I work as a Home Health nurse while I am getting through the end of nursing school. During an twelve hour overnight job, I wrote the following haikus whilst trying to stay awake at 3AM which I feel are a rather poignet insight into my character:
The focused student
Learn! Because after the test
She'll forget this crap
Red roses in a vase
Starting to wilt and show age
What a waste of cash
Oh stupid black dog
Wake up the patient again
And YOU'LL need a nurse
Warm heater air blows
I drape my shirt on your vent
Oh such warm buttocks
Dumb empty Coke bottle
Laughing at my exhaustion
Laugh in the trash can
(This one is a bit darker, but keep in mind it was three in the morning:)
Diligent nurse
Watches her patient all night
"Just die! I want sleep"
What Next?
09 January, 2010
05 January, 2010
Update, finally
Hello world, I am hailing from Portland, my new home. Anyway, I am here and am very happy to be out of Iowa. Very happy.
Anyway, a new friend just asked me why I haven't updated my blog in a while. He also seemed to express a bit of surprise over the fact that I hated my new (and please God, temporary) home health care job that I have. I hope to answer both of these queries in My New Rant (TM).
Ahem.
As you know, there is a a huge health care problem we face today. Too many sick people and not enough money. And as you also may have noticed, there is another problem which is less pressing where funeral homes get these poor people who have lost their loved ones to spend way to much money on their uptake.
I will connect these two in a minute. Grandma dies, and the family is either told or feels that their final act will indicate how much they loved Grandma. I mean, what cold hearted bastard is going to place her in a pine coffin and throw her in the sea? Even though she is dead and doesn't care, it just feels wrong to not do the best. Even when the best is a total waste of energy and time.
You see, I am not a advocate of the so-called "death panels", but I do feel that money would be better spent if we could figure out a way to put people who are in Hospice and have no quality of life out of their misery and spent that money, say, giving a five-year-old a new kidney. But of course going around and telling people to euthanize grandma is a step above telling people to just dump that corpse into a patch of forest that desperately needs fertilization. It isn't going to fly.
Keep in mind that I am talking about people who have no quality of life. People who don't know who they are, where they are, and who do not enjoy anything. People who can't get out of bed and have bedsores and people who are in constant pain and stress because of all the things that we are doing to them to "make them comfortable". When a person is screaming in pain as you roll them to clean up a BM or apply a dressing to an open bedsore, you really have to wonder what you are keeping them alive for.
I hope that I never see this. Someone please-- about 150 units on Insulin in my ass should really do the trick, thank you. Take the money that you would have used to keep me alive for another year and go feed Africa.
So why I hate my job-- well, although home health has a romantic ring to it-- helping the suffering, easing pain, yadda yadda yadda, most of the people that I see are pushed aside, forgotten. I mean, if you loved you sick little mother so much that you just had to keep her around for another year so that the two of you could bask in each other's glory-- even if she didn't recognise you-- would you really hire someone to take care of her for 10 bucks an hour and whose only job requirement was a GED? I mean, these aren't exactly the kid from Lorenzo's Oil that I am taking care of. Yeah, I am sure those patients exist, but most of what your average home health worker is seeing is a person that is forgotten. It's sad, and it's a waste of their time.
I think that Lorenzo from Lorenzo's Oil is a good example of why to keep someone around-- not that he kind of got better at the end, but that he had people who loved him enough to really take care of him. Had he been forgotten in a nursing home and neglected until his sacrum as pushing through the skin, I might have felt differently for the poor kid.
I also want to finish with a story from Thailand. My teenaged students refused to wear their helmits on thier motorbikes. I woudl bed, threaten, and bribe them to wear them, but the best I got was for them to take a helmit, wear it, and then take if off when they got around the bend. One day, a guy crashed outside our school and half the school watched as he was taken into a car and driven to the hospital, where he died of a brain hemorrhage. Most people knew of this poor guy. I fully intended to make a point about this man. The next lecture, I told the students sternly how sad this man-- a husband and a father-- had to die when all he had to do was wear a ten dollar helmet, which would have very likely saved his life. My class listened patiently and politely to my stern lecture and then one brave student raised his hand and asked "Teacher, why Americans afraid of die?" I was so taken aback by the question that I didn't even bother to correct his grammar. Why are we so afraid of death? And who is more afraid of death, the person facing it, or the ones they will leave behind?
Anyway, end of rant. I hope that I haven't offended anyone too much.
Anyway, a new friend just asked me why I haven't updated my blog in a while. He also seemed to express a bit of surprise over the fact that I hated my new (and please God, temporary) home health care job that I have. I hope to answer both of these queries in My New Rant (TM).
Ahem.
As you know, there is a a huge health care problem we face today. Too many sick people and not enough money. And as you also may have noticed, there is another problem which is less pressing where funeral homes get these poor people who have lost their loved ones to spend way to much money on their uptake.
I will connect these two in a minute. Grandma dies, and the family is either told or feels that their final act will indicate how much they loved Grandma. I mean, what cold hearted bastard is going to place her in a pine coffin and throw her in the sea? Even though she is dead and doesn't care, it just feels wrong to not do the best. Even when the best is a total waste of energy and time.
You see, I am not a advocate of the so-called "death panels", but I do feel that money would be better spent if we could figure out a way to put people who are in Hospice and have no quality of life out of their misery and spent that money, say, giving a five-year-old a new kidney. But of course going around and telling people to euthanize grandma is a step above telling people to just dump that corpse into a patch of forest that desperately needs fertilization. It isn't going to fly.
Keep in mind that I am talking about people who have no quality of life. People who don't know who they are, where they are, and who do not enjoy anything. People who can't get out of bed and have bedsores and people who are in constant pain and stress because of all the things that we are doing to them to "make them comfortable". When a person is screaming in pain as you roll them to clean up a BM or apply a dressing to an open bedsore, you really have to wonder what you are keeping them alive for.
I hope that I never see this. Someone please-- about 150 units on Insulin in my ass should really do the trick, thank you. Take the money that you would have used to keep me alive for another year and go feed Africa.
So why I hate my job-- well, although home health has a romantic ring to it-- helping the suffering, easing pain, yadda yadda yadda, most of the people that I see are pushed aside, forgotten. I mean, if you loved you sick little mother so much that you just had to keep her around for another year so that the two of you could bask in each other's glory-- even if she didn't recognise you-- would you really hire someone to take care of her for 10 bucks an hour and whose only job requirement was a GED? I mean, these aren't exactly the kid from Lorenzo's Oil that I am taking care of. Yeah, I am sure those patients exist, but most of what your average home health worker is seeing is a person that is forgotten. It's sad, and it's a waste of their time.
I think that Lorenzo from Lorenzo's Oil is a good example of why to keep someone around-- not that he kind of got better at the end, but that he had people who loved him enough to really take care of him. Had he been forgotten in a nursing home and neglected until his sacrum as pushing through the skin, I might have felt differently for the poor kid.
I also want to finish with a story from Thailand. My teenaged students refused to wear their helmits on thier motorbikes. I woudl bed, threaten, and bribe them to wear them, but the best I got was for them to take a helmit, wear it, and then take if off when they got around the bend. One day, a guy crashed outside our school and half the school watched as he was taken into a car and driven to the hospital, where he died of a brain hemorrhage. Most people knew of this poor guy. I fully intended to make a point about this man. The next lecture, I told the students sternly how sad this man-- a husband and a father-- had to die when all he had to do was wear a ten dollar helmet, which would have very likely saved his life. My class listened patiently and politely to my stern lecture and then one brave student raised his hand and asked "Teacher, why Americans afraid of die?" I was so taken aback by the question that I didn't even bother to correct his grammar. Why are we so afraid of death? And who is more afraid of death, the person facing it, or the ones they will leave behind?
Anyway, end of rant. I hope that I haven't offended anyone too much.
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