Well, it's almost two months in and I feel as
though I'm actually starting to understand my job! I say that lightly because some
days are better than others and there are still those days when I ask myself,
"and why did I choose to do this for a living?" This was
definitely a question going through my head when "Hurricane Sandy"
made her way up the East coast. I was scheduled to work only until 3:30pm that
Monday, but by that point, some high up person in the hospital (or the state,
but whatever) declared a state of emergency and no one was allowed to leave.
So, I worked four more hours and did a 12-hour day instead of an eight-hour
day. We were still not allowed to leave after 12 hours and were told we had to
sleep over. SLEEP OVER AT WORK?! After work I want to scrub the poo off myself
and now I'm told I had to STAY? We were given meal tickets so the nurses,
techs, CCSR's and SA's on my floor all went down with the 4394598 million other
hospital employees who had to stay and ate dinner. We then showered and donned
whatever sleep-wear we managed to throw in a bag the night before or morning of
that shift. On the other hand, if you ARE going to get stuck at work, at least
the hospital has wonderful resources! I went shopping and got a robe, some
socks, toothpaste, toothbrush and soap! According to my co-workers I looked
like an escaped psych patient. However, it was pretty convenient.
After our cleansing session we went to find rooms to sleep in. Long
story short the eight or so of us ended up in a room in the
"historic" building on the most uncomfortable cots ever. I did not
sleep well, spent probably a good half hour debating if going to the bathroom
would be worth it and then before I knew it it was time to get up and return to
work. Which I HADN'T LEFT. The most tiring part of this whole ordeal was that
the day after that Monday I was already scheduled to work 12-hours. Aah!
I'm really not complaining. I hope it doesn't sound like it. It
was a humbling experience to realize how necessary our jobs are, especially
because people don't stop getting sick or needing help just because the weather
gets bad. It was just tiring and somewhat unexpected. While everyone else was
off and staying at home, I was still working and let's not forget...getting
paid at least to sleep at the hospital! We had some co-worker bonding
time and it was nice to know that in a stressful situation that my co-workers
pitched in to help out and supported one another to get through the long
hours. I know many people had it much
worse, but I can only write about my experience and what happened.
Overall work has been
great and every day I am learning something new. I’ve hung blood, given an enema, drawn
cultures and labs off a central line and have even removed a central line from a
patient. Besides the technical stuff I’ve
also developed some nice relationships with patients and their families and almost
cried at the bedside when a tube had to be stuck down one of my patient’s
noses. OK, maybe crying is exaggerating, but I really did have tears in my
eyes! Haha. He took in like a champ
though. While I feel like I live at work
sometimes, I love having a job that I am happy to go to every day and can’t
imagine doing anything else. Unless of
course this job was in Israel, but that’s a topic for another discussion J
