A B C Ds

I just finished my first full week of work. It was an eventful week. I was exhausted when I started my last twelve-and-a-half hour shift and I was exhausted when I came home after that twelve-and-a-half hour shift turned into a fourteen hour shift. I have to be careful when I am so exhausted. I have to save my mental energy for things like giving out medications. So everything else tends to slide: When I got to work I realized that my coffee never made it to work with me. I cut into a doorway too closely and ripped apart the pocket of my favorite scrub top. I misplaced my favorite flashlight.

There were funny parts of the night, too. There are two techs who I work with, huge guys, huge like mountains are huge. One of them used to work with my friend in psych emergency services and since his name starts with D--Daniel--she called him "Big D" so I took to calling him Big D. The other guy's name also happens to start with D--David--and I was telling one of the other nurses that I was working with Big D and David and she said, "Double Ds." And I was so exhausted that I found that to be hilarious.

That's how exhausted I was.

Big D also saved me a piece of chocolate cake and made extra coffee for me. He's a big sweetheart.

About an hour into my shift, one of the doctors called me just to see what was up. I was joking awhile back with a friend via text that this doctor and I were going to be married, simply because he and I get along to the point where people look kind of sideways at how well we get along. Like, he won't answer texts or pages from one of my supervisors--she complains endlessly about him-- but he has never, ever taken longer than about 3 minutes to answer my calls. One night I accidentally butt dialed him and hung up before it rang and he called back within 90 seconds. Another night I had to talk to him about a patient who was going off, and in the middle of the conversation, he asked if I had been outside yet to look at the moon. Anyway, yeah, he just called after the patients bedtimes to see what was happening.

I also helped a patient to call her Mexican, Spanish-speaking only grandmother and, while sitting at the computer next to the phone, overheard her tell her grandmother, in Spanish, "Why didn't you answer the phone when the doctor called? The doctor here needs to talk to you"--she paused to let her grandmother answer and then she said, "Are the beans more important than me, grandma? The beans are more important than me?" I had to keep myself from laughing.

We were short handed last night and I had to take an extra cottage. It was not too bad, but it was a cottage at the other end of the campus and I walked back and forth throughout the night. Exhausted.

I don't yet know how I feel about working this full-time schedule. I'll have to wait and figure it out when my sleep schedule finally settles down and I'm not too exhausted to think straight.