tHe HoSpiTaL

It’s been a while since I’ve written. It’s not for lack of things going on in my life or new thoughts on current events. I just find that life is keeping me really busy and when I take some time out, I just can apply my thoughts long enough to write, although I’ve been longing to put some of this down on paper, or computer.

Being a real live nurse is very different from nursing school.

You go into nursing with all these high hopes and you know that people are not always very nice, but you believe that if you act a certain way, you can get anyone to soften a little, or you won’t let their mental illness get to you. Well, yesterday proved me wrong. Sunday proved me wrong. Saturday proved me wrong. I’ll just share about one patient.

This guy is going to go home on hospice care. So, there’s a lot of psychosocial issues there for anyone, but he was already mentally “off” before that. He doesn’t have an actual psychiatric diagnosis, but he’s on an antipsychotic medication and another one for anxiety, and it doesn’t take very long interacting with him to figure out that this guy is not all right in his head. One minute he’ll be acting like a fairly decent human being and interacting in a courteous manner, and the next minute he’ll completely go off and just be mean and rude. Anything can set him off, and you can’t do anything except for hold in whatever you’re thinking and come back later. After a few minutes he’ll be alright again, usually, and sometimes he’ll even apologize for his behaviour. I actually thought I enjoyed being around psychiatric patients, but this guy was ridiculous. I find myself wanting to get sucked into an argument with him, but you just have to hold it back. Smile and say stupid stuff like “I’m sorry I wasn’t here so that you could take a shower sooner.” I mean, I feel for him. It’s hard being in the hospital and not having control over your life, down to when you can even take a shower, but it’s hard to feel too bad for someone when they are going off on you, and the reason why you couldn’t come earlier is because you were getting HIS medication that he has to take in order for his heart to keep working. Not to mention I DO have other patients that need care too. So, from an objective place right now, sitting in my apartment, I can feel a lot more empathy than I do when I’m in this patient’s room getting told off. Too bad he had to wait 20 extra minutes. There’s nothing I can do about that, and he doesn’t have to be belligerent. And so the day was filled with lots of stuff like that. One minute he’s happy and the next he’s really mad. I kept reminding myself that he really had a lot of issues and couldn’t control himself (either b/c he physically couldn’t or b/c life taught him to be that way). The shower thing actually didn’t upset me in the morning. I took it in stride, knowing this patient’s mental history, but after you spend 13 hours interacting with a guy like this, you just want to scream or cry or both, but you definitely don’t want to spend another second around him. He’s been on the unit for a long time now, and none of the nurses want to have him. He’s so mean some times! We’re all there because we want to help, not hurt! We shouldn’t have to deal with people being mean to us! Nursing is already hard work without that. So, yesterday made me wish that I was working in pediatrics instead of with adults. Kids are a lot easier to love sometimes. They may not like you, but it’s because you have to stick them and they don’t understand why, and it’s not because they had to wait 20 mins to take a shower. I should have started praying when the guy first was difficult to handle, but I didn’t do it until I was just completely filled to the brim with frustration… "God, help me to love him as you love him. Let me see him as the child of God that he is." And then I was repeating to myself, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” That verse didn’t have a ton of meaning for me in the past, because I don’t have any enemies and nobody persecutes me. Now that I have to interact with some very difficult patients it takes on a whole new meaning. Not that these people are my enemies or persecuting me, but at some points during the day it’s a little difficult to tell the difference.

I don’t want you to think that I had an awful day yesterday. I didn’t. My other patient was very sweet and her family was great. Her family brought her a bunch of really good Mediterranean food. I know that it was good, because they made me eat some every time I went into the room. There must be some rule against that, but oh well. I tried to say no, but they insisted, and they were so nice, and the food was actually really good. I felt so bad for her. Her IV went bad, and she really had no veins. I didn’t even try and stick for a new one. Two very experienced nurses tried, and after 10 tries, they got an IV in. The woman was crying by the end. I know it hurt her so bad. One stick hurts, much less 10. And the place where they finally got the IV in is a really painful spot to get stuck and an awkward place for an IV.