I'm not sticking my finger in there!

I am currently enjoying a three day in a row break from work. I think it's the longest I've been off in one stretch since coming home. I love, love, love it. I have been there a lot lately, even curling up on the couch in a meditation room for a night. Then there were a few days with really horrible roads, where it took me two hours to get home.

I have had some interesting, and really sweet patients last week. Patients who hug me and tell their roommates that I'm the best nurse in the hospital. Flattery will get you everywhere with me! I heard another nurse mention that she had to digitally stimulate a colostomy q4 hours. I thought, thank god I don't have that patient, because I am just not going to stick my finger in there! Plus, he kept asking the night nurse to "finger him". And who do you think I ended up with the next morning? Same guy. And the first order of business that day was to explain to him that it was almost time for him to go home, and if he needed to stimulate his colostomy (which was 5 years old by the way, not a new thing!) he could do that himself, with a glove. Then I had to empty his colostomy bag which was full of completely formed stool, and doing it reminded me of squeezing frosting out of a tube. So gross. I hate ostomies, especially colostomies, with a passion.

fate is making all the decisions

After returning from Nepal, I found it very difficult to care for our patient population. Grown-ups who whine and complain about the amount of ice in their cups, the hardness (or softness) of the beds, the kind of foods on their plates, the medicine that's saving their lives is constipating them, the pain from surgery is too much... etc etc. I found myself wishing more and more for intubated, ventilated, sedated patients. I look at these people and think, you came to us for medical help. YOUR choice to have the procedure, to come to this facility. It's not the Hilton. We're not here to make sure you eat delicious food and sleep comfortable and undisturbed. We are going to poke you and prod you and wake you up every hour, we're going to serve mediocre food, the beds might not be top-notch in comfortability, but they do flatten in 3 seconds so we can do CPR and save your ass.

So I applied to every job I could in the hospital, and still haven't heard from anyone. No one. Nada. I guess it's not meant to be, but surely I'm not meant to play waitress for the rest of my life?