Tuesday, June 09, 2015

Live free or die, Bitches!

I GOT THE JOB!!!

New Hampshire, here I come...

Monday, June 08, 2015

Srsly...

working as a private duty nurse is trying my patience and getting on my last nerve. I have a patient whose mother is extremely particular in her son's care, which is fine and understandable, but she's also had a quarter of a century of practice and experience with her son and she just doesn't get that it can take time for a nurse, especially an inexperienced one, to master all the routines and details involved in caring for him. At least to her standards.

So it's truly great that she's scheduled a long-time caregiver to assist in my training, one who's known and nursed the patient since he came home from the hospital almost 25 years ago. Really, this lady has a wealth of experience and knowledge and I appreciate all she can teach me about my patient.

What I have no patience for is 8 hours of listening to New Age mumbo-jumbo, Eastern Mysticism, numerology, and astrology. Especially as it supposedly pertains to me. I don't want to hear which of my chakras are blocked, or how I can cleanse my energy. I don't want to know that 3 and 7 are my important numbers which indicate that I am an ethereal being. Or that because I am a Pisces I am "deep water" which meshes well with the patient's "hot water".

If I'm sweaty, it's because it's hot as balls in the room and I'm wrangling 180 pounds of dead weight, while wearing my dress-code ordered scrubs, not because I'm absorbing the patient's energy. I'm not a psychic vampire, ok? Nor am I an angel. And I don't buy that you can communicate telepathically with our patient. Or that he's communicated with you in dreams. If he's constipated, we know because he hasn't pooped in awhile and he's bloated, not because his "poop points" along his IT bands and on his trapezius muscles are tight. Dietary enzyme supplements don't cure cancer. Just because I'm a massage therapist doesn't mean I believe a bunch of poppycock. Where are the studies? Show me the evidence!

8 hours of being polite and professional have damn near broken me.

How do you tell someone you think they're full of shit without completely alienating them?