First Week Fears and the Importance of Fuck

How I feeeeeel: I spent the majority of this first week not knowing where to go or what to do. I don’t have the rapport with nurses, techs, or doctors and I really missed making fun of them. I missed coming to work and seeing all the familiarities that I love; Jaci’s angry face, Brennan always saving my ass, Tech Sean telling me to get off my (recently saved) ass, Chris’s laugh and farts, Cori’s bubbly hugs, and everyone making fun of Dennis.

Those longing feelings were abated by a handful of my coworkers asking me about leaving Riverbend and starting traveling. They are unhappy at Riverbend, and I choose to believe it is because I left and not the culmination of bad leadership, understaffing, and compassion fatigue.

Pining aside, I felt scared and overwhelmed. These feelings, while natural, were not things I have felt at work for years. Now here I was, the bumbling new guy who couldn’t figure out how to text on his work phone. Yeah, the Salem phones can text. Additionally, some of their most important equipment were things I had never used before.

Like the IVs. I had seen pictures of these long, pen-like IVs before, but I had never used them until this week. All my IV experience came from closed system IVs that were easy to use. A nurse asked me to start an IV on one of her patients. “No problem,” I said. I then made a bloody mess of her patients arm and bed. Like many white men before me, I stumbled through something I wasn’t comfortable with because I was too weak and prideful to ask for help and, like many mediocre white men before me, I succeeded while looking very stupid.

About the people: The nurses that oriented me have been very kind and helpful. They respect my knowledge and skill while politely showing me the right way to go about things. I’ve listened to them talk about their lives, spouses, and plans for time off, but something struck me as odd.  There’s something I can’t trust. No one is unhappy, and no one curses. Nurses and techs wander the halls sharing pleasantries and lighthearted jokes. The charge nurses don’t look beaten down. No one is looking at the number of patients in the lobby, and how they’re piling up, and saying, “fuck fuck fuck fuck this is fucking ridiculous fuck fuck shit fuck.” There’s a Stepford Wife happy sheen on the faces that surrounded me.

“They’re going to kill me or assimilate me,” I texted some friends. It came to be the end of my orientation and I was preparing myself to have a quiet and lonely contract. I like to curse. I like to make dark jokes. Laughing in the face of the misery around me has given me the strength to rise above it. Using humor to cope with the unchangeable gives me the power to spit in the face of the truly abhorrent. If I can’t change what happens, then I should be able to react to it however I see fit. But probably not with these bland randos.

With despair creeping in, I sat in the breakroom eating snap peas during the last lunch break of my last orientation shift. A night shift nurse with obsidian hair asked me how my previous hospital was. “Honestly, Riverbend is a fucking nightmare,” I said before thinking. I do a lot of things before thinking. “Oh fuck,” I said, doubling down on the profanity. “I didn’t mean to swear.”

“I don’t give a fucking shit what you say,” this nurse replied. We talked back and forth about how everyone I worked with seemed like an overly sanitized killjoy. “That’s just day shift. Those of us on night shift don’t give a fuck.” I had always worked nights and my old night shift crew was the same way.

This revelation put me at ease. I have a hard time being anything but exactly as I am. Watching what I say is difficult a lot of the time. Hearing this nurse curse gave me the permission to be myself; truly, I had changed inside. I wasn’t there to make a good first impression so that people liked me, and I didn’t lose my job. No, I was there to fill staffing holes and do my work. In twelve weeks, I’ll be gone. I will just be myself and say whatever I want.

It was missing the word fuck and hearing it from another person that gave me this mindset. I’ll never downplay using my full range of expression ever again. Fuck, I salute thee.

About the hospital: In a previous post, I mentioned that people loved working in the Salem ER, and now I can see why. They have departmental flow down to a science. They have a nurse whose job is dedicated to placing every patient from the lobby or ambulance. This person keeps a global view of the department and allocates resources accordingly.

Salem ER also uses an older version of the computer charting system that Riverbend uses—Epic, for all you EMR aficionados out there—but they are using it in exceedingly more competent ways. The staff is trained to recognize different things on the census board which prompts them to complete tasks. If I need a blood draw done, I highlight the patient on the census and turn them red to request a tech to do the draw. Techs see this and come do it. I can do the same thing if I need an order from the doctor. And they can do it for me.

I can’t wait to see more of the nuances of how this department runs so I can steal them and try to implement them at whatever hospital I settle down in.

Shit I said to Patients:

Patient: (while I was changing his bedding and cleaning up his bowel movement): Gonna have to lift my balls up to get all of it. Sorry about my long balls.

Me: If I get to be your age and my balls are this long, I might just use them to hang myself.

Us: (mutual laughter and a high five when everything is cleaned up)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Me: Okay, ma’am, I need to start an IV on you and draw some blood, so we can run some tests.

Patient: Okay, but you better not poke me twenty times.

Me: Don’t worry. I’m really good at getting the IV on the 19^th try.

Patient: Oh, you rascal.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Patient: I’ve had 12 heart attacks before and this feels kinda like that. Maybe it feels a little lesser than the others.

Me: Or maybe you’re just getting better at heart attacks.

Patient: Oh, heavens, I hope not.

Me: No, most people that are really good at heart attacks only have one and then they’re done.

Patient: (laughing) I suppose that’s true. I hope I’m never that good at them.

Me: You won’t be while I’m around.

 

What I’m into this week: Music—Ancient Names, Pt I by Lord Huron, Movie—Get Out is on hulu and even better on the second watch, Podcast—Whiting Wongs 14 – Gender Neutral Scripts and the Great Shark Debate.