I try to see but I’m blinded by the white line…

So. (Ok. Fuck this song gets to the core of me and makes it hard to breathe. The crescendos and violins. Haunting melodies. *holds breath*)

Anyways. Yeah. Echo is going on…uhm….60ish hours of no sleep. T.i.r.e.d. Yes. I never managed to sleep on Saturday nite or during the day on Sunday. Then I worked Sunday night. Then I stayed for CPR in-service. Then I got my car pseudo-fixed. Then I went up to the other campus to work for Dr F. And I just got home.

And of course, it never fails- the nite that I am totally sleep deprived, work is a fucking madhouse. I mean. Yeah, I know I work at a psychiatric center. But damn. Is it a full moon or something???? Evening shift didn’t go well for them…patients getting rocks from the courtyard and trying to cut themselves with them. An admission. 3 suicidal/selfharm risk people. One guy who is having some serious withdrawal issues. Another who suddenly started being completely manic. Another who randomly went up to another pt and kicked her, pretty hard.

Well. Often when eve shift is whacked like that, nite shift doesn’t always see it, cuz people’ve calmed down by then and such. Not last nite. People were up milling around. One of the actual suicidal patients, who is getting sent to State as soon as there’s a bed, was promising to kill herself before ever going to State. That she was “determined” to do it. So. Ok. The LOGICAL thing would be to put her in the quiet room and have her on 1:1, right? Right. But she refused to go to the quiet room. And apparently she was trying to talk her roomie into a suicide pact. And her roomie is very sweet, but also severely depressed and not really needing much prodding in such areas. And the roomie is also intelligent and told staff she thought that perhaps they were just feeding in to each other (BINGO!), and also that she was scared of the roomie. So. *That* person got put in the quiet room. Yeah, she was feeling like harming herself but she didn’t -want- to, and she was able to contract for safety.

So. The less suicidal one went to the QR. The high risk one stayed in her own room. And it’s not like the staff could’ve MADE her go to the QR, even tho there was criteria…but she’s a big girl and staffing was already low and the staff that was there I don’t think could’ve taken her down. Cuz one is just a little thing (SO CUTE! I adore her. She’s so sweet.), another is a new GN and I don’t think even has her CPI training yet meaning hands off. Another is unable to lift things cuz she has a bad back. And the fourth I’m thinking isn’t healthy as she could be either, since she’s working IP cuz one of the RTF kids really injured her a while back, as in requiring half a cast on her leg/foot…..So. Yeah. A code wasn’t the best option. So they 1:1 her as best they could. Great. But night shift really doesn’t have that luxury since we never get extra staff for 1:1’s even tho we should.

I ended up spending half the nite sitting outside her door watching her. The other half of the nite….well. I did one admission with a guy who, I bet by now is also having some major withdrawal from cocaine. He’s a readmit and he is just ‘out there’ like, not with it at all.

Oh, then there’s the third suicidal one, who threatened to hang herself with her shoelaces. And apparently she tried to hang herself earlier in the day with a hospital gown but it broke….So she was in the other quiet room. She slept thru the nite mostly tho.

Then there was another guy…the manic one. Who is LOUD. And he just comes to the desk and asks questions. Like, inane questions that if he were a child I would say he was doing it just because he knew it was grating on our nerves. Except he most likely didn’t know how ungawdly annoying he was being. Which sometimes makes it easier for me to deal with patients like that. But not last nite. Cuz it was just…ugh. He kept coming up and being like “one more question…” eighteen times in a row. And then at one point the girl who refused to sleep in the QR was sitting in a chair by the desk and he came out (mind you, it was prolly 2am at this point or later) and started babbling to her. I could just SEE her getting angrier and angrier. Her fists were clenching and her jaw was gyrating. And I kept asking this guy to go back to his room or leave her alone and he was like “Shh shh. Will you just wait until I’m finished?” in a very condescending manner. Eventually even Donna told him to go back to his room and he kept talking to the girl, didn’t even look at Donna, and just raised his hand in a “wait, wait” motion. Wow. Donna’s eyes went to slits faster than I could say Boo and she just turned around away from him and HER jaw started gyrating and she was like “oooh buddy. Shush me again and there’s gonna be problems…” And it’s not like Donna is power hungry or anything. She’s one of the most patient people that I know. But apparently he struck a nerve.

So. He was up to the desk every couple of hours.

And THEN. Then there was the last guy who…I dunno why, I took a liking to him. We’re thinking he’s detoxing pretty hardcore, and he was totally shakey and having tremors. He came out cuz his watch wasn’t working and I asked if I could help with it and I fixed it for him and he was ok for a while, but he just couldn’t sleep. BUT. Unlike the other patients, he would wander out of his room, mutter a bit about how he was just up and down and couldn’t fall asleep…look at the clock, and then go back to his room to try again. He was polite and he and I were even joking a bit. But. Then he started getting a bit dilerious. First he insisted that he saw a mouse climing on the railing of the wall. I said there was no mouse. And he got up and looked from another angle and was like “oh! You’re right. It’s just the silver doorknob, but from here it looks like a mouse scurrying up and down…” Ok. At this point I was like Ok. He realizes it’s not a mouse. He’s just sleep deprived. Right. Well. Round about 3 or 4 am I offered him some warm milk and when I took it back to his room, he was picking lintballs off of his sock and smooshing them with a tissue. He said to me that they just wouldn’t die, that they kept moving. I couldn’t see anything. But I gave him the benefit of the doubt and thought perhaps they were little bugs or something and I just couldn’t see them. Then he started picking spiders off of himself. Just 2. So. Ok. The place is sometimes crawling with spiders, especially with the weather like it has been. So. Ok. I go back to my duties.

Later he’s at the desk and is like “you have to come back to my room with me, you have to see this…” Okaaay….so I go back with him and at the door he is like “Ok, step up and hop over” (there is no step, just flat floor.) And then he stooped down and pointed at the carpet. “See them? Fleas! Thousands of them!! Shhh, you can *hear* them. Listen close so you can see them…” Uh. No fleas. But again, fleas are small. The carpet is speckled…. But then he ran to the desk and wanted white paper and he took it back to his room and scooped up a bunch of “fleas” which were non-existent. He just started getting more and more agitated and out of it from there. By the time I got out of the door (half an hour late, mind you) he was walking around with all of his clothes in his arms saying there was no way he was gonna sleep in that room with all of those bugseverywhere. And. *sigh* His eyes…he was in there somewhere, I know he was. But. *sigh* It’s just weird to see people escalate like that, ya know? Cuz at first, he knew that the things he was seeing weren’t there or rather, he was seeing things and knew that we couldn’t see them. They weren’t (the standard definition of) “real” But then it just kept getting worse until he didn’t understand that he was hallucinating and he really believed the things were real. lah.

It was just non-stop, all nite. THEN I had to sit thru CPR videos that I’ve seen a dozen times. But at least they had new dummies. Their heads were apparently made out of recycled milk jugs, and their bodies were just kind of flaps of blue styrofoam, and when you gave them mouth to mouth, you could see the bag inflate and stuff, so that was good at least.

And the car. Still has an oil leak. Air condition still doesn’t work. But the overheating-ness seems to be fixed. CarBoy says that the antifreeze resevoir looked as if someone mixed something or other…orange and blue?? Anyways. He said it was like gooey ice cream. Which apparently isn’t good. Anyways. He wasn’t sure if what he did would fix the problem cuz the only way to know was to just drive and see if it overheated. So I drove to the other campus and it was fine. woo.hoo.

Then I spent 3 hours, I kid you not, photocopying shit for Dr F. I wouldn’t mind so much if the copier weren’t so damn slow. I’m used to the one at work that is speedy, I guess. The school ones are snails in comparison.

But, she also *finally* looked at the website and had some (minimal) input. I dunno…I don’t know her well enough but…and maybe it’s just cuz I put so much time and work into it with non-spectacular results…she was just like “it’s nice. change this and this…” And the things she wanted changed were things she had put there in the first place (wording things) so that didn’t bother me at all. But. I dunno. *I* think it looks pretty damn kewl. I was kinda proud of it but now I’m just like, ‘eh, whatever’ And. What I really would’ve liked her to have said was something along the lines of “oooh, nice graphics” or something. But. That’s not what gets me down. It’s the fact that she won’t give me any input on what SHE wants, yet she doesn’t seem exactly thrilled with what I’ve done. I dunno. I probably wouldn’t be so irked if I weren’t so tired. I probably wouldn’t be so irked if I didn’t have this constant craving for some sign of approval.

But. One good thing about last nite was that I worked with Donna and she almost ALWAYS says “hey, thank you, I appreciate it!” as I am heading out the door in the mornings. And this morning…well, it was a very trying nite and at one point she thought that *we* (Dawn who was the other staff and I) were upset with her because of the way she was handling the wacked out milieu situation. And we so were not!!! Dawn was perturbed because evening shift didn’t get out of there til after midnite, and that essentially means the tech can’t do their job til they leave, cuz they sit in the ‘tech’ seat, so to speak. (The seat in front of the addressograph machine!) And. It just gets crowded when you try to shove 4 people behind that desk. Anyways. I made some comment to Donna as I was leaving about how the nite was hectic and she was like “I know. I know. We do the best we can…” And I was like “Hey! We pulled thru.” And she was like “Yeah, we always do! And nobody got hurt, I guess that’s the main thing, right…” (the conversation was slightly tinged with bitterness on both our ends. Bitterness aimed at the Higher Ups….the ones who control staffing. The ones who run the show without really ever stepping foot behind the scenes. Sure, we get a guest appearance every now and again. But it’s just for show.) Anyways. My point is that Donna appreciates me. And I made sure to let her know that I appreciate her too.

Oh. Other work related news…..So. One of the social workers has been out for several weeks. He had to have surgery on his back. He was to be back to work the first month of June, but things aren’t healing right. So. He has an MRI scheduled for later this week, to see when he can come back to work. Then last nite I discover that another coworker who had been having problems with bad headaches and pain that just kept moving around her body and her bili levels were low, which indicates something is bleeding out inside your body…she was life-flighted to the city a few days ago. She ended up having all these tests and surgery and they found TWO aneurisms in her brain. One in the front and one in the back. They still don’t know what’s bleeding out. And it’s possible she may have had a small stroke. She has some slight paralysis in her right arm. But I spoke to her on the phone- she actually called in cuz she knew Donna was working and she wanted to talk to her to let her know that she was ok…so her brain functioning seems to be pretty well intact as far as we can ascertain.

And then ANOTHER co-worker, who has also been having unexplained pains for several months….possibly some sort of cancer…like, they haven’t even diagnosed her but the dr is already going on and on about radiation and stuff.

It’s just weird…all of this stuff…another coworker was having really bad headaches and started having seizures a few months back too. Wonder if it’s something to do with the work environment.

I just talked to H. Apparently I’m going to go out to her place on Thursday then watch Z all day (12 hrs) on Friday. lah lah lah. But she said I could cut the grass, so yay.

I’m technically s’posed to do the therapy thing tomorrow but. I just don’t know if I can. ugh.

gawd i ramble so when i’m exhausted.

This song is apparently written by one of the band members based on a true life drunk driving experience…I didn’t know that when I first heard it but it just…from the first time, I was in love with it.

Untitled (How Could This Happen To Me)

I open my eyes
I try to see but I’m blinded by the white light
I can’t remember how
I can’t remember why
I’m lying here tonight

And I can’t stand the pain
And I can’t make it go away
No I can’t stand the pain

Chorus:
How could this happen to me
I’ve made my mistakes
Got no where to run
The night goes on
As I’m fading away
I’m sick of this life
I just wanna scream
How could this happen to me

Everybody’s screaming
I try to make a sound but no one hears me
I’m slipping off the edge
I’m hanging by a thread
I wanna start this over again

So I try to hold
onto a time when nothing mattered
And I can’t explain what happened
And I can’t erase the things that I’ve done
No I can’t

How could this happen to me
I’ve made my mistakes
Got no where to run
The night goes on
As I’m fading away
I’m sick of this life
I just wanna scream
How could this happen to me

I’ve made my mistakes
Got no where to run
The night goes on
As I’m fading away
I’m sick of this life
I just wanna scream
How could this happen to me
-Simple Plan-