Since I started clinical rotations, I've had to leave the house early in the morning, usually before the kids have gone to school. In the past, they've managed to get themselves out of the house and on to the bus without any problems.
This morning, though....well, it was different. I had to leave EARLY, like oh-dark-hundred early, before the time that the kids would even have rolled out of bed. I had to wake them up early, which they didn't like much - but I wanted to make sure that they were out of their beds and moving around before I left. I had a bad feeling as I walked out the door; it felt like it was going to be a bad day and I said as much to my daughter as I left.
20 minutes later, whilst I was waiting for one of the girls to get in my truck (we carpool and it's my turn to drive) I called home to make sure everything was ok. My youngest picked up the phone and I could hear the fighting in the background. My two boys were physically fighting, and my daughter was trying to break it up.
Fucking HELL. Why did they have to pick this day to fight? They've been great before now on days that were less important, but the one day I have to go in early and have a lot on my plate they choose to fight. GAH.
I called their dad and he managed to get it sorted out, but not after he spoke to me like I was stupid in front of my friends. He and I had a talk about that this evening, and I made my position very clear: do it again, and I'm leaving. This has been an ongoing issue and I am just about done hearing it and being treated like shite.
Yeah, it's that bad. It's BEEN that bad. One person here knows how bad it's been and knows that it's been bad for years - and they've been a really good friend to me for quite some time now, through all of it. They've listened to me, have let me cry on their shoulder, have commiserated with me when things didn't go so well and celebrated with me when things DID go well.....they've been more of a friend than I deserve and I love them dearly.
Anyhoo. I'm beat; I've been up since 4am and I busted my ass at clinicals today. I got smacked in the face, hit and pinched and yelled at, which is a first. I can understand it though; the patient I was tending to had a pretty large decubitus ulcer (bed/pressure sore) on their tailbone and had soiled themselves. I was trying to get all of the fecal matter out of the decub - had I left it there, the ulcer would've become infected and I don't know that this particular patient would be able to survive it. It was a particularly difficult case for me; this patient resembled a close family member of mine and I had to deal with all kinds of emotions over it. They gave me a lovely smile and a kiss on the cheek before I went home today, so I think that all has been forgiven.
Today, I smelled cancer on the breath of a patient and knew what they had before even glancing at their chart. It's got a very distinctive smell. Speaking of smells, I had to shove a decent goop of Vicks vaporub up my nostrils today - had I not done it, I'd have gagged and probably hurled because of the smells I was exposed to. One poor person has liver cancer, which means that their bowel movements are particularly foul smelling. One of the girls in my class had this person's BM in a bucket and neglected to cover it before she wandered down the hallway with it. Even seasoned nurses were covering their noses with their hands because the smell was so bad. I think that it's rude to do that in front of a patient, so when it was my turn to help someone with the commode in their room I coated the inside of my snout with the Vicks. It helped. A LOT.
Man, I'm beat. I'm physically and emotionally drained, and I can't think straight. My legs and back hurt, I've got little red marks on me where I got pinched (still) and I can't decide whether I want to go to bed and cry or go to bed and.....well, cry.
I think I'll go to bed. Screw crying, I'm done with that. I've done too much of it recently, and I aint gonna do it tonight.
