Thursday, February 14, 2008

I love my job.

I wanted to write tonight for a couple reasons. First of all, it is still snowing. You know, I'm getting used to it, I really am. But it's getting OLD. As of now it's Milwaukee's snowiest winter in 25 years, and by the end of winter I'm sure that statistic will be even more impressive. Everybody just seems worn out by it; I was talking to a nurse today who said she was thinking of retiring a year early just so she doesn't have to "drive to work anymore in this crap weather." I would sympathize, except that I now drive a 4x4, and it is absolutely AWESOME in the snow. In fact, it's way better in the snow than in any other kind of weather, when it just seems ridiculous and huge and excessively bumpy. I pretty much don't feel justified driving it unless it's snowing. Lucky for me, that's been every other day for the last three months. So I consider it a good investment as of now.

The other reason I wanted to write is to tell a funny story about work before I forget about it. Today I got a haircut (finally--I don't know if I was beginning to look more like Ringo Starr or Marsha Brady), and my new hairstylist was asking me what I do, and she was absolutely blown away that I work with kids in a psych hospital. Her surprise momentarily surprised me, but then it occurred to me that as a result of this job absolutely nothing fazes me anymore, whereas the general public would probably be completely shocked by even some of the more benign stories I have to tell.

We've had this girl in again, one I wrote about earlier this year. When I see her name on the admit list, I feel, simultaneously, the deepest sense of dread and a little spark of excitement because I know something crazy is going to happen. This girl is utterly, completely out of control. Well, last Friday she put on one of her most wonderful performances. Angry because "nobody likes her" and every other patient we'd had that morning had been discharged except for her, she threw a small cup of water at one of the teachers (out of nowhere) in the middle of a movie. The teacher and I exchanged surprised glances, but didn't really react yet because you can never tell with this particular girl if she's going to de-escalate or just blow. Well, she blew, about 10 seconds later. She got up, walked toward the door, picked up a full pitcher of ice water, and hurled it in my general direction before running screaming into the hall and locking herself in the bathroom.

I stood there for a couple seconds, sopping wet, literally head to toe soaked, speechless. Then I turned to the teacher and when our eyes met, we just cracked up. I couldn't help it, I laughed until I cried, the whole thing was so ludicrous. And at some point I realized I was laughing partially because of the fact that the entire situation didn't even really bother me, that in the scheme of things, it wasn't really even all that ludicrous. In a 'normal' school, if some kid dumped a pitcher of water on a teacher, I imagine the whole place would shut down. I mean, I don't really know what would happen--nothing like that ever really went down at any of the average public schools I attended. But in our situation all we can really do is laugh, and move on, because hey, if it doesn't kill you, you pretty much just come back to work the next day (side note: this was proven true just the other day when a staff person was strangled--almost to death--by a patient hearing voices and was back in the hospital the next day).

So anyway, luckily, one of the teachers had--I kid you not--a hideous Christmas sweater and a pair of black leggings in the office. I could explain the sweater but it's too long a story--suffice it to say I'd borrowed the sweater before purely because it was so incredibly hideous, and she'd never taken it back home after I returned it to her. So I took off my soaking wet clothes and wore the hideous Christmas sweater and leggings for the rest of the afternoon. You better believe I got numerous compliments on my festive attire, but frankly, I don't think anyone even thought it was that strange that I was wearing a Christmas sweater in February. Also, the patient came back to class 20 minutes later, freshly medicated, and apologized to me, explaining that the voices made her do it. I accepted her apology and we watched the rest of the movie and ate popcorn.

In conclusion, when you work in a psych hospital, you can wear whatever the hell you want. I could elaborate on this, but I won't, because I need to get some sleep and I could honestly go on about this for days.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Why is there not a picture of this SWEET outfit accompanying this post!?!? :(