What NOT to Say: Answers I Wished Were on the Board Exam

last night we had some pretty crazyass patients.  like CRAZY, kept ripping out their own IVs, getting out of bed with a broken leg crazy.  i witnessed some fine therapeutic communication on the part of the nurses i have the privilege of working with every day. 

Nurse 1: Do you know where you are, Mr. X?

Patient X: Bellevue?

Nurse 2 (under her breath): Working with you makes me feel like I'm at Bellevue.

Patient X: Why am I here again?

Nurse 1: you tell me!  you promised you weren't going to drink again and when we get you sober, you drink the beer again (she was filipino). and now you're back here.  you tell me, whose fault is that?

Patient Y: oh! it hurts! (as we put EKG stickers on her--clearly not painful)

Nurse 2: stop being such a drama queen.

Patient X: the IV is too tight!  I'm going to take it off.

Nurse 2: if you take that IV out, i'm going to restrain you. 

Patient X: I'm gonna do it!

Nurse 2: you go right ahead.  let's see what happens. 

Patient X: why do you have to stick me again (with an IV)?

Nurse 2: it's your own fault.  you know what?  I think you pulled out your IV because you LIKE getting stuck. 

priceless.  

On the Night Shift

last week i pulled my first three (in a row!) night shifts at the hospital.  like everyone else i was nervous enough to crap my scrub pants at least a little bit, but my preceptor--the nurse i'm shadowing--is happily competent, chill, and pleasant.  and sassy. 

what is it like to work the night shift?  there's a flurry of activity at the beginning--doctors, residents, interns clearing out for the day, nurses giving report, visitors peacing out, handing out medications.  things are pretty busy until about 11:30 and suddenly it's dead quiet and there is nothing going on.  everyone settles at a computer, charts, then the lights go out and there is nothing to do until 4 am.  there's another flurry of activity between 5-7 where we wake up patients, give the ones that need bathing baths, give more medications, and the change of shift happens again.  

since working nights my perception of simple things: lunch, sleep, errands have been kind of turned upside on their head.  i take breaks to eat at 3 am, but should i be?  i'm happy when i get to bed by 8:30 am. when i wake up, it's light out but it's 4 pm.  it's kind of a bizzarre existence to live.  and what am i supposed to do when i'm not working?  do i try to fix my sleep schedule so that i can live like day person instead of hedwig the owl?  and does that mean i have to stay awake for 36 hours in order to reset my clock?  how is working nights conducive to having a social life or a family life?  i'm sure people do it, i'm just not sure how. 

anyway, all this and more have been my life of late.  i work, come home, eat something, and then pass out, only to wakeup 7 hours later and do it again.  i am a working, eating, sleeping blob.  

anyway my first night generated lots of random observations, so without further ado, here they are:

1) there sure are a lot more blood pressure machines available at night time.  where do they go during the day?

2) cleaning up patient poo has really turned me off to the smell of it.  not that i was really turned on by it before, but where the smell didn't use to bother me, now it REALLY bothers me. and i've become more paranoid about smelling like poo now. 

3) one should never wear a thong for a 12 hour shift of anything, but especially not nursing.  and i am obviously not speaking from personal experience. 

4) is eating "lunch" at 3 am, even if you haven't had anything to eat since 6 pm, going to make me fat?  

5) working the night shift is like joining a secret club.  no one else really understands what goes down at night time, and you share a special bond with the people who work with you during this time.  

6) i am thankful for friends who work on my floor.  and for new friends in my program that i previously have not had the honor of knowing who also work on the floor.  and i'm thankful that my close friends are there to take "lunch" with me and are all for bitch-festing.  

7) when patients have a lot of phlegm and can't clear it, i suddenly develop an urge to clear my own throat, even if there's nothing in there. 

8) night shift is way more chill.  there hasn't been a night i've worked where my preceptor hasn't been on fb.  sometimes she also brings a magazine or listens to music. and i get a lot of downtime to work on my school assignments. 

9) there is a girl who is also a student who sometimes works the same time i do.  Lord help me if she talks to me again.  i'm going to wring her throat so she'll stop making noise. 

10) i love old people who still have it together.  they like squeezing and patting my hand and are generally adorable. 

11) there are hella filipino nurses in at this hospital.  i mean in new york. i mean in AMERICA. good thing i fit right in. 

12) the MDs who work here are scarce.  they are either hidey holing in their lounge or off doing more important things.  when they ARE here, they act like Jesus Christ, savior of 6GS and it's annoying.

13) the thing i've noticed about working nights is that i'm usually not outwardly sleepy, but my brain spaces out way more than usual.  so my eyes will be open, but glassy. like dead dobby, but i'm not dead. or a house-elf. 

14) hospitals are dirty, dirty places.  i mean you'd think it should be pristine, but i hesitate to even pee in the bathrooms here.  they are really gross.  it's a miracle that most patients don't come out with more diseases than they came in with (although they sometimes do). 

i work another triple nighter next week, and perhaps my my idea of working nights will change. we'll see.

Missed Letters

dear cute-med-student-who-(my-clinical-mates-insist-)keeps-checking-me-out,

if you are truly interested, please grow a pair and ask me out already.  i can't be bothered to deal with boys who don't have both testicles firmly in place. you're asian--learn to pull out some geeky warcraft tricks and facebook stalk me or something, n00b.  

sincerely, 

the other asian student on 4Tower

**********************************************************

dear professor churchill,

i think your class was quite possibly my favorite of the entire year.  what a way to end a seemingly endless string of 5x5's!  i love that you don't play mind games and seem genuinely interested in our learning and... surprise!  in US as REAL PEOPLE.  i actually wanted to learn about peds (have i mentioned i hate children?) because you were such a pleasure to learn from!  i hope you go far and succeed in all that you attempt.  you deserve only good things in your career for all that you put into it. 

warmly, 

the obnoxious loud one in the front who you suspect is chatting during class (sorry, it's the only time i can talk to my sister.  i'm sure you understand, you are that great of a woman. but at least i participate in class and sometimes get the answers right!)

*****************************************************************

dear gym nemesis,

you are annoying.  and rude. and ugly.  and i hate your gym outfits.  please graduate and move away from new york. 

regards, 

the girl you accused of stealing your time slot on cross trainer #2

*********************************************************************

dear roommate who has aspergers,

i'm sorry that we talk about you behind your back so much in the kitchen.  you are kind of weird, but i know that you mean no harm and are actually kind of a sweet guy, even if you do take 40 minute showers and smell a little funny.  no hard feelings, okay?

-from the roommate across the hall.

*********************************************************************

dear american idol judges,

you guys really need to get your shit together.  you are boring all of us and your lameass comments actually are bogging the show down.  may i make a few suggestions?

paula: STOP GETTING BOTOX.  or taking drugs.  or whatever it is that's keeping you from stringing two sentences, oops, i mean words together.  your comments are even more irrelevant than ever. 

kara: can you please find your niche now?  your comments are redundant and don't add anything special to the show.  we know you like hearing yourself talk, can you direct that energy towards something productive?

randy: you are not bringing any semblance of intelligence to the table when you continue to say "dawg."  it's been 8 seasons.  you can stop now. 

simon: you have always been my favorite because you keep it real.  (and because i like old guys) WHY DID YOU STOP?  we know you have what it takes to be the resident snarky british guy.  gordon ramsay has kept up that part of his bargain with fox, why can't you?

also i know that anoop doesn't have star quality, but if you can do anything about him making at least the top 5, i'll let the fact that you put talentless jasmine in for no good reason and completely shafted jun'ot slide. 

yours truly, 

outraged fan from new york (but let's face it, this could be written by several million people across the country)

*****************************************************************

dear homeless man at the 168th subway stop,

i used to feel bad for you.  no one should have to sleep in a subway, and no one should have to sleep in that subway.  but since i found out that you totally have a place at the men's shelter literally a hop, skip and a jump away i have a different opinion.  please stop breaking whatever rules you're breaking to get kicked out.  cigarettes are not worth being cold and exposing yourself to the new york elements.  

from, 

the girl who promised to bring you a blanket and forgot (sorry about that--i overslept and felt terrible about it afterwards)

********************************************************************

dear columbia university school of nursing/etp office:

thanks for admitting me to columbia last may.  i didn't get in anywhere else and it was a relief to know that i'm not a failure.  but do you really think that letting 200 more people in is such a great idea?  i mean, an extra $300,000 coming in is great, but you don't even get that money, it just goes to columbia.  look--some of my friends don't even have integration sites yet and integration starts in less than two weeks!  forget their feelings, i'm pissed on their behalf.  

we had loads of problems with crowding and not getting enough individual attention this year.  do you think that goes away with more people?  for people who have lots of PhDs and other letters that i often can't decipher, you guys sure are dumb.  get your shit together!  

respectfully yours, 

the etp student that desjardins mistook for a masters student because there are so many students in the etp program she can't know all of us even just on a facial recognition basis. 

Integrizzalicious

well now.  

for the past month or so i have been wringing my hands about where my integration placement is going to be.  what is integration, you ask?  for the two people following my blog (no, really i know there's just two) after my 5 rotations of 5 weeks each which are ending once and for all this friday with a mere 100-question test and a sad farewell to quite possibly my favorite professor after sally aboelela the physiology professor, i get a week of spring break and then two months of "work."  that is to say, i am assigned to a [hopefully please oh please oh please] competent nurse and follow her around.  oh sure, they say "shadow" as if that sounds more professional, but for all intents and purposes i will make like a facebook whore and tag around someone.   i work the [12-hour night shifts that] she works, I do the nurse-y things she does, and basically get to play pretend-nurse on someone else's RN license. 

everyone i knew had been getting their placements at these awesome hospitals including the Hospital of My Dreams (which i sadly did not get) but more than the actual placement i just wanted to KNOW.  i hate the waiting.  anyway, i finally got my placement today and i will literally be just down the street from my apartment!  i am kind of thrilled about this and also kind of not... the commute is good news and i will be working at the same time and on the same unit as a good buddy, but generally the hope is to get a job at the place where you are integrated, and this hospital has CRAP benefits: a lower salary, smaller education compensation (i.e. "pay for my master's education, bitches") and not as nurturing a work environment as the Hospital of My Dreams.  it doesn't mean that i can't work at HMD, it might just mean that it'll be a little harder.  

and now i have lots more things to think about.  will i like it?  what if the nurse is crappy? how do i fix myself so that i basically keep the same hours as a fruit bat?  will i ever see my friends who keep normal human hours again?  more to come. 

lastly i have been getting back into playing with the yeasties.  my first attempts at whole wheat bread, which was not really whole wheat bread but LIGHT wheat bread, didn't really go so well.  yesterday i tried making whole wheat pizza--also flawed.  today i'm giving the pizza another go and am currently growing a pizza dough on my warm stovetop RIGHT NOW.  hopefully it'll be more... pizza-doughy (yeasty?  chewy?  soft?) and less like a pita, which is what it tasted like yesterday.  other yeastastic fun i'd like to attempt eventually: cinnamon rolls, revisited, soft pretzels, bretzels, and those mouthgasmic soft-on-the-inside-yet-chewy-on-the-outside dinner rolls that you can get parbaked at trader joe's.

does the fact that i now blog about food--and let's not discount the numerous food pics on fb--mean that i have a boring life?  ohdeargod.

On Bikram Yoga

Last week I went to my first yoga class ever.  Unfortunately, naive me didn't think of researching exactly what kind of yoga I was getting myself into.  I envisioned relatively harmless downward facing dogs, warrior poses and feeling stretched, but not really having to work that hard.  

WRONG.

Bikram Yoga is 26 poses every single session, in a heated, humidified room.  It's like being in someone's mouth.  No, wait.  Hotter.  And since the yoga studio was in Harlem, the stench of BO (recently identified as dirty jockstrap/men's locker room/soiled kitty litter) that came as a punch in the face wasn't too much of a shock, even if it still made me want to vomit on my own shoes.  And that was just the holding area of the studio.  When you go in to the hot room, the stench intensifies and the humidity is nearly oppressive.  You start sweating as soon as the door is closed. 

And the poses are hard.  I suck at balancing, I have extraordinarily terrible flexibility, and when you try to trip your hand/leg/foot or whatever the pose requires, your hand slips because you are literally sweating out of every pore of your body.  

After our first session, my friend Stef and I walked back toward the subway in a kind of daze, unspeaking and just focusing on getting air into our lungs.  But upon recovery 5 minutes later, the feeling was amazing!  Some muscles were getting used and I had no idea they existed (well, okay I did--I majored in physiology. But I didn't know you could work them!).  Yoga--even stinky yoga--is exhilirating!  Which is why we went back on Sunday, are going back today, and will keep going until our one week unlimited pass expires.  

At which point I believe we'll start yoga-studio hopping, looking for new yoga studios (they're becoming ubiquitous in the city now) who are offering similar awesome deals ($20 for an unlimited week including a mat?  Hells yeah!) until we start earning money to justify the exorbitant cost of being a member of a yoga studio.