different hats

I have a nursing confession to make. Actually, I have two of them.


Number one: I hate giving grown people baths. Yuck.


Number two: I hate feeding people at work. Honest. I know it's weird, but I just don't like it. I'm not even talking about physically putting food on a fork and putting it in their mouths, either. I just mean feeding them in general. I think there's something wrong with me. I really do.


I wiggled my way out of the first one when I moved from the ICU to the ER. In the ER you don't ever give people baths unless you're washing blood off of them, which doesn't bother me nearly as much as lathering up someone who looks like my grandpa. Go figure. The only thing worse is brushing someone's teeth, which gives me the heebies just thinking about it. Double yuck. (There's a reason I'm not a floor nurse, believe me).


I bring this up because today at work I felt more like a waitress than a nurse. ("Hi, my name is RC and I'll be your server today. Because we all know that the type of soup on the specials today is far more important than those pesky cardiac enzymes.") Take my sweet little old lady who had me recite the entire cafeteria menu (most of it completely wrong, mind you), before she settled on a simple sandwich. But she had to have potato salad with it. No chips for her. No green salad, either. Did you hear me, young woman? Potato salad. Period.


So I called Dietary and threw myself on the mercy of the potato salad gods, mostly (I'm sorry to admit) to shush her up (as my grandma would say). The tray came up and voila! A bowl of potato salad. I took it in to her as proudly as if it were a five star meal, and left her to eat in peace.


She ate everything on the tray that wasn't nailed down. Except the potato salad. That, she didn't even touch. Not a single bite.


A few minutes later she hit her call light and when I went in, she looked at me hopefully and said, "Pudding?"


Grrr.


On the other hand, she was a ray of sunshine compared to a couple of my other patients. This spiel got quite a workout -


"Hi. My name is RC and I'll be your drug dealer today. Would you like to hear the specials or would you like to just cut straight to calling me bad names when I cut you off? Or how about the special combo plate? That's the one where you're nice as can be until I say the word "no" in any way, shape or form and then you grow fangs that would make a T Rex jealous and demand to see my doctor, my boss, my senator and my priest, in that order?"


This is all by way of saying that I'm not trying to avoid talking about my last week. I just need a few moments to hear myself think first.