River's Edge Urban Academy

Homeschooling 4 kids ages 9, 6, 4 and baby while working as a postpartum nurse and lactation counselor.

Friday, February 04, 2005

I hate my F@@king job
Well, tonight anyway I really do.
This is my patient load:
1st post-op day patient with minimal English and crappy breastfeeding baby. Is of a culture where women are waited on hand and foot after giving birth and doesn't quite understand why I keep leaving her room? Aren't I gonna stay the whole time and hold the pump on her boobs for her?
Day of delivery Nigerian patient. Actually had a decently nursing baby but as she is African she does think that I will be doing everything for her. Her baby was 10+ pounds and NOT CUTE.
41 year old primip (old primips are the WORST, generally very anxious with tons of questions) with tiny little 5# baby that was at 10% weight loss, jaundiced and a crappy breastfeeder.
Top it off with a early twenties primip who we (according to her) decided to mess with by adding a little meth to her urine sample. Now she has certainly not used meth for a very long time so we are just trying to be mean to her. Yeah, we have nothing better to do than to tamper with people's urine samples. And like we WANT all the paperwork involved in that. Believe me I wish we never found out! Her mom actually bordered on being verbally abusive, though not exactly directed at me. And yes, her kid couldn't eat for crap either! Of course she had to come down to the nursery and feed him there since he was on a 72 hour hold and it didn't help anything that by the time she got down there he was too frantic to learn to latch on.
Now this is a tough assignment, despite only having 4 pt's (we often have 5). I expressed that to my charge nurse at the beginning of the shift so that she would look elsewhere for who to assign the next admit.
So, guess who got the first admit? That's right! ME! Nevermind that the other nurses were sitting around talking, with their charting all done while I raced my ass off. There wasn't much I could say when they gave me the patient other than to suck it up and take care of her. At the end of the night though, I did ask my charge, "Why me?" The answer, the other nurse who should have gotten the 5th pt is "incompetent" Excuse me? That nurse walked out of work right on time while I stayed 45 minutes late charting! My reward for competency is being shit on?
Ooooh, one good thing happened that I better get on the record: A visitor in the hall stopped me to tell me I had been her nurse and I helped her SO much with breastfeeding. She was still nursing her three month old and I spent a little time in the hall talking to her about how she could increase her milk production. It was really rewarding as she is of a general type of pt who I did not expect to nurse for very long. I gave her props for continuing to nurse and thanked her for taking the time to thank me. What a sweety.
Anyway, that's my venting for the day, I do feel better. Now to eat a nasty frozen bean burrito as I hardly had time to eat on my whole crappy shift.

2 Comments:

  • At 9:24 AM, Blogger Kate said…

    katy, I love you! I'm sorry you had a bad night, but your post made me laugh and I really needed it!

    Thanks for checking in on my family while I've been gone. Tim is bringing kids down here today, and we should be back by Monday night. I'll be so glad to see my little urchins! Thanks too for your love and prayers.

     
  • At 10:44 AM, Blogger KatyM said…

    Oh, Kate,
    It is so nice to hear from you. I am glad my post could cheer you up. I'm glad SOMEBODY is getting some good out of that evil shift. Actually, I was a little surprised when I re-read it at how profane I was! Looking forward to seeing you guys soon.

     

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