Nursing School on Steroids – Part Four: Impending Doom
I was having so much pain in my right shoulder that by May I would have already returned several times to my surgeon’s office for cortisone shots. Had I known better, I would have realized that this signified something was wrong; that you aren’t supposed to need more cortisone shots months after surgery. After all, the whole reason for the surgery was to stop the pain. Repeated cortisone shots are also bad for your bones. But I didn’t know any better, and while still in pain from the first surgery, went ahead and had the left shoulder surgery as scheduled. I just wanted to get it over with and move on, a mantra I would repeat many times over in the future.
My past shoulder surgery gave me the experience necessary to know the extra things I needed to prepare for this upcoming event. A visit to the medical supply store provided me with hospital no-rinse soap, a no-rinse shampoo cap and the adult equivalent of baby wipes. I also bought spray deodorant and a dental flossing pick. The pillows were all set for the recliner, and most importantly, I knew to inform the anesthesiologist that I was adrenal insufficient so as to not repeat the last surgical blood pressure crash. So bring it on!
The surgery went off without a hitch, and I spent the whole summer recovering (again without formal rehab) and trying to put colorful tabs in my nursing drug handbook. Since we weren’t given a pharmaceutical class, the nursing students were instructed to have a hand-held computer with all the meds listed, or a nursing medication book with all the meds tabbed and classified. Since I couldn’t afford a hand-held computer, I worked all summer on that book (and still have it), but would be hassled over my lack of pharmaceutical knowledge anyways (more on that later).
School started and I would now be able to do my Friday clinicals at the nearby hospital where I had worked as an EMT. No more commuting! And not only was I vice-president of the state Student Nurses Association, I had been voted my school’s president of the local chapter. This was beginning to be as great as last year – but not for long.
While in the college library one day, I ran into “Kittie” the nurse. I must digress and describe the significant history Kittie and I had together. It went back to a time when I had been an EMT, and while working at the hospital ER one night, I was asked to help out Kittie because she didn’t have a technician. I was already assigned to another nurse and would be devoting most of my attention to her patients, but I said I’d help if Kittie needed me. It was before I knew I had Cushing’s disease and was experiencing a particularly bad night. We were short staffed, the end of my six-day-in-a-row rotation, and my short temper was very short. Kittie was in the room with a patient. She called me in to do something quickly, so I ran into the dark room and switched the lights on. Holy cow – you would have thought I had committed a major crime! Kittie starting yelling about how she didn’t want the lights on because the patient had a migraine and why was I so stupid not to know this and why couldn’t I do the procedure in the dark and if I was competent I wouldn’t have had to turn on the light and. . . . . . . whatever. I was just helping out. I didn’t know the patient had a migraine. I had a hard enough time keeping track of my own patients. And I should have never been expected to do the procedure in the dark anyways.
After I did whatever I had to do, Kittie came over and finished her lecture. She offered no apology for being rude and embarrassing me in front of the patient and her family, just excuses. I was about to boil over. The volcano inside me was about to erupt and I couldn’t do anything about it. She finally finished with a perky little voice saying, “So, . . . are we good?”
There comes a time in everyone’s life when they hear something so ridiculous coming out of someone else’s mouth that its occurrence is beyond belief. This was that kind of time for me. Did she think we could possibly be “good” after this? Restrained, I looked her in the eye and replied, “No, we are NOT good, and I will never be working with you again. I have no respect for you.” And after that, the charge nurse made sure we would always be kept far, far away from each other.
So fast forward to me being in nursing school and seeing Kittie in the library. I went up and said hello to her. After all, this was the new me! The evil brain tumor that made me say bad things was gone, and I would be forgiving and nice to Kittie. I thought with Kittie’s medical knowledge and understanding of what I’d been through, she’d also forgive and forget. Let bygones be bygones! So she told me that she was going to be a clinical instructor for the nursing school, and would probably be my instructor. She was glaring at me with a creepy little smile, and I wasn’t sure if it was the “I don’t understand endocrine disorders” glaze or “I hate your guts” glare, or a combination of both. But whichever it was told me that it didn’t matter if I’d gotten over our little incident, because Kittie hadn’t. I had burned a bridge that was going to be difficult to rebuild, if at all. A really bad feeling came over me; a feeling I was all too familiar with – the threat of impending doom.
Cheers!
TPP
