To start with, I should explain the blog title I guess. A year or so ago I was at a home party to support one of my friends, also in attendance was the friend's MIL, who is, shall we say, nasty. After making snide comments about everyone as they left the room, MIL turns to me and says "and what do you do?" (Now, I am a nurse by training, but no longer work in a clinical setting, currently I do Data Analysis for a health management company, but that is is a little long to explain so I normally just say 'I'm a nurse.') So she the asks me, "which hospital do you work at?" And I say, "I don't work in a hospital any more I work for [health management company]." To which she makes the infamous reply, "Oh, so you're not a real nurse."
OK, back story out of the way, flash forward to last night. My grandmother fell at home in her garage and was taken to the local ER via EMS. My dad, who also works for the same EMS service, but was stationed in another house, wasn't able to get away so he calls me and asks if I will go up and sit with her until he can get there. So there I am in office clothes, sitting at my grandmother's bed side when she decides she needs to go to the bathroom. It's a small town ER, right after she got there a full arrest comes in, so guess where everyone in the ER is, Grandma's back hasn't even been cleared, she's still strapped to the backboard. I hit the call light and someone comes over and says "I'll be with you in a minute" not "What do you need" or "Are you OK?" So 15 min later, Grandma's really starting to squirm so I go out to the desk and ask if I can please have a bedpan, the lady huffs at me but stomps off to get it, I go on back in the room and start pulling on gloves, the lady comes back in, looks at me oddly, but lets me help her put Grandma on the bedpan. My Grandmother then explains to the lady that "[my granddaughter] is a nurse." Which, especially since I'm in my office clothes, gets me the hairy eyeball and "Which hospital do you work at?" Once again I'm forced to explain that "I no longer work in the hosp, etc, etc." Which garners the response, "Oh, so you're not a real nurse." If I hadn't been so tired at the time, I think I'd have wet myself laughing.
Well, thankfully last night Grandma was really just bumped, bruised and embarrassed so my dad and I got her home and got her settled. This morning however, I'd barely gotten to work when I got the call that she'd fallen again and was back up at the ER. Now she's admitted to the hosp and we're trying to figure out what to do for her safety. My crazy aunt is trying to convince us that 'Mom would have wanted us to take all her stuff while she's in the hospital.' I'm left with trying to herd cats while we try to get the family to make a decision.
As the icing on the cake of the truly crappy day, I had a coworker ask me a question that I wasn't fully paying attention to, and so didn't answer as clearly as I could have. As a result she did something that cause privacy concerns for one of our clients, and now she is having calls from the privacy office, and there is some question as to whether or not she will get to keep her job. I'm not her supervisor, and she's an adult, in fact has been a nurse nearly as long as I've been potty trained, and she should have known not to do what she did, but that doesn't stop me from feeling truly crappy that I may have inadvertently cost her her job.
So at any rate, now am waiting for hubby to get home, and after a quick dinner we are off to the hospital to discuss assisted living options with my Grandmother. Yeah me.
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