Made It Through The Week

Halfway though my LACASA volunteer class, and it's now Sunday, the night I look forward to all week: OFF WORK! I successfully made it to the two evening sessions and the all-day Saturday class. Yeah, I'm tired. Really tired. I wasn't able to fall asleep for even the shortest of naps Saturday morning, and then in the evening there was barely time for 4 hours of sleep before I had to get up and go to work again.

Shockingly, I feel pretty good right now. I know there is only the thinnest of eggshells separating me from exhausted oblivion, but I'm sipping a Green Flash Brewing Co. Stout right now, and making chocolate-chocolate chip pancakes.

And this was after a busy night in my favorite department, Chemistry. I didn't do a lot of extra stuff like maintenance and reagent calibrations. Sorry, first shift, I just didn't have that level of energy. But I still managed to get plenty done. Including calling the house supervisor on an unbelievably rude nurse. A coworker took me aside and told me about tonight's incident, and combined with what I'd heard the previous night... I decided we just weren't having it. The lab employees already take enough disrespect, but to have a nurse say the Blood Bank tech is 'dumber than a box of rocks' for simply sticking to policy where dispensing platelets is concerned; and to have listened the previous night to this nurse snarl to us about all the 'big-ass' patients out in ER and how they make her want to go on a diet, and no wonder they're sick... Yep. This is the level of maturity and professionalism(?) we deal with. Be that as it may, the size/shape of the patients is private information, and not even relevant to their lab specimens we're working on. Sort of getting close to breaching patient confidentiality, but mostly just plain disrespectful and negative. Who needs that in the workplace? Answer: NO ONE. What's funny is that she's no candidate for a magazine cover herself. Yeah, let's just discuss ass size for a moment...

Not sure where all this energy is coming from. Maybe it's because it's finally spring; maybe it's just taking this class and taking a step to getting out of this rut I've found myself in. That vague feeling that something isn't right with my life seems to be gone. Just having something going on besides the endless repetition of dragging myself to work night after night is enervating.

Lots of stuff to think about. Lots of statistics (not all of them good), lots of information, lots of different abuse situations... This isn't a class to necessarily get your feel-good fuzzies, but yet it's oddly a good feeling being in that place. We laugh a lot in class, and hear about the myriad ways there are to help. I feel a bit like taking this class has been like a leaf blower in my head, stirring up a lot of ideas, exposing some ugly wet dirt and worms. It was always there, it was just lightly covered up. The last few days I'm remembering and thinking about things that happened to me that I haven't thought about in years. It's kind of unsettling, but maybe it's a healthy thing. It kind of feels weird to be talking about some of it, but the other volunteers want to all talk about their own experiences, too. Rubbing shoulders with some true survivors is really something. And no one is judging or comparing. I get the feeling we all want to just sit and talk with each other and ditch the lectures for a day.

Time to wrap up these pancakes and get ready for bed. Perfect, beautifully gray wet craptastic day for sleeping!!