Dogue

I'm beginning to sound like a broken record at work, and I'm sure you guys are thinking, "Whiney wuss. Deal with it, already." Okay, I confess, I'm a bit of a whiner when it comes to things which require actual motivation and energy beyond that requisite to sitting on the couch for long periods of time, staring into space vacantly.

But really, last night at work from 3p-7p took the cake. I "floated" which is nursing code for "Ha ha, you're fucked!" A notorious management-born strategy for solving staffing problems on floors on than your own, floating is enormously and I would say almost unanimously unpopular amongst non-float pool nurses. I had the unique privilege last night to find out the root cause for this deep, deep hatred: you get the "heavy" patients on the floor that no one else wants. It felt like some kind of hellish punishment: all of my five patients were incontinent and bedridden and demented, three were on contact precautions and varying degrees of aphasic and dysphagic, one was on a tube feed, one on a heparin drip, three on maintenance fluids, and every single blessed one of them needed to be changed up in the course of the shift.

And that wasn't the worst of it (it got super bad; not code bad, but almost as bad in a different non-patient related way) but I'm beginning to bore myself now, so I'll shut up.

Because sometimes, you need to sit down, shut up, and pet the pooch. The first thing I did when I got home last night was literally run to the dog and lavish inordinate amounts of affection on his person. Having a pet is therapy, I don't care how cheesy and Oprah self-help it sounds.

I tried to take some pictures of him today, but most of them ended up of his forehead, or his ass as he slunk out of sight of that stupid annoying flash, dumb human. He got a bath today, and looks all puffy-headed and darling, but his pictures don't really do him justice. His photographic expressions range from mildly petulant to extreme loathing (presumably of being photographed) and he needs a little bit of grooming but on the balance he is a cute little chap if I do say so myself.

I love my dog, and if I have to go to work and suffer in order to keep him richly supplied with designer dog food and gourmet cookies and such, then so be it.