Thursday, July 30, 2009

Live blog: Overnight shift at the hospital

Believe me when I say that this will probably be more interesting due to my various antics to stay awake and keep busy than it will be for the things that go on at the hospital during the night. Especially, since I'm back on the chronic care unit. I was on the surgical unit unexpectedly last night and it was so drag-yourself-on-the-floor fatiguing.

8:45pm - Patients 1 and 2 are asleep in their cribs. They will stay asleep until I leave at 7:00am tomorrow morning (my gods willing). Patient 3 has a personal caregiver 24/7, so all I have to do is give him his feeds and his meds. I am now starting my Japanese exercises. Having mastered hiragana, I will now practice katakana. Kanji that's more complicated than "person", "big" and "I" can go straight to hell.

9:10pm - Okay, I lied. I actually haven't started studying Japanese yet. First I had to eat my delicious sammich (egg bread and spicy sausage slices - hell yes!) while browsing websites about terrible celebrity fashion. Now that my delicious sammich is all gone, I worry that I will be hypoglycemic later in the night. Thankfully, I also have a peach. But I'm no good at picking out peaches and fear that it won't be ripe enough and that I will be sorely disappointed as I have been so many times before with this particular fruit. Alas. Also, I have just tried out an anime site. It isn't blocked, BUT! this computer doesn't have flash player which pretty much makes it impossible to watch any videos on it. Victory snatched away!

9:15pm - But apparently it has a DVD player. Fate is kicking me in the butt, because of course, I don't HAVE any DVDs with me. Unless I want to watch Dora the Explorer or other kiddy stuff we have on the unit. And that's a no. What will I do when I have kids and I have to buy them crappy DVDs? Will I have to actually WATCH with them? I'd much rather read books with them or play with toys or make up imaginary play. Maybe it will be a "Mommy's naptime" activity. "Here kids, go watch this blue dog count to five ad nauseam while mommy honkshus for 2 hours. ZZZZZZZZ." Oh yeah, that will totally work. *thumbs up*

10:40pm - Slowly getting through the different types of verbs and how to conjugate them. It's easy enough once you have the rules down, but it's a matter of knowing enough verbs. Ever so slowly getting there.

11:30pm - There are sleep studies being performed in the room opposite ours. Which means the alarm rings whenever the heart rate, respiration rate or oxygen saturation drops below a certain limit. The alarm's so loud that I thought it was a fire alarm or something. One kid keeps ringing so often that it's waking up the other kid who's getting the study done. Which means that the other kid will probably have to do the study again tomorrow night, since the results from tonight won't be accurate. Finally, we've put tape over the speaker portion of the monitor and it's been quiet ever since.

12:30am - My preceptor's gone for her 2.5 hour nap. I usually sleep later than her, because 1) I have trouble falling asleep during work unless I'm tired out and 2) the later I take my nap, the less hours I have left to work when I wake up. Plus, I'm really into my studies now. 2 more chapters in this book and I should have the means to say basic sentences in Japanese. I think, I will now take a short break, however, to do some charting. Since I love making lists and crossing stuff off...
- do charting [done]
- finish off 2 more chapters [done]
- turn off the feeding pump and flush the gastric tube for patient 3 [done]
- take nap [done]
- wake up [done]
- do meds and more feedings [done]
- read Aishiteruze Baby online

4:15am - Back from my own nap. I've been taking my night shift naps on a spare cot that I drag into the conference room just next door. I put my eye mask on, zip up my hoody and huddle under the blankets. Even then, it takes me a good while to fall asleep. Tonight, I had an anime theme song running through my head. I have my cellphone alarm to wake me up, but I forgot to tell that to the PCA who scared the crap out of me by knocking on the door just ahead of the alarm. Ahhhh well.

5:00am - Well, I'm done everything on my list except reading Aishiteruze Baby and I don't feel like doing that just now. 2 hours left and I'm stuck for what to do? Should I study more? Read the news?

5:10am - What's this, what's this? I've been snooping around the computer, trying to see if anyone has copied a video worth watching onto it and found "Midnight Sun - partial draft", a PDF file. That sounds familiar, I thought. So I opened it up. And got through the middle of the second page and said, "Waaaaaaaaaait a minute." Title based on astronomical phenomenon? Character names taken from a smutty book in the 18th century, like Rosalie and Emmett? Pointless drivel that kept me completely uninterested? The name "Edward" hogging a whole line by itself AND italicized? This is a Twilight book! I closed the file with the speed of a hypochondriac shoving away a leper. (Digression: What a curious sentence.) But I find myself wondering, who was reading this at 6:30am on May 12th, 2009? Well, I do know that there were McGill students doing shifts here during that time. Bwahahahaha~
I don't know why I find this so amusing. A sense of gleeful superiority, I guess. I've been careful to avoid anything Twilight-related and am determined to keep it that way. Forever. Well! This has given me a second wind. I will fetch a glass of water and find something else to do!

5:40am - Found some tea biscuits in the kitchen. Sweeeeeeet. One of the sleep study kids are awake, thanks to the freaking alarm of the other kid. Now she's wandering up and down the hallway, practicing her recently acquired support-free ambulation. She's walking without holding onto anything, I mean. My kids better sleep until 6:50am at least. I mean it!

6:56am - Everyone woke up around 6:15am, just when I was trying to chart and tiptoeing around. Ah well. Kids are in playpens or walking around. It's great that some of these toddlers have started walking by themselves, but it makes it so tiring to chase them around and stop them from shoving electric plugs up their noses. No more night shifts until the end of the summer! Yatta!

Friday, July 24, 2009

Trying to stay awake as late as possible tonight.

The next five shifts for me are all overnight, so I need to change my sleep pattern. So let us see how much I can ramble on.

I've been reading Rousseau's Confessions over the summer. Just during my breaks at work, you understand. I tried reading it straight through back in high school and just couldn't do it. An autobiography can be so tiresome to read. Maybe my age also had something to do with the repugnance with which I abandoned it? Anyhoo, I'm past the middle point now and I honestly don't know what to think. I don't, or didn't know anything about Jean-Jacques Rousseau. I know nothing of philosophy except for that darn "Philosophy of Science" course I took in U of T and I hated it, to put it simply. I can't even be bothered to elaborate on what a waste of money and time that was.

The only other book of Rousseau's I have in my possession is La Nouvelle Héloïse and I haven't read it yet. I mean to, after Confessions and I hope I can get past the epistolary style. I know the first time I read "Les Liaisons Dangereuses", I was extremely confused about what was going on.

How do I find this autobiography of a man who describes himself as "too loving"? I suppose if he's being as truthful as he claims to be, then I can forgive his effusiveness. But here's the general feeling that I felt while reading:

Rousseau the child, clever but not thoroughly educated - Understandable.
Rousseau the teen, easily swayed by passions and whims - What a dumbass.
Rousseau the young adult, too full of dreams to be any useful - Still a dumbass.
Rousseau the somewhat successful adult, useful but still all over the place - Eh.

Reading the above, you can probably tell that I'm not too horribly impressed by his life. But maybe that's an indication that he really is trying to be honest about everything he's done. He's not trying to build himself up as anything more. All the impressions I got of his stages in life are what he thought of himself, I think. So that's good. Will it make the book very interesting for anyone but himself (and maybe his friends who are mentioned in it)? Probably not. I feel as though I'm reading it to be reading it. And that's never a good thing to say about a book, is it?

I have a feeling that once I'm done with it, it'll go back on my shelf and stay there for a long looooong time. ^_^;;

Friday, July 3, 2009

What a day...

I worked 12 hour shifts on Wednesday and Thursday. Wednesday was alright, even though it WAS Canada Day. Thursday was admittedly more difficult. When you've been out of the house for 13.5 hours only to drag yourself back out early the next day, your brain is going to falter a bit.

I was okay until about 3:30pm on Thursday. That's when I got back from my lunch. I work in the tech-dependent unit, which is a room with 3 patients and a nurse's desk in the corner. The kids there are mostly toddlers with tracheostomies and require constant supervision and oxygen monitoring. One baby was out on day pass with his parents and the other two toddlers were napping. So I was free to drift along in my Elvish sleep. The 3.5 hours passed without incident and my shift was over.

There's a mini bus schedule that I made on a cue-card that has all the important times (when my shifts start and end) for the bus that conveniently connects the hospital and my apartment along a road without much traffic. I love that bus.

Yesterday, however, I left the building and realized that the bus wouldn't come for another 15 minutes. No problem, the hospital is right next to a subway station. What I didn't account for was the half-zombified state of my brain.

I went to Atwater métro station, paid my fare and went down to the platform. I remember looking across the tracks to the opposite platform and noting that it was heading towards Honoré-Beaugrand (which is kind of like Kennedy station on the Bloor-Danforth line). What I didn't note was that THAT was the direction I was supposed to be heading in. Believe me when I tell you that I am well acquainted with this particular station. Last fall, I did my clinical placement at this same hospital. I go down there to shop at the Korean market which is nearby. I know Atwater station damn well, is my point. Now why, on this particular day, I decided to go down the staircase on the left instead of the right is a mystery. Maybe my brain was angry with me for subjecting it to the smell of chlorhexidine all day, I don't know. But there I was, placidly looking up at the TV screen and wondering what the weather would be like in the evening for 5 minutes straight without even thinking about whether I was on the right platform or not.

The train arrived and I got on. Now, my station, Place des Arts, is 5 stops east from Atwater. So one doesn't want to zonk out completely during the subway ride. Zonking out partially is okay, though. While I was in this haze, I heard the announcement, "Attention. Attention. Charlevoix station is closed. Buses are available from..." I thought to myself, "That's strange. They don't do that announcement unless you're going west on the green line." Then came the announcement, "Next station, Lionel-Groulx." It took 2 seconds to sink in. That's right. I was heading west. Thankfully, it was only one station in the wrong direction, so I got off.

Lionel-Groulx is like Bloor, where you can transfer between the green and orange lines. But unlike Bloor where you change floors to change lines, here you change floor to change your direction. Nonsense, you cry! I tell you, it's true. My brain apparently wasn't done screwing with me, so I mindlessly walked across the platform and got on the train, thinking that my misadventures were at an end.

I wouldn't be posting this if that was the end. Oh no. Being squishy of brain, I had changed to the orange line. When they announced, "Next station, Place St. Henri", I actually said aloud, "Bloody hell!" By this time, I would have been better off just sitting on the bench in front of the hospital and waiting for the damn bus. With a supreme burst of effort, I forced myself to stay alert and made it back to Place des Arts without making any more blunders.

All that was left was to take a bus for a short distance to my apartment. Imagine what I discovered when I exited the station! It's Internation Jazz Festival time here in Montreal and all the streets in the area were closed off for the concerts. This was the last straw. I was hungry, I was tired, it was bloody hot and sticky. If I were a child of less principles, I would have thrown a screaming tantrum right then and there. (Fact: My parents swear that I have never thrown tantrums, just death glares which is infinitely more endurable.)

Grumbling, I walked to my apartment. It was only a 10 minute walk, but I let myself wear the cranky pants that had been collecting dust in the closet of mind. Once I was home though, a shower and some food fixed EVERYTHING. Ahhhh~ Then I passed out on the bed and slept the night away. ^_^

Later in the month, I have to work three 12-hour NIGHT shifts in a row. I'll be happy if I don't somehow end up in Ottawa after that.