I have been struggling with depression over my chosen profession for a long time now. This is an attempt at releasing some demons. It is my fervent hope that recording and sharing these experiences would lead to a better understanding of myself and of this crazy world we all choose to be a part of.
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After five days off, I drive to work singing. I'm a little off-key, but the windows are up, and my favorite songs are all queued up in preparation for the forty or so minutes my car will take to weave through 1740 traffic on my way to a place that I used to call my sanctuary. I grew up in hospitals, I used to tell anyone who asked why I would ever want to be in this profession. This is my natural habitat. But I digress..
The point is that I've been away for five days, and I was, for once, happy to be going to work. Or, more appropriately, I was very, very hopeful that I will not feel the oppressive depression that work has been inducing lately. I want to love my profession. I employ so much conscious effort in staving off the negativity that overwhelms me when I remember that I don't know how to be anything else other than a nurse. When positive thinking, meditation, deep relaxation, venting, and all the other internet suggestions didn't work, I even sought out a therapist who might be able help me come up with other ways to start loving patient care again. That's how much I want to embrace this profession. But, again, I digress.
I am always cheerful when I walk through those double doors. I smile, I greet everyone appropriately, I take report, I assess my patients. It's the usual routine, bolstered by all the repetitive positive self-talk ringing inside my head. This will be a good day. I love my job. I love the people I work with. I make a difference.
Then one patient's CIWA rises to 28 while he's cussing at me. He swings at the staff and hurls misogynistic derogatory remarks while we empty his urinal and try to keep his trembling legs from sending him face down to the unforgiving floor. He doesn't show an ounce of decency until first the security guard then the doctor walks in. They barely say anything to him but he's suddenly reasonable. He gets back to bed. Even in his poor mental state, he respects them, these gentlemen who were kind enough to grace his presence for exactly two minutes.
But the nurses who struggle to keep him safe, who rearrange the entire unit so that we can put him in a room closer to the station because he's at such high risk of falling, who get yelled at by the doctor for calling for the nth time because he had no withdrawal medications onboard, who change his linens because, once again, this grown man has soiled himself, the bed, and the floor-we're just female dogs and prostitutes who need to shut the hell up or we'll get what's coming to us.
This is Day 1. It ended with a CNA sitting beside me at the station waiting to give report to the oncoming shift. She was pulled from the floor and had to stay at the patient's bedside for the latter end of our shift. For the sake of my patient's safety, nurses with full patient loads willingly surrendered their aide.
"You must not have been doing this for very long," she says, exhaustion apparent in her voice. She spoke with no hint of mocking or irony. "You still have a lot of compassion. Patient's like that-- they make it so hard to care."
