March
2006
Just my average Monday
Monday is my smelliest day of the week. Why, you ask? Well, mostly because 90 % of my patients smell funky- and on Mondays I have LOTS of patients. It usually goes like this:
7:00 - I wake up, cuddle with Robi, go back to semi-sleep, trying to squeeze a morsel of Sunday into the dreaded uglyness I see starting.
7:05 - I wake up again, conscience winning over lazyness
7:15 - I’m somewhat dressed, bobbing between the putting on of the various pieces of clothing. I go to the bathroom.
7:30 - I emerge out of the bathroom, still in a zombie-ish state. I fix myself a quick breakfast while watching the news on our very own Romanian CNN, called RealitateaTV.
7:45 I realize I have 15 minutes to walk 2,5 km so I better get going.
8:15 I arrive at work( late, but so what), get a glimpse at the horde of patients waiting in the hall and decide I’m not ready to face them. I enter the nurses’ room. My nurses, God bless them, are waiting for me with a big mug of coffee. I catch on the latest news of their lovelife and hospital gossip.
8:35 Having extracted enough strength from the coffee mug, I put on the coat and storm out of the nurses’room, muttering a “which of you arrived first for psychological testing, please come with me” while entering my room.
Somewhere in the first half hour of testing my nostrils come alive and start frenetically moving, trying to identify the source of the sudden nausea that’s taking over me. The brain remembers quickly what’s happening and commands the nose to shut down and leave all the breathing to the mouth. During the next 5 hours, the nose sometimes forgets the command, this leading to the worsening of aforementioned nausea. At 12-ish the horde is usually gone so I get to disinfect hands, wash them with soap just to be sure and then get the heck out of the room to my nurses who, without even asking why I look pale and drained, fix me my second cup of coffee. I rejoin humanity.
You might think I’m exagerating. I wish I was. Fact is, most of my patients are a) poor b) living very far from a source of running water (think villages in the middle of mountains) c)alcoholic d)a combination of a), b) and c). So while I don’t like the funk, at least I understand why it happens. Bad thing is, knowledge was never a cure for nausea. Just ask the intelectual preggos.
Haha… you need to stop stealing nursing stereotypes from the Death of Mr. Lazarus. Or was your admission merely confirmation of the truth it held? (Yikes!)