to the melee, so I think we'll just stick close to home today.