June, 2006 Archive

“after two months of trying! i’m so happy! i finally gained weight!”

i am totally visual, and there is  really no evidence to this joyful expression, so i eyed her suspiciously and tried to figure out where those gained pounds were hiding. maybe, the loose scrub tops was sort of camouflaging the supposedly obvious reason for this news. i continued to eye her, to no avail. unable to contain my cluelessness, i asked : “how many pounds?”

“TWO!”

now tell me, is there any reason why i should not hate this woman? i can’t think of anything either. so i told her to shut up and leave me alone. she thought it was a joke that i was dismissing her, so she continued to relate how she started doing my advise of eating at least three times a day, and she can’t believe how simple it was, and how it worked. if she was not one of those co-workers i can almost call a friend, i could have restrained her big mouth.

i can totally gain two pounds just by looking at pictures of food. and she has to TRY for TWO WHOLE MONTHS?

what is this, a joke?

it wasn’t, and she was really ecstatic, and excited, hoping that in the next two months, she can gain 2 pounds more, so she can reach her goal of gaining 5 pounds. she was very optimistic about her future in the weight gain department.

on the other hand, to say that i am pessimistic about my future in the weight loss department is the decade’s understatement. i’m stuck at going up and down, up and down, up and down (yeah, like a real yoyo) on the last 25 pounds i need to loose after two babies turned me into an insatiable, pregnant glutton who acted like it was the law of the land to gain 40 pounds with every pregnancy. and i know, it is not an excuse that they are just 18 months apart. thanks for pointing that out. yeah, my youngest is 22 months old now, thanks for asking. what’s funny?

what is wrong with this world? that’s what i’m asking.

tell me, should i just go home to my own planet, where people who find it hard to gain 5 pounds are placed in a really stinky jail and later executed, or should i stay here on earth for awhile and make the lives of people like them miserable?

to quote the great napoleon dynamite: “what would YOU do in a situation like this?”

if i don’t believe in the Bible’s ten commandments, i could have strangled her.

there is this particular commandment that says “thou (meaning I) shalt not kill. considering how an angry person becomes unbelivably, magically strong, only God knows where she would have ended if i did strangle her.

i am not usually cranky. usually. but i’m only human, and being in a room with a patient that talked and demanded attention for 12 hours made me loose it. she slept for a total of three hours, waking up every 15 minutes, saying the same nonsensical things. i was thinking it must be divine intervention that i was off for three nights, and on the next two nights that i was back, she was my patient again. maybe, the gods of patience education were trying to give me a lesson.

only 30 minutes before the PCA (patient care assistant) walked into the room to have her daily small talk with the “funny” patient, S yelled for water, “I”M THIRSTY, I’M THIRSTY, I’M THIRSTY! i got her a glass of water with ice, and she said she didn’t like it. i placed it at her table, and was just a few steps away when she sat up and threw the water on the floor. after 5 minutes, while the towel was still on the floor, the whole scene happened for the second time. still, she would occasionally yell that she is thirsty, just like she endlessly yelled that her name is S, that she is 23, that she is bleeding in her arm, and that she will divorce her husband.

at 0630, when my patience level was below zero, in came the VERY CARING PCA. ”are you are thirsty? okay, i’ll get you water.” she placed a straw on the pitcher and coached the patient to drink. she did drink and do what she was told, till she almost finished the whole pitcher. “oh, you OBVIOUSLY are VERY thirsty, i can see that. that’s why you do not pee, because you have no water. come on, drink some more.”

now, if the patient was actually not peeing, and did not put out 2 liters of urine in 12 hours, or have not drank 720 ml of water on my shift, because i was such an uncaring bitch who was extremely so lazy to carry my heavy ass to get water for her, i would have felt relieved that at last, a VERY CARING PCA was nice enough to do my job for me, and i would have sincerely thanked her for everything and called it a day.

but the whole yelling thing for 12 hours, gave me a larger than life headache and made me loose my supposed composure. on top of that, my other patient was a demented 79 year old woman who pointed her index finger at my face a number of times, threatening to curse to me till the day i die because i won’t let ler get out of the room to go to her imagined car, to pick up her imagined living parents. i was so frustrated with the malfunctioning human brains surrounding me, that i almost lost my own, almost believing that mental illness can rub off to one sane person in 24 hours.

it was not a surprise that her little implied self righteous message made me furious. really really furious. this is one of the few things that i absolutely hate about some of the people at work. when they say something, making it sound like they are the only ones with the ability and capacity to care. i hate people like them and i cannot, for the life of me stand them. they make me sick and they make me think about violent things. don’t you just want to get rid of these people?

only, i was thinking about the future of my kids, and how will they cope having a mother in prison.  if i end up being guilty of killing a VERY CARING PCA, the thought of talking to my little ones on the phone touching the glass that separates them from their criminal mother, put a little sense into my aching head. so, instead of pulling her hair in all direction, taking her eyes out of its socket, and kicking her nose till she breathes her last, all i said was: ”don’t say that, you don’t even know how much she drank and peed in my shift!”

to which, the VERY CARING PCA replied: “i did not say THAT.” almost whispering to herself. of course, she did not say that, she sounded it. man, it’s either i  read her correctly, or severe paranoia is the fruit of two nights of frustration.

i felt bad not for stopping her from continuously coaching the patient to drink water, because the patient robotically sucked at the straw that she shoved on her mouth, but i felt good sparing my hands of a VERY CARING PCA’s blood. however, my very own blood boiled when she actually had the gall to say goodbye to me when i said goodbye to the nurse next to her. she obviously thought saying goodbye was some sort of an apology. last time i checked, “goodbye” and “sorry” do not even rhyme.

well, VERY CARING PCA,
     i have no intention of talking to you ever again. i do not want people to say you are interacting with uncaring nurses like me. i remember exactly the very first time we met, when i joined you at the cafeteria table and you were waiting for your scheduled interview with the nurse manager. i vividly remember how you proudly related the stories you have about your previous job, and how you quit because all the RNs there do not know anything, and that they are all lazy. also, i remember you saying that you hate most of the RNs, because you think that they are mostly arrogant for thinking that just because they are RNs, they know better than you, when all they have ahead of you is their stupid license. imagine your shocked, flustered face when the other PCA who was with you softly told you i was an RN.
     i will not have anything to do with you ever. and i will defintely NOT care enough to give you water if you go crazy.
     but yeah, if i go crazy and ask for water, i can only wish a VERY CARING PCA like you, will be at my side giving me a pitcher of water till my abdomen distend and i end up feeling extremely bloated and more crazy. i won’t mind that at all. and since i am crazy, i’m sure one of the ten commandments will not apply to me and i can beat the living daylights out of you till you puke your guts out. i will not be labeled a criminal. because i’m crazy, and you can’t blame me for being crazy, right?

_____________

for the record, in my normal state of mind, i am not capable of any violent action. the above rant is overflowing with hyperbolic statements. i have no intention of strangling or killing anyone, i am just magniying my feeling of frustrations, and it proved to be cathartic. i will appreciate it if you think twice before you publish a hateful comment.

“my name is S. i am 23 years old. 33 years ago. i divorced my mother. because she left me for a better man. i don’t have kids. it is my birthday on tuesday. i will divorce my husband. my mom is coming to get me. i will divorce my mom. i’m going home. i want orange juice. your mother is coming. she is under the bed. your mother is dead. you killed her. i know how to count. my name is S. i am 23 years old. 33 years ago. i want orange juice. i will divorce my husband. it is my birthday on tuesday. it is my anniversary tomorrow. i divorced my mom. i love my husband. they are japanese. spanish speaking only. spanish speaking only. my name is S. i am 23 years old. your mother will get you. your mother is dead. you killed her. i want orange juice. i know how to count. they are japanese. my name is S. i am 23 years old. i love my husband. spanish speaking only. my mother is coming. she is behind you. you killed your mother. i will divorce my husband. i don’t have kids. i love my husband. my name is S…”

i apologize for the loud, redundant statements.

i was listening to this the whole night as i was sitting at the bedside of a bipolar patient who was obviously on her manic state. at about 2 in the morning, i was getting scared that all these things she was saying actually made sense. not the part about me killing my mother, but the fact that there are things that she is preoccupied with.

mental illness is so complicated. i don’t know which is more difficult. to be the patient, or to be the one who loves the patient.

when you have a damaged heart, liver or lungs, and nothing is working, either you get a transplant and survive. or you don’t, and you die. when you have a damaged mind, either you go to therapy and take meds, and exist. exist with that haunting fear that you are never the same again. you live, terrified. all the time.

S laughed and smiled at every sentence she said. she had all this energy coming from nowhere, but she is the object of everybody’s pity, or embarassment, or disgust. there is no difference between being mentally ill and being physically ill. that fact is out there, but there are still a lot of people who look at mentally ill people and think unpleasant, judgmental thoughts.

most human beings have sincere compassion towards those who lost a limb, a gallbladder, or a breast, but we usually have a vague, incomprehensible feelings towards the ones who lost their mind. i think this is sad, but it is the truth.

S’s husband was very caring and supportive. but it must be worse than hell, to see your wife like that…there, but not really there. it must be heartbreaking…to see somebody you love disappear, taking all your memories with her, not knowing if she will ever come back. and when. and if she will, will she “leave” again?

that uncertainty must be mind blowing.

they have the sweetest smile.

i have seen them in and out of our unit for the past year. to be honest, i kind of miss them.

G was in her early 40s i think. i initially admitted her from the ICU after a bilateral above the knee amputation that had a couple of complications. she was diabetic, and apparently had really bad necrotic wounds, it was not possible to save her legs. she had a tracheostomy tube, and was not yet fitted for the valve that will let her talk. it was challenging to place her in a comfortable position at first, but when i finally figured out how to do it,  i saw that really sweet smile for the first time.

with big brown eyes that communicated in absence of the spoken words, she went through me in an instant.

for more than 13 months, she was in the hospital. in that period of time, she coded twice, was revived, and was in the cardiac ICU for awhile. she went into respiratory distress about three or four times, and was sent to the Medical ICU. always, when she is stable to get out of the ICU, she was sent to us. the very last time i took care of her was when the doctors have sort of given up on weaning her from the tracheostomy mask, so she can be sent to a facility.

she would take the oxygen mask off, on purpose. when i checked her, she would look at me with those eyes that spoke a thousand thoughts. she was tired, and desperately wanted to rest. in peace. i knew what she was saying, and it broke my heart.

for 13 months, her husband and son visited her. he would comb her short curly hair, whisper stories to her, and just sit there, holding her hand. he would practice speaking english to me, and ask me if he was saying the words correctly. he would ask if i thought she was getting better, and ask when can they finally take her home. their son, who is about 10 year old, would usually stand outside the unit, waiting for his father, until they got a yes from the child services that he can go in and see his mom. it was then that i saw that smile.

when her husband and son leave, i would tell G that she was blessed for having a caring husband, and a loving son. after working hard at wherever it was they ask illegal immigrants to work, he would drive for a 4 hour round trip to see her. stay at her bedside for over an hour, get home just before midnight, and go back to work the next day. day in. day out. for over a year, consistently. that kind of devotion is not very common nowadays.

but G, like everybody else who has been confined to a small room that smelled nothing like home, who has gotten all the bugs one can possible get by staying in the hospital, was always depressed. she didn’t see the point in getting better. she would point to her stumps and her tracheostomy, raise her arms in the air, and shake her head, fighting tears. usually, i have no smart or sensitive sounding answers to that nonverbal statement. i kept quiet and touched her shoulder. occasionally, in my thoughts, i agreed with her. i didn’t see the point either, but i told her otherwise.

two weeks ago, while in the cardiac ICU, G’s wish was finally granted. a long awaited rest that took forever to come. the news didn’t really surprise me, but it still made me sad. i remember those eyes. those smiles that didn’t come very often. i remember her husband. his eyes that showed both hope and lack of it, everytime he saw her. his reserved but genuine smile that occasionally calmed her down, but mostly made her lonely. i remember their son. his confused eyes that seemed to have endless list of questions. his innocent smile that made her seem so happy.

i’ll never see those smiles again, but i’ll never forget them.

it’s father’s day, and i am thinking of how G’s husband deserve that “father of the year award”. 

this is what i think: when a husband treats his wife with such love, thoughtfulness, and respect, he is not only showing his children what kind of a husband he is, he is also telling them what kind of a father he is.

and, if you really want to know the truth… i don’t find it ironic that instead of my own, i am talking about other children’s father on father’s day.