Sorry, I've got kind of a downer of a post today.
Today was my first day back after my run-in with a patient on Saturday, as I wisely called in sick on Sunday and had Monday off anyway. I would be lying if I said that I was not at all apprehensive about stepping back onto the unit. It's weird to feel nervous about going to work, wondering how my still very visible battle wounds are going to affect my patients' temperaments and if my mere presence is going to cause conflicts.
I slept in a lot later than I thought I would, and when I woke up, I noticed it was snowing quite heavily. This made me happy. I love snow. I love winter. 20 minutes later I came to the realization that my car now had its first winter driving test, and it failed miserably.
(Digression: Who in the world actually likes long cars? They suck way too much gas, are difficult to park, and much, much more difficult to control on a slick road when turning. Is there an advantage to them outside of legroom that I'm failing to see? I drive a 1995 Dodge Intrepid because it was all I could afford to buy at the time, and I routinely rue the fact that it's so honking big that it's awkward to park it most anywhere. Anyway, my car slides a lot during turns. A lot. I'm not used to this in the slightest, and joined the 360 club after getting off of the interstate on my way home. Then a giganto truck had the nerve to tailgate me on an icy road for the entirety of my trip. How close was he following me? Close enough that his headlights actually outshone mine. Who does that? But back to the story.)
There was apparently some form of accident on 70, as I got stuck on the highway long enough that I was 15 minutes late to work despite the fact that I left 10 minutes earlier than usual, and I usually get to work about 6 minutes ahead of time. My coworkers were relieved to see me, as they thought I was simply calling in again or worse, just not showing. However, I was stressed from my drive, which was also complicated by snowflakes turning to ice as soon as they hit my windshield, making it impossible to see out of and impossible to clear once the ice attached itself to the wipers in addition to the sliding, icy conditions and the stopped traffic, and was thus unable to deal with that beloved patient standby, the bum rush.
"H-h-h-h-hey Andy. How's it g-g-goin?"
"Hey, Andy, can you tell Ruth I have privileges now and let me out?"
"HI DAVID ANDY! Is that Jerry Jarvis? Am I being good? Come 'ere and tell me what's for lunch today!"
"Can I have some gum, Andy?"
"Hey whatsyername, can I get my snack? I didn't get my snack!"
On a normal day, this would've been easily manageable simply by saying, "Guys, I've got to get the shift report. I can talk to you after we get out," and they'll dissipate. Today I had no such luxury, since shift report was over, and couldn't get away. Plus, very few were receptive to my evasive techniques, and I absolutely had to find out what was going on with the patient that attacked us on Saturday and if any of the other patients were reacting to him. As a result, I had a very difficult time getting the patients to leave me alone for long enough to get this information, and the tone of my day was set with me trying to get away and being unable to.
As it turned out, the violent patient was not at all better and still causing serious problems. Multiple codes had been called to get him under control the previous day, and he had been threatening to attack a few of the evening shift staff all weekend, myself included. As a result, he was on one-to-one precaution for protection of others, and I would be sitting with him on my own for an hour.
It was bad. Really bad. He was looking for a fight, but he's not dumb enough to go after staff. For that matter, he's not dumb enough to go after his peers. When he wants to fight, he wants to be sure that he doesn't throw the first punch so he can claim he's defending himself. What he did do was threaten and intimidate and insult any patient around that he thought would respond violently to him, and when I went to stop him, he turned around and threatened violence against me. This is not particularly scary, as it's just a method to get attention, and as I said, he's not dumb enough to actually attack staff. He wanted me to come after him, and when I didn't, he ratcheted up his obnoxiousness by knocking over the laundry cart, taking all of the magazines from the common room, and demanding that everyone watch what he wants, in hopes that staff would call a code or try to take him down. And every hour, he had a different staff to irritate, always trying to goad staff into crossing a line.
Not only was this exhausting, but it also made all of the other patients, especially the more excitable ones, angry and edgy. From after dinner to bedtime, there was no downtime on the unit, just constant movement from one patient to another to de-escalate them. It was a losing battle, but we managed to stop all of the major conflicts.
After work, our evening shift staff all worked together to dig out our cars, and then left as a group. I am fortunate enough to work with an excellent staff, but everyone on my shift has an application in to work elsewhere. In a couple months, I may be the only one left on the unit with a bunch of rookies, and I only have four months in myself. This, also, is a bummer.
And now I'm home. My apartment is a messy wreck, even worse than usual, but I don't have the energy to do anything but sit in front of a screen and veg out, either surfing the internets or playing a game.
And from the looks of it, tomorrow will be much the same.
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Sunday, February 4, 2007
"Pain heals. Chicks dig scars. Glory lasts forever."
I love my job. This has probably been surmised by the five readers of this space. I enjoy interacting with my patients, and I get a real feeling of self-realization when I help them find their way out of ruts they've lived in their entire lives. My co-workers are amusing and helpful.
That said, there's a good reason there are always plenty of openings. My job is dangerous, and if nothing else is routinely disgusting. The disgusting bits don't bother me so much; nothing hand sanitizer and soap and water won't take care of.
But today I had a run-in with the more dangerous parts of my job:
I walked into a bad situation at work today, and as one of only two male staff on the scene, was on the front lines when it turned violent. In addition to the scratch on my face, I suffered some form of knee injury. I can support my weight on the bad knee, but I can't lift myself. Standing on one foot is easy; climbing the stairs to my apartment proved Herculean.
(The Ice Pack. The LPN wrote "Andy From my 1st boo boo. 2/3/07") The worst part of the whole thing, though, was the way the other patients looked at me. Part of it was out of concern, because I'm a well-liked staff member and almost always the "good cop", but there was another aspect to it, a fear that the staff would not be able to protect them. That uneasiness was difficult. A new admit, an autistic patient who has bonded with me, was extremely upset about it, and wanted to know exactly who hurt me, and how I started bleeding. I'm not convinced he's letting it go, and that worries me for him, my coworkers, and the patient that attacked us. Two other staff were involved; one received a minor nick on her finger, and the other got rug burns on his knee. (Have fun explaining that one to the girlfriend, Jerry.)
And now I have a choice. I have sick time. If my knee is not in serviceable condition tomorrow, I can call in. Except that it's Super Bowl Sunday, and the Colts are playing, and the hospital is going to be dangerously short-staffed anyway. If I call in, Jerry will be the only male attendant on our ward, and it's hard telling what the fallout from this will be. On the other hand, I will not be any help, and part of me feels that if I'm around the patient that became aggressive tomorrow, the situation will be worse. He told a female staff that he's very upset about what happened to me, but he will not be able to tell me that because the whole thing was just him acting out to show us how tough he is, and being sorry for the person he hurt, even if he didn't want to hurt him, will undermine his stance. That disjoint might cause him to act out more.
So I'm a little conflicted. Dad recommends that I call in. No one on the unit expects me to be there tomorrow. But I will feel bad if I leave them high and dry. The guilt; the guilt.
That said, there's a good reason there are always plenty of openings. My job is dangerous, and if nothing else is routinely disgusting. The disgusting bits don't bother me so much; nothing hand sanitizer and soap and water won't take care of.
But today I had a run-in with the more dangerous parts of my job:
I walked into a bad situation at work today, and as one of only two male staff on the scene, was on the front lines when it turned violent. In addition to the scratch on my face, I suffered some form of knee injury. I can support my weight on the bad knee, but I can't lift myself. Standing on one foot is easy; climbing the stairs to my apartment proved Herculean.
(The Ice Pack. The LPN wrote "Andy From my 1st boo boo. 2/3/07") The worst part of the whole thing, though, was the way the other patients looked at me. Part of it was out of concern, because I'm a well-liked staff member and almost always the "good cop", but there was another aspect to it, a fear that the staff would not be able to protect them. That uneasiness was difficult. A new admit, an autistic patient who has bonded with me, was extremely upset about it, and wanted to know exactly who hurt me, and how I started bleeding. I'm not convinced he's letting it go, and that worries me for him, my coworkers, and the patient that attacked us. Two other staff were involved; one received a minor nick on her finger, and the other got rug burns on his knee. (Have fun explaining that one to the girlfriend, Jerry.)
And now I have a choice. I have sick time. If my knee is not in serviceable condition tomorrow, I can call in. Except that it's Super Bowl Sunday, and the Colts are playing, and the hospital is going to be dangerously short-staffed anyway. If I call in, Jerry will be the only male attendant on our ward, and it's hard telling what the fallout from this will be. On the other hand, I will not be any help, and part of me feels that if I'm around the patient that became aggressive tomorrow, the situation will be worse. He told a female staff that he's very upset about what happened to me, but he will not be able to tell me that because the whole thing was just him acting out to show us how tough he is, and being sorry for the person he hurt, even if he didn't want to hurt him, will undermine his stance. That disjoint might cause him to act out more.
So I'm a little conflicted. Dad recommends that I call in. No one on the unit expects me to be there tomorrow. But I will feel bad if I leave them high and dry. The guilt; the guilt.
Saturday, February 3, 2007
Harry Potter and the Naked Horse God
Daniel Radcliffe is starring in Equus, apparently. I only mention it because the next time I see a scene in a Harry Potter movie where Harry is sprinting somewhere while holding his wand, I'm going to say, "He should be careful running with that thing, or he might put an eye out." You've been warned.
I should also add that Equus was required reading for all Fall Semester sophomores at Wabash. As such, we had enough Equus jokes to last us for months.
I should also add that Equus was required reading for all Fall Semester sophomores at Wabash. As such, we had enough Equus jokes to last us for months.
The Divination Standby
My horoscope is inexcusably awful today. It's like the stars aren't even trying. Quoth Yahoo!'s personal astrologer:
"Your day will be somewhat dictated by the whims of someone who is in authority."
This horoscope sucks on many different levels:
1. Well, duh. An authority figure will tell me what to do? What other bits of advice do you have for me, Zodiac? The amount of daylight hours will be somewhat dictated by the temporal distance from the summer solstice?
2. What sort of action am I supposed to take now that I possess this crucial bit of information? I thought the point of knowing your future was to plan accordingly. I am just as helpless now as I was before I read it.
3. I understand that horoscopes have to be vague by nature; if it said "At precisely 5:33 EST you will receive a call bearing bad news about your career, but this can be avoided if you ask to do a job no one else wants," and nothing happened, or it was my day off, then the whole credibility of the practice could be called into question. But still, this one doesn't even bother to specify if the whims are good or bad. In fact, it doesn't even say that I'm going to be told what to do. Just "somewhat dictated" by the whims of authority.
So after I read this, instead of just saying "How the hell can anyone take astrology seriously?" like everyone else on the planet, I think to myself, "I could write a better horoscope than this. Surely Yahoo! could afford to hire an actual writer." And after 10 seconds of brainstorming I came up with:
Sagittarius: The powers that be may feel the need to rein you in. An acquiescence on your part, even if it is only temporary, may be the best course of action.
Here's why this is a much better horoscope:
1. Excitement. "Powers that be" "rein you in" "course of action". These are exciting, dramatic phrases that lead people to believe that their lives are much more important than they actually are, which is priority one for any horoscope.
2. Good advice. The message of this horoscope boils down to "Hey stupid. Do what your boss tells you to." Following this horoscope will likely lead to continued employment.
3. Vague, but applicable. What was I thinking of when I read this? The fact that I've been pulled over 4 times in the past five days for a missing head lamp. Perhaps making an appointment to get that fixed would be wise.
4. Vocab words. Do you feel smarter? I do. Because no one wants their horoscope to insult their intelligence.
This led me to believe that perhaps my true calling is "astrologer", but then I choked when I realized that writing horoscopes would require thinking up 12 such lines, plus a birthday forecast, every day for eternity without repeating. How could one go a week at this without running out of ideas? Would you have to go back and check all of your archives to make sure you didn't accidentally forecast death and destruction for Libras for seven straight days? How do actual horoscope writers deal with this sort of thing without becoming overtly snide or otherwise compromising the Very Serious tone that horoscopes are written in?
And then it occurred to me. Good horoscope writers would have to have a system to make sure they didn't get tedious with their predictions. They'd have to have some pre-determined method for chosing to forecast about love, work, friendships, or personal accomplishment, with good or bad implications, and with warnings or suggestions. The idea that horoscopes might actually be the result of an intricate and arbitrary system independent of the intricate and arbitrary system that it's supposed to be representing fills me with some strange sort of satisfaction, somehow. Does this merit further study? Perhaps.
"Your day will be somewhat dictated by the whims of someone who is in authority."
This horoscope sucks on many different levels:
1. Well, duh. An authority figure will tell me what to do? What other bits of advice do you have for me, Zodiac? The amount of daylight hours will be somewhat dictated by the temporal distance from the summer solstice?
2. What sort of action am I supposed to take now that I possess this crucial bit of information? I thought the point of knowing your future was to plan accordingly. I am just as helpless now as I was before I read it.
3. I understand that horoscopes have to be vague by nature; if it said "At precisely 5:33 EST you will receive a call bearing bad news about your career, but this can be avoided if you ask to do a job no one else wants," and nothing happened, or it was my day off, then the whole credibility of the practice could be called into question. But still, this one doesn't even bother to specify if the whims are good or bad. In fact, it doesn't even say that I'm going to be told what to do. Just "somewhat dictated" by the whims of authority.
So after I read this, instead of just saying "How the hell can anyone take astrology seriously?" like everyone else on the planet, I think to myself, "I could write a better horoscope than this. Surely Yahoo! could afford to hire an actual writer." And after 10 seconds of brainstorming I came up with:
Sagittarius: The powers that be may feel the need to rein you in. An acquiescence on your part, even if it is only temporary, may be the best course of action.
Here's why this is a much better horoscope:
1. Excitement. "Powers that be" "rein you in" "course of action". These are exciting, dramatic phrases that lead people to believe that their lives are much more important than they actually are, which is priority one for any horoscope.
2. Good advice. The message of this horoscope boils down to "Hey stupid. Do what your boss tells you to." Following this horoscope will likely lead to continued employment.
3. Vague, but applicable. What was I thinking of when I read this? The fact that I've been pulled over 4 times in the past five days for a missing head lamp. Perhaps making an appointment to get that fixed would be wise.
4. Vocab words. Do you feel smarter? I do. Because no one wants their horoscope to insult their intelligence.
This led me to believe that perhaps my true calling is "astrologer", but then I choked when I realized that writing horoscopes would require thinking up 12 such lines, plus a birthday forecast, every day for eternity without repeating. How could one go a week at this without running out of ideas? Would you have to go back and check all of your archives to make sure you didn't accidentally forecast death and destruction for Libras for seven straight days? How do actual horoscope writers deal with this sort of thing without becoming overtly snide or otherwise compromising the Very Serious tone that horoscopes are written in?
And then it occurred to me. Good horoscope writers would have to have a system to make sure they didn't get tedious with their predictions. They'd have to have some pre-determined method for chosing to forecast about love, work, friendships, or personal accomplishment, with good or bad implications, and with warnings or suggestions. The idea that horoscopes might actually be the result of an intricate and arbitrary system independent of the intricate and arbitrary system that it's supposed to be representing fills me with some strange sort of satisfaction, somehow. Does this merit further study? Perhaps.
Glorious Sound
I bought new speakers, which caused one of my computer's sound drivers to fail. Troubleshooting told me to uninstall it, and then reinstall it. After I uninstalled it, my computer restarted itself, and then I had sound. I have no idea how or why this course of events unfolded, but it did.
Now if I hadn't lost all of my mp3 files of dubious origin, I'd have something to listen to.
Now if I hadn't lost all of my mp3 files of dubious origin, I'd have something to listen to.
Friday, February 2, 2007
And I'm back.
I have a new computer now, thanks entirely to my dad. How shall I repay him? By making fun of him while telling the story on the internets. I can get away with this because I'm Dad's favorite by at least a few lengths. If you want to argue this, fine, but be aware that I was the only one to call or visit when he broke his back, and not only did I visit, I shoveled his driveway after the blizzard hit.
Anyway, the story. When my computer had a meltdown and refused to start-up, when ScanDisk assured me that my hard drive was irreparably destroyed by an Adobe Macromedia Flash Player update, I did the only thing I knew to do: go see my computer nerd dad for confirmation of this fact. Dad instinctively told me to bring it down into the basement, which is a veritable inner-sanctum of nerdosity.
After descending the stairs, the visitor is greeted by a gigantic table with a dungeon maze put together on it. Pewter miniatures may or may not be in the middle of roaming it, depending on whether my dad and his friends finished their previous game. On the bookshelves around the main room are about 35 years' worth of Dungeons and Dragons adventure packs and modules.
If D&D isn't your style of nerdness, then you can take a quick left and find my dad's giganto-huge collection of old war boardgames in their original shrink-wrap. As the frontrunner for the position of favorite, when dad finally keels over, I'll get first choice of the games. Those copies of "Broadsides and Boarding Parties" shall be mine, I tell you. Happily, there's a copy of "Hero Quest" for each of his 6 children.
Moving on, we come to the Lab. Dad has made himself a test lab, where he has spent the past week building his new computer from raw parts. He is quite proud of himself. The Lab is fully stocked with a static free placemat to put the computer on, a grounding bracelet which ensures no rogue static electricity will fry computer circuits, and a test monitor, mouse, and keyboard so the computer can be instantly tested for functionality.
Just beyond the Lab we find a whole lot of exercise equipment that probably never got used. That treadmill will be mine someday too.
Dad plugged my computer into the Lab and quickly confirmed that yes, my computer was dead and I hope there wasn't anything on your hard drive you wanted to keep. My hard drive was mostly filled with illegally downloaded MP3s from college that I kept telling myself I should just delete anyway, old Nintendo ROMs (which should really expose me as the hypocrite I am for making fun of my dad's nerdiness), and pictures. The pictures upset me a little bit, but most of them were pictures of me with my first ex-girlfriend AJ, and it's probably best to let those go anyway. So, no, outside of the odd document that I started and never finished, nothing of much value was lost.
So how did I end up with a computer so quickly? My dad has a computer network so he and his friends can take a break from slaying orcs in the basement by slaying each other over a LAN wargame of some kind. I mentioned my dad recently built a new computer from the ground up. This machine was to be added to the three computers already in his room, but that required a massive reorganization of the computer room, and when the dust cleared, it was obvious to all that three was the maximum number of computers that would fit in the room. As such, the fourth computer had no place, and was given to me. My new computer is my dad's fourth-stringer, and it's still over twice as powerful as my old one, which I got when I went to school in the fall of 2000. It is a 1.67 ghz Athlon machine, and I'm rather pleased with it thus far. I don't have sound yet, though, and I could use a DVD-ROM if I'm going to fulfill my genetic code and play nerdy computer games. Expect a return trip to the Lab in the near future to iron out these kinks.
Also, I leave the internets for three days, and when I return Molly Ivins and Barbaro are both dead. My old computer travels with a rather interesting karass.
Anyway, the story. When my computer had a meltdown and refused to start-up, when ScanDisk assured me that my hard drive was irreparably destroyed by an Adobe Macromedia Flash Player update, I did the only thing I knew to do: go see my computer nerd dad for confirmation of this fact. Dad instinctively told me to bring it down into the basement, which is a veritable inner-sanctum of nerdosity.
After descending the stairs, the visitor is greeted by a gigantic table with a dungeon maze put together on it. Pewter miniatures may or may not be in the middle of roaming it, depending on whether my dad and his friends finished their previous game. On the bookshelves around the main room are about 35 years' worth of Dungeons and Dragons adventure packs and modules.
If D&D isn't your style of nerdness, then you can take a quick left and find my dad's giganto-huge collection of old war boardgames in their original shrink-wrap. As the frontrunner for the position of favorite, when dad finally keels over, I'll get first choice of the games. Those copies of "Broadsides and Boarding Parties" shall be mine, I tell you. Happily, there's a copy of "Hero Quest" for each of his 6 children.
Moving on, we come to the Lab. Dad has made himself a test lab, where he has spent the past week building his new computer from raw parts. He is quite proud of himself. The Lab is fully stocked with a static free placemat to put the computer on, a grounding bracelet which ensures no rogue static electricity will fry computer circuits, and a test monitor, mouse, and keyboard so the computer can be instantly tested for functionality.
Just beyond the Lab we find a whole lot of exercise equipment that probably never got used. That treadmill will be mine someday too.
Dad plugged my computer into the Lab and quickly confirmed that yes, my computer was dead and I hope there wasn't anything on your hard drive you wanted to keep. My hard drive was mostly filled with illegally downloaded MP3s from college that I kept telling myself I should just delete anyway, old Nintendo ROMs (which should really expose me as the hypocrite I am for making fun of my dad's nerdiness), and pictures. The pictures upset me a little bit, but most of them were pictures of me with my first ex-girlfriend AJ, and it's probably best to let those go anyway. So, no, outside of the odd document that I started and never finished, nothing of much value was lost.
So how did I end up with a computer so quickly? My dad has a computer network so he and his friends can take a break from slaying orcs in the basement by slaying each other over a LAN wargame of some kind. I mentioned my dad recently built a new computer from the ground up. This machine was to be added to the three computers already in his room, but that required a massive reorganization of the computer room, and when the dust cleared, it was obvious to all that three was the maximum number of computers that would fit in the room. As such, the fourth computer had no place, and was given to me. My new computer is my dad's fourth-stringer, and it's still over twice as powerful as my old one, which I got when I went to school in the fall of 2000. It is a 1.67 ghz Athlon machine, and I'm rather pleased with it thus far. I don't have sound yet, though, and I could use a DVD-ROM if I'm going to fulfill my genetic code and play nerdy computer games. Expect a return trip to the Lab in the near future to iron out these kinks.
Also, I leave the internets for three days, and when I return Molly Ivins and Barbaro are both dead. My old computer travels with a rather interesting karass.
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