How Soon is Now

Prefice: I don't want no moral highground responses from this okay? And don't threaten me with the BRN alright?You can say what you want but be real. I want you to think, don't judge and try to understand that people come from all walks of life and in this profession you are in contact with them. Take off that white dress for just a sec okay, baby?

Alright friends. This is where I cross the line. Its time for the truth. Just because they don't teach it to you in nursing school doesn't mean its not out there. Yep. The blacks RN's hate the Mexican RN's. Phillipino's RN's hate the Nigerians RN's. The Chinese RN's hate the Vietnamese RN's. The Korean RN's hate everybody. Vehemently. The white RN's think that they "secretly" despise everyone but as a white guy who is as baffled by white culture as my Ethiopian co-worker during our daily lunch break talk, it's obvious and we can tell. White aint right. Brown doesn't mean its time to get down. Black is wack. What the fuck rhymes with Vietnamese?

Vietnamese don't do what you please?

But whatever. we all know race exists. We're just not allowed to talk about it. American's, technically, aren't even supposed to notice race. That would make us ˆracistˆ. My wife isn't of my race. I noticed. I'll admit it. And now I've got a little mix baby crawling around. I noticed, I'll admit it. But not enjoying the differences, pretending not to notice- bores me. You all bore me.

My friends, The intra hospital race wars is not what I have come here to speak of to you this evening. Oh no. I want to, how do you say, ˆdivertˆyour attention from the minutiae. From the atmosphere of blasé daily affairs, from the things you know you will have to do: assessment, meds, chart, dressing change, IV's, more meds, talk some shit about your fucked up co-workers, take a step back baby and just look around.

Is everybody wasting? or wasted. How easy is it to put that 5mg dilaudid into your pocket-after all your pt that hapless mother fucker with bi-lat ORIF and a glorious GSW to the left butt cheek only gets 1mg IM every 4 fucking hours. For BTP. Good luck with that. Thanks for your compassion you saucer shaped pupil resident. Took me a month to figure out why all the residents were fucking anorexic, jumpy and working 48 hours in a row. Duh! Don't be so naive you fuckers. Just takes an appointment. And its legal.

Diverting is a felony. Fel-o-ny! You are no longer a nurse but a common criminal. High as a kite.

But that’s not where it's really at, my friends. The good shit, the shit you can maintain with and make a 100k comes from your psychiatrist. That pimp dealer. He's a physician but he's a pusher too and you know what? There is no healing with that motherfucker. Where does it end? At what point does the shrink say, "I fucking fixed you with all my drugs, now you are better. I guess I need some new clients!" Doesn't happen. Shrinky dink would never say,"You stressed? Try some of this shit it's called MS Contin. You can shoot it snort, stick it up your ass, its great." That's too easy. He prescribes shit you've never heard of. The latest shit. The French have invented a new drug called "Provigil". Its like speed accept you can sleep on it and don't get the euphoric buzz of meth. Put that on the PPO card, my good man. I'm fucking street legal now.
I don't think most of my co-workers divert. I don't think the idea of slamming high octane opiates has even crossed their mind. Thank god. They get high in other ways. This I know.
The hypothetical:
But getting high has crossed his mind, friends. Up until now, he'd never had access. Now he has access and he thinks to himself, "I look at these patients with fucking unbelievable injuries, when I come on they are writhing in pain, some faking it just wanting chemically mediated release, some really fucked up and hurting. I give them their medication regardless, I am the nurse, IV push, IM, fucking PO, and whoosh-they can't wait for my q day physical assessment. If someone who has been shot 7 times and sporting a brand new colostomy with bloody drainage, if this street fighter, if this man who takes these traumatic insults in his stride while he lies in bed plotting his revenge, his URBAN COMEBACK, if he can tell me that I am the greatest nurse he's ever had- and its only 0830. Fuck that must be some good shit right there.
That shit will take the edge off of the shit I've been prescribed just to make it through this day, it'll make things alright. "
I surmise the high:

Alright. alright...he can feel his own breath hovering around his head, evaporating into delicious ether that can only come from a teeny tiny sterile little bottle with fluid in it that looks like water, that turns to red red wine and feels like some peace is finally cascading up through his antecubital to a royal fuck you all, to let him just lay low. He just smiles and nods and knows.
High, he thinks, "My pain doesn't hurt, in fact it feels good and I have a little bit of time before that fucker called work goes off again. My condo is on the same street as my hospital, I live a few sweet blocks away and in my bliss, blissed out I hear the squads running, flying by with sirens operatically calling, Code 3 is now peacefull and funny, so many times a night YYEEOOOWW, I just giggle cuz they are here to touch my mind, just wrap my skull up in a soft wool baby blanket. To breathe."

The next day- this nurse, this imbecile, rolls up to work and this dumb motherfucker thinks that nobody notices. Most don't. Most of his coworkers are unsuspecting. Some are habitual shit talkers looking for dirt. Some care and have seen it before.
Swear to god his name was Hal. Hal was an ex-army RN. Like that means something. Maybe just that he knows a lot more dude nurses.
"Hurt my knee in the Army." That was his story and he stuck to it. Hal told somebody he shouldn't have trusted that he took Demerol every night for the pain. I don't know how you could work four 12's a week if your knee was all fucked up from a softball accident in the army, I don't know, maybe Hal should have lost some fucking weight and taking the strain off that knee.
Anywhooo-Hal would roll up and work everyday, the same fuckin way. Profusely diaphoretic, extremely irritable, you could say irrational, shaking, looking so goddamn pale. Fucking in withdrawal. 4 long ass days a week. He thought of himself as an honorable and good RN, didn't want to work around patients high, I don't know what his logic was because he was pretty fucking unstable kickin four days a week.

People give me shit cuz I'm still a student RN, and I talk and write like I know so much but what a lot of arrogant nurses can't fathom is that life starts before RN and before RN I was EMT and before that I was a student , and before that was just waiting and it was always my job to obey and do what I was told and watch. And watch I did. I watched Hal's co-workers, most of whom had worked with his failing ass for at least 5 years. None of them every did anything. Is that friendship? Loyalty? Understanding that Hal had a wife and a daughter who probably wanted to go to a college she was not in the right social strata to attend?
There is no dramatic ending to Hal's story that I know of. I left that ER, Hal was still shakin' it up and his co-workers were still pretending not to notice. I'm not an RN yet. But I am an adult, a father, a human. What would I do with a license to maintain? None of my business.
But the way I found out Hal had an addiction to pain meds was simple enough. We were pushing a pt upstairs, the gurney every so lightly bumped into Hal's right leg and he said unto me through gritted teeth and sweat soaked hair matted against his fat face, "I wish I was at home with Demerol right now." Cheers to that Hal. Your girlfriend awaits. Thanks for being honest, dude.

Adderall. Wellbutrin. Ativan. Xanax. Prozac. Vicoden. Norco if you're lucky. Lamictal. Lexapro. Candy my friends. Anything to get u thru the shift. This show must go on, we've got a new star and her name is Super High Accuity. She'll make you a super nurse. Give you some stories to tell at the bar after work or at a lame party but she doesn't do shit for your psychic scars. She doesn't give a fuck about YOUR trauma. Fuck the pyxis. Comedy.


Best line ever in a movie was in Wallstreet. Charlie Sheen, Oliver Stone production.

Buddy (charlie) is about to get arrested for violating SEC insider trading rules. Police and federal agents are wating in his corner office. Right before his arrest he stumbles into one of the older traders, Lou, a kind, wise old stock trader who has seen this young man's unstoppable demise coming for quite some time.
And he says,
"Bud. I've got to tell you something. A man finds himself looking in the abyss, there is nothing staring back at him. At that moment he discovers his character. That keeps the man out of the abyss. "

The Racist Medical Field: Racist R.N's: Race Warfare

Some shit boggles the minds, friends. Pull up a chair, read my rant, because in my rant you will see how my day transpired. Oh, just a warning. Don't read this shit at work because IT WILL get your lazy ass fired. (You should be so lucky!)

Fuck I want to write about racism and the medical field. I pondered attempting to get into it early in my blogging chronicles but I trust my fellow nurses so little that I didn't want to become the angry male nurse of the damned, like one of you snitches would call the California BRN and alert them that a possible immoral nurse is harvesting racist thoughts- "liquefy his potential license at once!"
so I decided to back off. I imagine the comments I would have received for an open and frank discussion about race relations in a county medical system would have enabled me to garnish my blog with the same snotty bitch comments I received on allnurses.blob. "Very unbecoming of a nurse." and "Its a shame that nurses like you exist." I even got excommunicated from the site for 6 months, I think my time is up, but like Lindsey Buckingham says, "I aint never going back."

I didn't get kicked off allnurses.blob for being racist, I got kicked off for being rude to other nurses who were trying to validate snacking themselves to death for super low pay. One of them went into it about how nursing should be a vehicle for all the disenfranchised 3rd world women of the world to come to America to provide substandard non-English speaking care and i lost my shit. I actually got kicked off by a foreign nurse who was moderating the discussion on the pro's and cons of foreign nurses. That's good ol' nursing objectivity for you. When I suggested that perhaps she wasn't the ideal candidate to be the MOD I got busted. Privileges revoked!

I'm sorry, I just don't see how extracting all the nurses form Nigeria will help anybody out. You think Phillipno's have shitty little tempers? Well baby you never met a Nigerian RN on her third 16 hour shift in a row with like nine capitalist kidsat home and an unemployed security guard husband. See, basically, we took them from fighting to have enough food, sheer poverty environment, from understanding what it is to value being alive, we took them from fighting for family and sincerity to fighting America's losing battle with soul-lessness. Fine now they won't starve, but they think they're starving because MOM RN won't buy them that Wii fast enough. Now they have enough food to eat so they are morbidly obese. Now they can trust their government (right), but grow up thinking they're deprived because their jeans don't cost $120. Now their newly minted Nigerian-American children are fighting battle to get the Iphone and $140 addidas. Do you think her kids give a shit about their starving cousins in Nigeria? Fuck no. As every red-blooded American kid knows, regardless of where their parents are from, those new blackjacks come in a mint green and they are fucking tight!

Fuck Nigeria. Fuck the Philippines. Fuck Vietnam. Fuck the UK. Fuck South Korea. Fuck North Korea, too. Fuck Kenya. Fuck Canada. Let me fuck Canada again. Fuck Canada. Fuck Japan. Fuck that former MD now lowly ass wiper RN from Romania. Fuck him. Fuck Arkansas. Seriously you travelers from that creepy state need to stay the fuck home. You're worse than the goddamn Guamese. Fuck Guam.

Fuck you white people. Fuck you black people. Fuck you Phillipinos. Fuck you all Asians who get to work early and take my good parking places. Fuck you mexicans. Fuck you el Salvadorians. Fuck the Jews. Fuck the Muslims. Fuck the Mormons, scientologists, 7th day Adventists (WTF!?), Fuck the kwanasians or whatever they're called. Fuck the Buddhists. Fuck the Taoists, the Hindu’s, the Sikh’s, And fuck that Pharmacist dude who knows that the best shitter is upstairs in the medical library and always stinks it up before I can get to it. He looks swarthy, maybe Moroccan. Fuck Morocco. fuck the jehovah's


Wait a minute- gotta talk about the Jehovah's.
If the wife and I ever decide to get around to further fuck our lives up with another kid- and we're getting down-and a fucking Jehovah comes knockin on my door, on a Saturday, right when I'm bout to penetrate that furry distance that sometimes separates me from my wife-It's gonna be like Luigi to Donkey King: I'm a gonna freak a the fuck out.
Seriously, I'm a morning fucker, I'm too tired to fuck at night. Fucking in the morning for me is like wake and bake for others. It's just how I like to start my day. Quaker instant oats and my wife’s delicious poonani. Mazeltov to that.

Fuck the Baptists, fuck the protestants, fuck the Catholics, fuck the episccipalianz, fuck the Lutherans, fuck the nondenominational mega church fuckers, the only ones I don't say fuck you to or those wacky fuckers who handle the rattle snakes, I love that shit. That's just fucking cool. I always see them getting interviewed on TV:

Hot Latina female Newscaster: Have you ever been bit?

Shit crazy Christian snake handler: Oh sure. Yeah.

Hot Latina female Newscaster: How many times?

SHit crazy Christian snake handler: oh, I'd say about 300.

Hot Latina female Newscaster: That's fucking crazy.

Shit crazy Christian snake handler: Yeah. He-he. Yeah.

I fucking love that.

FUCK THE CHRISTIANS! AND FUCK RN'S OF ANY RACE WHO FORM CLIQUES BASED ON RACE AS A GODDAMN LITMUS TEST. Cliques in hospitals should be formed on the capability of each member to perform grossly negligent behaviors, to destroy morale, who in the unit can take the most breaks and feel no shame? Who can eat a box of snackwells in less than 2 minutes, thereby turning them into Mealwells? Who can turn the most miniscule of events into A BIG FUCKIN Deal that requires written warning to be dispersed amongst the employees who actually work. Cliques should be formed based on how much personal chaos is brewing in your life, how many times you've cheated on your spouse and how much Wellbutrin you snort at lunch. CLIQUES HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RACE! THEY ARE ABOUT FUCKERS WHO SEND COMPANY WIDE EMAILS IN CAPS ACCUSING EVERYONE OF DOING A SHITTY JOB EXCEPT OTHER MEMBERS OF THE CLIQUE!! Cliques have nothing to do with race, they are about a group of the most fucked up, foul, seriously miserable haters getting together to make everyone else hate their lives as much as they hate theirs. If I roll up to a unit and you fuckers are speaking in Tagalog- how the fuck am I supposed to know how in control and evil you are? How can you manipulate me in a language I don't understand? It just doesn't fucking work. Proper hatred is spread through all races, creeds, denominations. That's what makes the shit effective. Hold on a sec.....

I just had the most violent BM of all time, I was like bracing myself against the bathroom walls, that's how much you guys pissed me off tonight. fuck. I just gave birth in there, the porcelain is cracked and needs me to hold C-spine.

I'm going to try and sleep.

Next up, drugs. That's right fuckers. Co -workers on Drugs. It's ridiculous, we are trained to look for this shit and we are the ones who are high!. Just because a MD wrote the script doesn't mean we can't tell how on your ass you are. If that post doesn't get me sued then nothing will.
(You know who the biggest druggies are in the hospital?- RN's? Pharmacy? anesthesia? Access is power. Access is power. Access is power.

One good thing about Bush

One good thing about that fucking heartless criminal George Bush:


RECORD, and I mean RECORD voter turn out for a primary. After these last 8 miserable years, you bet your ass people are going to start voting again.


History will haunt Bush Co. like a fart in a car. A car with the windows rolled up and the heater on. It will linger way too long.

The Roughest Nursing School West of the Mississippi

The beat goes on. Or maybe I should say the beating goes on. Semester 4. Holy Moly! Glad to be here. Glad to be almost done.
This semester instructors did their usual show-of-force routine as previous instructors before them: not acknowledging the presence of any individual students, no smiles, no jokes. Eyeballing us secretly from the back of the room where they quietly congregated,looking at us, turning away and chatting, then looking back at us as if to say, "Look at that one there. What a chump. I'm gonna break him!" It had a real WWF wrestling vibe to it. I envisioned my 5'10,rather husky Nigerian born instructor, picking me up and spinning me above her head like apiece of pizza dough and then throwing me against a pile of chairs. After I hit the ground she bellows at me, "What labs should you check to see if you're okay after this traumatic injury? RBC's? No! Who cares how many red blood cells you have? BUN/Creatinine? I don't care about your kidneys. No! Check your CKMM, YAARGGH!"

The 4th semester chair had this to say, "I guarantee you by the end of this semester you will be burned out, so use your sick days wisely."

WTF!? Is that what nursing is about? A fucking marathon of busy work and a battle of wills? Maybe it is. What I can never separate, what I continually struggle to understand, is my instructors desire for us to be very competent novice nurses or are we reveling in their dark sticky bully side where they get off on fucking with us. I guess all this ball-breaking is for a good cause, and I, no doubt, will look back when after graduation and be thankful for the lessons I learned while still in school as a student as opposed to being on the floor with a license to defend...but at what cost? I can not BELIEVE how tired I was a month ago. It was scary. I was so tired, I didn't EVEN KNOW how tired I was.

I finally decompressed on the last week, the 4th week, of break. The first two weeks of vacation I was an anxious, irritable ball of nerves. The third week I slept, the fourth week I rejoiced.

Now I'm back in it with more soon to be fulfilled promises of extreme exhaustion and cramming. These fuckers even want us to come in on Saturdays to go to healthfairs and recruitment sessions (and I know like you know you can't recruit to a captive audience). Including clinical which is 17 hrs a week, I'm in class another 8 hrs over two days. Plus fucking 6 more for Saturdays. Isn't there some like nursing student sweatshop law? With all the massive write ups, projects, and arbitrarily graded care plans (fucking 3 our last semester- grand total of 9 throughout the program) and hellish exams I'm already in a straight jacket.

Whine, whine, whine. Fuck it, just get through it, I'm almost done. Keep on'. I'll do whatever it takes to have a job I feel truly passionate about and be able to adequately support my family. I should be so lucky.

Thanks for everyone's support with the previous post. It really helped.

Stacked and not so Angry anymore

Aaahh my people. My fellow nurses, healers, friends, nemesis's, those I adore and admire, those I can't stand.

One more semester to go. So much to tell. So many thoughts have furrowed my brow, like a crashing thunder storm on a hot summer afternoon, passing as quickly as it obscures the sun.

I got real depressed this semester. Every afternoon, around 1530, after school and on the way to pick my son up from day care. I felt so empty. Tired and empty. I have never felt depression like that before. It was like, physically painful in my gut. I felt no joy. And let me tell you, picking up your child, and feeling depressed, joyless, really makes one feel ashamed or guilty. It can be a very destructive cycle.

So AMN, what was bothering you? Why so blue?

The critically busy 7 days a week schedule, the lack of sleep, the monotony of obligatory rotations that have questionable value, the constant degradation and mind games at the hands of perpetually insecure instructors. Friends, I was bummed the fuck out.

You know what I realized? I'm not Angry Male Nurse anymore. I realized I had become:

THE MOST SHIT TIRED BURNED OUT NURSING STUDENT IN THE HISTORY OF FUCKING NURSING.

But I'm cool now. I rested. I contemplated my sadness. I contemplated my anger. I wandered the hallways of my mind, pondering the meaning of a nursing career, directions to take, units to work in, mistakes NOT to be made. My friends, I pondered!
My wife and baby (he's doing great by the way) are visiting family out of town. Last night was the first night that I had slept alone since June 26th. It was the first time I did not wake up two or three times during the night in a very long time. And I realized: "Dude, your depression was secondary to your incredible exhaustion. Who the fuck wouldn't be depressed?"
I think Everybody, I think I was just really really tired.


I'll keep this relatively short:
I was working in the ER a month ago as a Student Nurse Worker. Basically an overworked NA. Two Samoan- American kids came in from a popular local rave. Roller #1 was a small guy, about 20, shaved head. Roller #2, was a pretty buff young dude, maybe 19, looked like a rugby player. They were under arrest for possession. They were handcuffed to their gurneys. And they were ROLLING THEIR SAMOAN BALLZ OFF! Dilated pupils, chewing their jaws like they were made of gum, rubbing their heads on the pillows of the gurney in ecstasy. Looking back, they probably had just ingested several pills prior to arrest to avoid more prosecution. Probably a good thing they got arrested because, frankly, I have never met guys their age with such warm, open, and funny dispositions. Such vulnerability. (It was also abundantly clear that neither of these guys should be behind the wheel) Maybe it was the E. Proably it was the E. Maybe they were just nice dudes. They got cleared after my shift was over, I worry about what happened to them in County lockup. But ecstasy only lasts a couple of hours, so by the time they got cleared they were probably more hungover than anything and got their sense back. (VS stable, both had fevers probably related to pharmacodynamics, no immediate cardiac or respiratory distress- though they both were hypertensive and diaphoretic.)

The following is a rough transcript of the conversation that made my soul feel better:

Roller #1: Hey man. Where is your wife? Your baby?
(I don't know how he knew that I had a wife and baby)

AMN: Home.

Roller #1: But you are here.

AMN: That's right. I'm working.

Roller #2: You can do it. Man. Keep on with yourself.

AMN: Gotta pay the bills. I'll see you guys in a couple of minutes.
( I came back fifteen minutes later. They watched me while I worked with other patients.)

Roller#1: I know you're tired. I can FEEL how tired you are. Keep on though. Keep on.

Roller #2: I'm not embarrassed to say it. Right now,I think I love both of you, dearly.

(His eyeballs kind of rolledback into his head, his eyelids nearly close-then his eyes popped back open. He satisfyingly grinded for a few moments.)

Roller #2: This is true.

Roller#1: Hey nurse guy, we believe in you. It's okay to be tired. You look really tired.

AMN: You guys alright?

This is no joke everybody:

Roller #1 and Roller #2: We're more worried about you, man. How are you doing?

AMN: Well, I guess I'm a bit tired.

Roller #1: I'm open to talking.

Roller #2: That's what we're here for.


I guess I looked as bad as I felt. Tired and blue! But what can you do when the only official protocol, the only mandate available is to Keep on'.

So I kept on. And we talked. Not advocating drug use, but their empathy was wonderful. I know, boundaries, bad idea to burden the patient with my problems, but in this instance, it just worked. I didn't give them intimate details but I summarized. I'm pretty much a closed book to coworkers and patients alike, I guess my soul was cold, and I needed their warmth.

Those young dudes completely shocked me. I realized, nobody had asked me recently how I WAS DOING. And yet another reminder to never EVER judge a book by its cover.


More to come friends!

Stay up Late

Fatherhood continues and evolves. For this first month, my wife and I have had a pretty moody little dude on our hands. Gas, poop, and hunger. Limited amounts of sleep. Something to work through. I couldn't hold him without him kicking and screaming, waving his tiny balled fists, trying to swat away whatever it was that was agitating his pain. My little dude was not having a lot of fun with this new life and frankly, I wasn't having a lot of fun, either. The wife did great though, kept her spirits up and worked with what she had. Mother in law came to stay with us for a month and that was immensely helpful. Mother in law left, and we still had the Moody Dude on our hands.

But!

For the last two days, miraculously, for who knows whatever reason, perhaps on of the thousands of tricks we employed to fight colic and fussiness paid off. The last two days have been awesome! Little crying, just a lot of looking around and even a few smiles. A vessel ready to explore the world. A baby that listens to and watches his mobile, as opposed to hysterically shrieking at it, he sometimes smiles at the hanging mobile that to me, is strangely reminiscent of a Pink Floyd concert I went to in high school. The change has been so dramatic, we noticed it immediately. And best of all, we pulled five hours of sleep. I probably shouldn't us "we" because my wife has to get up far more frequently than I do to give him the bizoobs but the change is duly noticed. And it feels great!

SO... to get to the meat, to get to my thoughts...today at work a 29 year old man ran into the ER carrying his crushed 1 1/2 year old child in his hands. When the father was leaving home, the boy ran out and the father backed over him with the massive family SUV. As bad as you've seen it in your experience, it was. I (thankfully) didn't see anything gnarly, I came into the situation as a big crowd of people moved into trauma. Staff came out of the trauma, talking in that glazed sort of way, when the adrenaline is high, the experience is burning into your psyche like a liver fluke into your gut. When your still not sure if what you saw was medically inspiring and challenging or you just voyeured into a devastating personal moment for someone. My co-workers came out of the trauma and I heard grim remarks, saw heads sadly shaking, "blood everywhere" "brain matter" " seriously not looking good". I only saw the father briefly, standing up, his head shielded by his arms as he leaned against a wall and cried, large numbers of family circling him, giving him support that must be baffling and terrifying at that moment. What do you do? What do you think? Are you angry at the father, do you feel sorry for him, do you forgive, do you dare to visualize what his life will be like after the so sudden and immediate death of his child? I was working in triage most of the night so I directed the upset and anxious family members as they poured in, asking how to get to the pediatric ER. I tried my best poker face, almost pretending that I didn't know what nightmare I was about to direct them into, "The pediatric ER is just to the left." Afterwards everyone in triage would also shake their head, what a nightmare.
And of course the Sheriff department tore apart the SUV, police lining it off where the dad had driven up to the ambulance bay doors. Furiously burrowing into the vehicle, under seats, in doors, looking, looking, for some proof that this father was a murderer and needed to be charged with a crime as horrendous as the accident. So weird, this tought looking family vehicle became a crime scene and I don't know the outcome of their investigation nor do I want to. What a shitty job...

I never felt like this before, I couldn't stop visualizing myself in his shoes, I kept imagining picking up my injured child off the ground with catastrophic injuries that I inadvertently inflicted. I couldn't imagine killing my own child. How do you live after that? How do you go to work, how do you be with family, what does your wife do? Does she hate you with the venom that mothers reserve for those who hurt their babies? Does life become a rollercoaster of self destruction, do you give up?
Do you try to die?
I'm so thankful that I wasn't even involved directly with the medical care. I've prided myself on my non-squeamishness around blood, around eagerly encountering the human wasted, the trauma's, the human drama, but I tell you what- tonight, just hearing the details, I thought to myself, "I don't have the stomach for this anymore." One of the most upsetting experiences of my medical career and I wasn't even involved.
Sadly, this validated my fatherhood more than anything else that has happened to me, more than any other joyous or challenging experience I have had with my boy, thus far, in this beginning first month. The thought of the sweetness, the innocence, the innate struggle to survive I see in my boy, for that to be taken away by my own hand is utterly upsetting.

Licensed to Ill

Sorry I've been gone for awhile. It's not good blogger etiquette to only write sporadically, it doesn’t bode well with my legions of fans and fanatics. But what can I say? Personal life has kept me busy and I needed a certain amount of time to decompress, because Angry Male Nurse was becoming Burned Out Angry Male Nurse as does happen from people who invest everything they’ve got into their career form time to time. I’m okay with that, I just need to make sure I have the tools, the support, and the time to chill when I need to. Which I do.

Finished off 2nd semester. Did okay. Made it through with virtually no personal drama, until the end when the students who failed the most absolutely ridiculous and unreasonable final written in the history of Med-Surge got pissed and started manipulating student and staff to get their way. I really felt bad for the students who didn’t get through, I felt that some of the blame did not lie on their shoulders, that teachers who couldn’t even write questions with 8th grade English skills should be held to count for it. But then I saw how the failed students played games and threatened and eventually turned on each other, and I saw that perhaps that the reason for their failings their failure lay more with their lack of professionalism and maturity than anything else. So I backed off, let the chips fall where they may and began to recoup.

My wife and I had a baby on Tuesday. He is the most enigmatic, beautiful, and poopy little dude I have ever met. I’d like to tell you his name but there are some haters out there so I can’t. But it is a fitting name for such a cool dude.
Labor was 30 fucking hours long. The epidural was too strong for my wife so at about 20 hours in her contractions basically stopped, which relieved her so she could rest but scared the shit out of me because the thought of C-section after my wife’s valiant efforts would have broken my heart. I have no problem with C-section, just that my wife wanted to go natural and her spirit was into it. 2 1/2 hours of pushing and the use of Pitocin and suction and my little baby boy came out. I cried when he came out, a good cry, tears that contained my fears, my stress, my anxiety. Also with it came utter joy and amazement, love for my wife and relief that we were all safe. The nursing profession, nursing school, became small dots in my mind, like light coming into the opening of the end of a distant tunnel. Put things into perspective.

I love politics. That’s who I am. But a game is a game is a game and even though it involves human lives I am not responsible for the millions of unbelievable outcomes, for all the incredible personal tragedies I see and some that I am involved in. When I am working I am in a state I call, “In the Mix”, meaning I float from one living to dying crisis from the next, I hear all the other nurses working alongside me performing in the mix, applying their knowledge and intangible personal skills, putting out fires, fucking starting them, dealing with it, I exist in all the noise and I can apply myself one situation at a time. Brains here, not breathing in the ambulance bay there, relieved discharge here, comforted by morphine here, change the patients diapers there. I am in the mix, talking to my mind, listening to the noise but being part of it, too.

I love becoming a nurse. I feel like I am becoming something useful and functional. Skills develop and flourish, unique skills that I am very proud to possess. Some nurses wield them with confidence, other dish the skills out in utterly small insecure amounts.

Sometimes I think about the Beastie Boys from “Licensed to Ill”. Their ZaZen in the mix of 1980’s partying, music industry, cultural racial significance wrapped around them like a blanket


Let it flow let yourself go
Slow and low that is the tempo
Let it flow let yourself go
Slow and low that is the tempo

Have you ever felt water pour on your head from a small waterfall? Not that I get to that often, truly I live in an urban jungle, but I have been in nature a few times. The waterfall is surprisingly loud, and forceful, all that water pushing down on your head and neck, feels like your skull might cave in. But it doesn’t, and after a few moments you realize that the tension in your shoulders is being worked out and you are bending to the will of the water and sort of being with it. That is how I feel in the ER. Stretched out but adjustable. And when the bull shit politics starts to overstretch me, when the patients bullshit becomes a bit too odious, when the doc decides that he or she will revert to pissy 14 year old nerd mode, I put my clasped hands over my head, like a shelter, and shunt off some of that cold water pouring onto my head from the waterfall, and I look around, catch my breath, and let the beating begin again.



Let it flow let yourself go
Slow and low that is the tempo
Let it flow let yourself go
Slow and low that is the tempo



Rainbows, waterfalls, and unicorns, bitches.

Bring it!