Help! I'm Stuck in an Idiom!

I am now knee deep in my psychiatric nursing rotation.

I spend two days a week, usually on the afternoon shift, at a local psychiatric hospital. I'm on a locked unit and some of the patients are, in clinical terms, bat-shit crazy. There are a lot of stories, schizophrenics and delusions all the time.

It's not as scary as most people think, but it can be a little weird sometimes.

Last night I was playing cards with a patient and a couple of students. We were playing spades. When it was my turn to deal I realized that we were short 2 cards.

I was in a mental hospital. We weren't playing with a full deck. Are you kidding me? Was it an accident or does someone, patient or staff member, have a sick sense of humor?

Somewhere in that story is two or three minutes of stand up comedy.

If a joke pops into your head I hope you'll share it.

I Just Couldn't Take It

No, I haven't quit the program.

What I did do though, was walk out of a class today. In disgust.

Of course you're wondering why, and fully aware that I plan to tell you. What you are probably wondering is why I don't just get to the point. No reason.

So here goes.

I have class called Intro to Professional Nursing. It's really a blow off class, and the instructor has purposely set the bar low to allow us to focus on the hard science type classes. Everyone gets an A.

I have enjoyed the class mostly. It's a nice low stress break in the week.

Today was movie day. The instructor brought in a film related to health care, told us to watch it and explained that it would be discussed during class next week.

Why would I walk out on a movie? What could be so bad?

It was Michael Moore's "Sicko".

Whether or not you agree with the film, I hope you'll agree that it's an editorial, not a documentary. If you really think it's an unbiased work then you will likely not agree with anything that follows.

In my opinion the film was full of half truths. Like the guy who cut off his fingers on the table saw and could only afford to have one reattached. The last time I walked into an Emergency Room with an injury I was not offered a menu with prices. Why was one finger 5 times the cost of the second? Something about that smells wrong.

How about the golfer who went home for treatment in Canada instead of staying in the U.S.? U.S. Insurance usually travels. And when I do things like go SCUBA diving (which isn't covered by most insurers) I have a supplemental plan that will pay for anything I need, including being flown here from anywhere if treatment in the US is necessary. That costs me $99 a year. Canadians aren't covered by their government outside Canada. Atena covers me if I'm over there.

There are a whole bunch of other problems I have.

The thing that finally made me leave was the whole house call thing in France. The guy who talked about the service starting because a doctor with a plumbing problem decided that since he could get a plumber to come out in less than an hour, then anyone should be able to get a doctor to come to their own house that quickly too.

Yeah, plumbers are pretty much like doctors right? That's fair. Maybe if I need a neurologist one day I can just have my neighbor, the electrician, check me out. Holy shit.

It was then that I walked out.

Do I have opinions about whether or not US Healthcare sucks and how to fix it? Yes.

Am I going to share them? No.

Instead I am going to bitch about being subjected to a highly biased film in a program that is is not about opinion or or art. Nursing is and should be about fact. There are different kinds of heart attacks, and there are different treatments sometimes. But those treatments are all based on researched science. New ideas are tested rigorously. No responsible clinician passes off opinion as fact.

Blogs are the place for opinion. Classrooms should be places of fact, at least in a science based curriculum. I resent being subjected to that film. It's more than an hour of my time gone and who knows how many tuition dollars.

For the record, while I may have been less incensed, had the instructor played a 2 hours segment of something done by Rush Limbaugh I would have disapproved as well. I don't care for people with axes to grind or agendas to advance.

I am so annoyed that I can't even tie this together very coherently.

I think I'll just take a quick nap and then do some homework.

Are we bad parents?

First, a little background.

You know of course that The Peanut is out of the crib and sleeping in her big girl bed.

You may also recall that I once posted a photo of my home here. It’s a 1940 bungalow with two bedrooms and a half bath upstairs and two on the main floor with a full bath. Mona and I sleep downstairs and The Peanuts room is upstairs.

There is a baby gate up there to keep her off the stairs, but she’s pretty good on them now so we rarely use it anymore. (I know what you’re thinking, and no, she didn’t fall down the stairs. Just wait.)

This morning however we had a little incident. Somewhere around 3 AM The Peanut woke up crying and looking for her blankie. She sometimes loses it in her bed. She settled back down after a minute or two and then had another short episode about 30 minutes later.

I finally got back to sleep around 4 AM.

At 5:45 Mona’s alarm went off. She hit the snooze and I thought I heard a little cough from near the foot of the bed. I called The Peanut’s name but she didn’t answer. Mona thought I was mistaken. But as soon as we started talking a bit, The Peanut showed up.

Apparently she decided she’d had enough of the big girl bed and come downstairs. The good news is that we have a very considerate little girl. Instead of waking us up or crawling into our bed, she simply displaces one of the dogs from its doggie bed.

That’s right. The Peanut slept on the floor in the dogs bed last night. No covers, and the dog won’t stay in there with her. So she ends up sleeping on the floor without the benefit of a fur coat or even her blankie.

Would you like to know the worst part?

This was the second time it's happened.

It passed

Last Thursday we found out that Mona, along with all her co-workers, will be keeping their jobs.

We had some other plans in place, but it's nice to not need them. It's especially nice to know that at the very least we'll still have health insurance.

Spring Break was last week, I pretty much did nothing. I did see Watchmen on Friday. It was interesting, but also in my opinion mildly pornographic. The sex scenes left little to the imagination and there was a lot of full wangular nudity.

The best part about that day was the 66 degree high. I drove with my windows down and we aired out the house for a few hours.

I'm back at it this week, and Thursday starts my psych rotation. I'm told the place I'm going is basically alcohol rehab, which I imagine means dealing with a bunch of people who are sick and pissed. Great.

The Peanut is now in her big girl bed permanently. We took her crib down on Sunday.

We're also making progress with potty training. She is going pee on the potty about 80% of the time. We're still working on #2, which has only ended up in the potty a handfull of times. But any progress is fine with me. I'm ready to be done with diapers.

And that's the short version.