Well, I was up until 4 am. I had to take my sis in law to the er. She'd already been once yesterday(dad in law took her that time). Poor thing suffers from chronic kidney stones. She gets them a couple of times a year. When I worked in the hospital, just when hmo were starting to screw everything up for the rest of us, we admitted kidney stone patients, so we could keep them comfortable (I've seen grown men in tears over these things) and make sure the stone did indeed past. But I guess the insurance companies think it's better just to make the patient suffer at home and run back and forth to the hospital.

It was getting bad when I worked there. The insurance companies would mandate how many days a patient could stay for a certain diagnosis. When I worked on urology, we had many elderly patients who would come in for something but wouldn't always be ready to leave by the mandated date. So then the doctor would just find another existing problem, call in a specialist consult for that and then, whamo, the patient could stay another couple of days. There'd be some patients with as many as four or five consults, just to keep them there so they could be treated for their initial problem. Insurance companies suck!

But as I was there last night, I thought how much I miss working in a hospital. I'm one of the strange ones, they never weirded me out, I never thought the smell was bad. I always enjoyed the excitement. I mean, where I worked, on onocology, it wasn't always that exciting, but I loved working the night shift. It was quiet, yet not. I don't know how to explain that really. I never liked working days, just too much stuff going on. And swing shift was much the same way. Just too much stuff. But the night time was quiet. You could walk down empty halls, but still feel the energy flowing through the building.

People think that patients sleep at night, but they don't. Especially on the cancer ward. Day and night don't have much meaning to many of those people. And it's some sort of phisological thing, that most people die between the hours of midnight and 5 am. Most around 5 am. One doctor explained it to me saying that's when your body is the most at rest, when you circadeum rythms are at their lowest and your body at its most vunerable.

Apparently last night, earlier before we got there, some guy came in with a gun shot wound to the head and brain matter all over his face. Oh, I miss the hospital!

I mean, I spent so much of my time there as a professional patient, that when I had the chance to go to school, I thought, I'll be a nurse and get paid to be there.

I really miss it. I really do. And when I had my second back surgery(from 15 years of prednisone therapy), my neurosurgeon looked at me and said, "Laurie, you can't work the floor anymore" I was so upset. I went into the deepest depression for the longest time. I didn't want to work in a doctor's office. I wanted to work in a hospital as a floor nurse.

I did try working for a doctor...a urologist who made his money(are you ready for this?) putting in penial implants. I hated it and the doctor was a real prick(lol...no pun intended)

Years before, when I worked in a shit factory(yep, Saf...)I used to walk into work everyday and think, just what the hell am I doing this for? I mean, our union t-shirts read "We sweat our butts off to keep America cool" but building air conditioners and heat pumps wasn't exactly a nurturing, and life changing job. It was boring, tedious, and people looked down on me because I worked there. I hated it. I felt like I wasn't doing anything worthwhile with my life.

But working as a nurse, I felt needed and fullfilled. I got a lot more respect when people would ask, what do you do? oh, I'm a nurse. Cool, hey I have this problem with my back can you help me?(like we were freakin DOCTORS)

So when the doctor told me I could no longer do what I loved to do, my world turned black. Mark, bless his heart, stuck it out with me. He did get fed up eventually, I mean a person can only take so much moping, and finally one day told me, "You're not just your job, Laurie. Stop defining yourself by that." smart man, huh?(and he was just a baby at the time, not even 22 years old yet).

But still, I miss it. I miss helping people. I miss the respect and I miss the routine. I don't, however, miss the difficult patients...lol...

ok, quick story on that(maybe two). I had a charge nurse on the peepee floor. She was in her 70's(no one except the nursing director knew exactly how old she was)but she was a spit fire of a thing. Every morning when she left work, after an eight hour shift, she walked six miles. And she was one of the most difficult women to work with. No other nurses would work with her. A stickler for proceedure (in the form of paperwork) even if it came at the cost of patient care. As a matter of fact, one morning she asked me about a patient at the front of her section(the end of mine). I said, Pearl, that's your patient. Oh my, she said, I didn't know that. Luckily the nurse's aid had gone in every few hours and checked on the man, changed him and rolled him in bed. He was semi-comatose and didn't speak. Pearl walks in to give him his morning meds and says, Mister, you need to speak up so we'll know you're here.

funny thing happens to elderly people when they have surgery. They have strange reactions to the meds they use to put them out. They used to always come back disoriented and confused for several days. This one man, (who was Pearl's patient) had had surgery that morning. I had gone in to check on him the morning of,(at Pearl's request) and he was the meekest, mildest, most polite, soft spoken man.

But later that night, after surgery, his call light went off. I went in to see what he needed. He had the call light by the cord and was swinging it like a weapon trying to hit me. Pearl comes in the room, sees the man swinging his call light and says, Mister, you're gonna have to pay for that if you break it. Like the man cared or even knew what he was doing. I laughed so hard. Man, that woman was so out of touch.

Anyhow, fond memories...lol...

I miss it.