With a bang

This birthday taught me about the power of community and friendship and staying put and working hard and making roots and making wishes.

Thanks to all of my friends and my family who give me confidence and love and wisdom and put up with my moods, and any drama, and make me one of the luckiest eeking-towards thirty-year olds I know.

convenience

A pet-peeve:

The way hospitals, slowly but surely, train those who work in them to think less about the people it was built to serve, and more about their own convenience for the evening. We all enter with the intent of helping people. But slowly, men and women, boys and girls, are all turned to patients. As street clothes are removed and gowns are dawned, the people that we want to help transform into people that we work for - and who we expect to work for us.

Last night I was told to ask two separate supportive families (wives, daughters, sons, friends) to leave two sad, hurt, scared patients when it was HS (the hour of sleep). One man wanted desperately to have his wife stay... "but who will help me go to the bathroom?" he asked, worring, when it was suggested that she leave. We have no explicate rules on our floor regarding guests, or visiting hours. However, it was argued that the women were not allowed to be in a room whose beds were filled with men, and that the rooms were too small for the nurses to reach the equipment if there were other family members sleeping in the room. Since I was the nurse who would need to navigate to the IV poles and monitors, and was more than willing to do so, I thought I should make the decision regarding my patients. "No," came the answers from above. "They need to leave." No reason. Just fear of being bothered. Desire to keep the floor quiet and controlled. In exchange, more worrying, perhaps more pain, and less comfort for our patients.

It is this attitude that bothers me.

1:11am and counting

I am working my first night at el hospital. 6 hours down. 6 to go.

It is super quite on the floor tonight - although every bed is packed with people.

Today's floor is a diverse group - a 26 year old psychotic female who has been gently swaying for the past hour, holding a cup of water, stating that "it gives me balance" when I dare try to remove it - a dying man, with his family, finally sleeping tonight - a 31 year olf Brazilian man, readmitted for a surgery that shouldn't land him in the hospital another time, unable to sleep, perhaps thinking about his adorable baby that visited this evening - an Ethiopian father of three recovering from surgery after a bad break of his wrist, scared to be alone, shrouded by blankets to block out the light he refuses to let me turn off - and many more, slumbering, staring at the ceiling - medicated to fight their pain - wanting sleep - wanting to go home.

Tonight each story intrigues me. Each person brings with them to the hospital such a different perspective and reason. Why is my 26 year old friend in such a state? Some suspect a recent trauma, some suspect a tissue disorder, no one knows, and her words, seemingly plucked from her brain in random order, barely suggest a story and are anything but trustworthy.

In some way tonight, however, her words start making sense, and remind me of how often I too am simply pulling thoughts out of my spinning brain to verbalize. She, a grad student, my age, reminds me of how close we all are to such a line between sense and nonsense. How we only see the world through our own unique eyes, and no one sees it in quite the same way we do.