Geriatric Jesus

Heh heh. So I suppose it might have been funny (weird, but funny) if the hamster's name was Stalin, or Cesar Chavez, but it's Jesus, so to me, it's particularly funny that pretty much the extent of Jesus's activities during his awake time don't stray very far from a cushy wad of toilet paper upon which he's plumped his fuzzy arse. He waddles out for some hamster seed, a sip of water, and then, back to the toilet paper wad.

I'm guessing he has three, maybe four months, tops left of Mortal Coil. But that's okay, because we all know the Jesus story ends happily, kind of, except for all the people that were killed in His Name, Amen.

Any way, that's the nurse in me, with the uncanny sixth sense of guessing correctly, within days and hours, how long it's going to take someone to die. I have to get out of nursing, I'm becomiing the Grim Reaper.

Non sequitar.

The people who live downstairs are bona fide white trash, which is ironic, because we basically live in a very nice condo filled with retired elderly people and their fat little lap dogs, and single young work-a-day people.

Any way, Easter was spent screaming at each other, which is an activity that I am sure is not exclusive to just white trash, but it annoyed me enough that I finally put on Morales very, very loud. Well, not loud, but loud enough to block out the cursing teenager screaming at mom, "Fuck you, bitch!"

Ah, if that ain't birth control, nothing is.

Also, either they are yelling at one another, or the kid has about fifteen friends over, all of whom sound exactly like Beavis and Butthead, or they're watching t.v. At least, I think they're watching t.v. It's weird t.v., though, it always sounds... seedy. Like, I can never figure out if it's t.v., or people having weird sex. I think it's t.v., but it always sounds so weird, and vaguely unwholesome. I really don't want to think about it, actually, but I don't have much choice the way the condos are constructed.

Goddamn it! All I want is to live in a normal place with normal neighbors, for once!

So back to my day.

I spent the entire day drafting a CV and cover letter. It was tedious, and depressing, but sort of like writing a school paper or doing a wet-to-dry dressing on a stage four pressure ulcer (you don't want to know what that looks like, trust me); there's an odd sense of triumph/relief/pride in having accomplished something tangible.

The depressing thing is realizing that I look very lame on paper. It's like "Hi, I am a nurse. I went to a bunch of schools, and didn't really do anything notable except graduate, sometimes on schedule, and I've only been in this profession for eight months, so uh, I haven't like, won any employee of the month awards because we don't have employees at my hospital, we have indentured servants."

Of course I cleaned it up a little bit, but basically on paper you could distill a description of me down to "a highly educated fuck-up who has self-diagnosed anxiety/panic disorder over going to work in the morning." Because people die at my job, and I haven't gotten used to working as slave labor for a CEO who makes about 700K a year salary but swears he can't afford more nurses.

Hey! I've got an idea! The CEO claims a salary that is worth, let's see, the starting salaries of eighteen graduate nurses, and probably at least a dozen experienced nurses. So why don't we slash the CEO's salary to something worthy of the kind of leadership we're getting (I'd say minimum wage would be generous) and hire more nurses? Likewise I'm sure the executive cronies' salaries are all probably worth about twenty to thirty more nurses.

On our sub-acute critical care unit, we lately have been working one nurse to eight patients, all cardiac post procedure, post operative, sometimes, with management telling us "I'm sorry, that's the best we can do." I'm telling you this so that you will go write your Congresswoman and tell her to please enact legislation that mandates safe staffing ratios for patients.

Please.

We don't mind saving your life for the modest sum of $25/hour, but it would help if we had enough staff in order to do so. It's very helpful if say, you are dying, and require the immediate attention of your nurse, that she isn't stuck somewhere on a phone arguing with staffing to please not float her nurses, or chasing down dietary to give a tray to a cranky patient, or mopping crap (and I mean that literally) off the floor because housekeeping refuses to do so, instead of monitoring her patients, doing rounds, administering medications and all the other stuff we're supposedly hired to do.

The next time you're in a hospital, request to talk to the CEO and demand to know what the nurse/patient ratios are, and why they suck so badly, and how the hell one nurse is supposed to take care of eight post procedure/operative patients safely. Then threaten to write your Congressperson, and follow through.

Incidentally, can you tell I have to go to work tomorrow?