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BabelFishe
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Name: Diamondtrim
Country: United States
State: New York
Metro: New York City
Birthday: 9/1/1982
Gender: Female
Interests: Aberrations. Beginnings. Bonding. Connecting. Free time. Spare time. Growing. Healing. Hurting. Discovery. Discovering. Deviation. Capturing moments. Green-thumbing. Expression. Distinctive markings (metallic or inked). Original ideas. Meaning. Identifying. Patterns. Symbols. Idiosyncrasies. Simile. Revamping. Unearthing. Strategies. Releasing compunctions. Wording. Rhythyms, rhymes, and harmonies.
Expertise: Coming up short, one way or another.
Occupation: RN
Industry: Living.
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  crazedweazels
MSN: crazedweasels@hotmail.com
Member Since:
6/22/2004
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| My two days of freedom are coming to a close. They never seem long enough, these languid days between, where I can do what I please with only a sprinkling of necessity, instead of the other way 'round.
I need to see a dentist, but have decided to put that off until my taxes get done. What better way to spend your return on than major dental work?
I have very bad teeth. I actually should have said, in the first sentence of this paragraph, that I need to see an endodontist. That's the one that's gonna fix my choppers. Of course, I could always just have 'em extracted, but I'm starting to run short on teeth. I'm in my late twenties, and still have four baby teeth. Two of them are a source of my problems right now. No surprise really...what baby teeth are supposed to last this long?
They took an xray of my mouth and I was sort of shocked to discover that one of them no longer has any roots. How the hell is it still in my mouth, then? It doesn't really cause me any discomfort, though. And has a filling in it. That's not even one of the ones that need fixin', though...amazing as that may be. Stupid teeth and stupid genetics, giving me bad teeth. It's not like I don't take care of them!
Anyway, I have resolved to like work better. I realized that I do enjoy healing, and the fault of my job comes with not feeling as if I'm healing so much as just pushing temporary fixes. Maybe that feeling would be weaker if I wasn't a float and had some sense of progress with a group of patients, but as it is, I'll just have to look deeper.
Work still has a stranglehold on me, but I'm beginning to wonder if I wouldn't feel that way about any job. I just like staying at home too much.
Maybe if I popped out a few brats, I'd have a good excuse to do so. But, then we'd be living in a car and not a house and I'd probably want to get the hell to a job...any job.
My license cost me quite a few personal sacrifices to get, and I want to like having it. I am proud of accomplishing the feat, but I am sick of just feeling proud. I want to feel justified in my calling.
Because even though it was never the calling that I had pictured for myself, it is the one that I now have. And who doesn't want to feel justified in what they are forced to do in order to live?
| | |
| I enjoy having a laptop. It's so nice to occasionally break away from the desk and spread myself out on the floor. A bit of jostling for position, and *bam*, ready to go.
My contacts are drying up and irritating my eyes. I go through phases where I don't wear the damn things for months at a time, then decide to start wearing them again. Of course, it probably doesn't help that this current pair is quite old. And therefore expired. Eh, comes from not being able to afford the eye doctor. I opted for new glasses instead of contacts the last time I was there, and that was already over a year ago.
Which brings me back to my original point about them drying up. I finally bought eye drops for myself tonight. That was nice. One of those things that I just don't ever remember to get, because I never wear them anymore. Certainly never when I'm actually at a store that sells the drops. I usually only reserve them for occasions when I don't want to be burdened with my glasses, but these last two days, I've been wearing them to work.
I'm also eagerly anticipating the arrival of my new eyeshadow. I went on a splurge recently, because I've a little bit of extra money (read: christmas money) and since The Man and I also already established savings accounts with his inheritance, I saw fit to spoil myself.
I won't bother listing what I already bought, because I'm fully aware of what I already bought. That would be stupid and a waste to write it. (it was a watch that I've wanted for years and a bracelet of the same variety...it says Carpe Diem, my new years motto). (take that!)
Waiting for those items to be shipped to my door was agony. The night before they arrived, I emailed the senders to let them know that I was on to them, and that they wouldn't get away with cheating me. The very next day, both packages came.
I'm not gonna say that my emails were that powerful. It just would have been nice to have been sent a tracking code, so that I could have obsessively tracked both items as they made their way from Tennessee and Arizona, to me. That's all I'm saying.
I told myself that I wouldn't bother with buying online again, unless I absolutely had to. But, two items that were on my list of things to buy with my gift money (I just can't help but make a list, lest I forget something that I really wanted to get and use the funds for something else.) (Yes, I'm fully aware of how neurotic that sounds.) were simply unlocatable in any store. One was sold out. The other, just didn't seem to exist in any realm other than the internet.
So, here I am once again, waiting. Waking up each day and staring with longing at my mailbox, looking for the plastic bag to dangle from it. The plastic bag that will signify that my waiting is at an end. That my agony is over and my gratification is at hand.
But, at least this time, I have a tracking code for both items that I'm waiting on. (a shirt and the aforementioned eyeshadows.)
They're from ELF, and I'm quite excited about them. Dirt cheap, too. A shameless plug for a product that I enjoy. Maybe they'll feel the vibes of my appreciation and notify the shipping folks to move their asses in getting it to me. I have little patience for shipping, but it's like a drug that I can't turn away from, lately. Addictive, even. It's like I crave the waiting, the suspense of wondering if today will be the day that the package finally comes. I don't fully understand my motives.
I'm not sure there are any, other than want and need. Want of an item and the need to have to buy it online, because the damn stores don't have it. Very simple, after all.
I was dawdling on my drive home tonight, flipping through some music and wondering what I could do to passive-aggressively wake up The Man as he napped in my passenger seat. It irks me that he won't sleep when he gets a normal chance, but takes up what little time we have together to do it. The puppy was with us, because even though I was driving home from work, he had decided to take her. Usually, she's an excellent tool for my P-A foibles, but she betrayed my intentions tonight, by going and falling asleep with him.
I suppose that I could have made some sort of noise to wake her, but I didn't. It would have been easy from there, because all I have to really do is make eye contact with her and she is good for my evil designs of wrecking his sleep.
Still, I let them sleep. The urge passed and then I was caught up in other things.
Namely, how life is all about additions.
We start off in a family. We grow older and make friends. Those friends are additions to our lives. They add things and can subtract things, too. But even if they take away, the memories are still there, additions to our gray matter.
Eventually, we leave the nest of home to make our own somewhere. We make even more friends, more additions to life.
Possibly even meet someone. A significant other, who becomes a large addition. This happens to most of us. They begin to acquire things. Objects that become additions to their life together. Symbolic of their shared time and energy. Building and expanding, adding to their life. Additions.
Somewhere along the line, pets may get added in. So, here's two young people, barely able to care for themselves, stumbling around through life with all their additions. Possibly feeling overwhelmed, possibly not. Possibly making rash decisions, possibly not. They continue to grow by acquiring, adding more to their lives then they previously had.
Adding education, adding a job, adding responsibility, adding the perks of better pay. Adding a place to live all their own, and adding all the stuff that helps make it so. Adding feelings, adding sensations, adding it all up.
The additions never stop, because that is what life is all about. Eventually, there is offspring. They get added in, on top of all else that was already being juggled, because that's what we are ingrained to do.
Add more to what's there, because who has the foresight to say when enough is enough?
And with kids, there comes a whole new set of additions, because suddenly everything is different. But you have to keep adding.
It puts me in mind of a Jenga tower. Or maybe more like Prickly Pile-Up, because with Jenga, you're actually taking pieces out instead of putting them in. Seeing how much you can remove before the tower crumbles. Prickly Pile Up is all about how many you can pile on until it all comes crashing down.
That's sort of what life can feel like from time to time.
This may or may not come from the fact that I just recently added a puppy to my household of additions and castoffs. I was just thinking about next steps in life, and where they can lead to. Of course, I'm aware that there is no dictum stating that we all must reproduce. I'm still on the fence about the whole kids thing, after all.
But, I am still busy just adding and adding. When will it be enough? When will I say that I've got enough? I don't wonder about that so much as what is coming. Will traveling be in my future? When would be the best time to go so as not to interrupt too much the flow of my life with The Man? How will it affect our plans? Will it even affect our plans? We still have much to do before we can even begin to contemplate those big additions to life. Namely, his schooling. He needs to be dedicated enough to that to show me that he can carry the weight of all these things we've already added. Especially before we go and add any more. He needs to show himself, too.
So, I think for now, I'll stick with the watches and bracelets, eyeshadows and such type of additions to my life. They're much easier to go back on than the other types I'm thinking about. We're content, but there's a definite sense of urgency underlying the contentment.
Still and all...it'll have to wait. I'm not getting any younger, but on the same token, there is no room for anything bigger than new makeup right now. It'll have to do. And, in a way, it does.
| | |
| So let's see...I had wanted to do a year-in kind of post, where I think about all that has transpired throughout 2009, but honestly, there wasn't much that happened this year.
At this time last year, The Man and I were fresh moved out of the hovel with the killer furnace and crackhead neighbors. It was a busy time, getting the one car back on the road, hoping that we had enough money to fund this big adventure (moving trucks aren't cheap), and wondering if the new landlord would let us move in halfway through december instead of waiting until january 1st. We didn't want to spend Christmas '08 in a place that just might kill us with carbon monoxide poisoning, or if it didn't do that, at least not keep us warm because it ate oil like crazy. That thing had used 100 gallons of oil in just 17 days at one point. We knew we had to get out, and we did. So, New Years last year found us warm and cozy, if a little tense, in our present place. This past year has been good to us as far as that stuff goes.
Then, it also seemed as if 2009 was the year of death for us. Within the first three months of the year, 3 people died. One was my uncle, another was The Man's uncle, and the third was a family friend. The most dramatic was the family friend, who shot himself in a standoff with police in Florida rather than be arrested.
The most disturbing was The Man's uncle, whom I had loved and still miss. His death also had the most repercussions for us, as I've already written about in my last post, concerning my grandmother ''in-law'' and her screwed up situation. We spent a lot of 2009 trying to clean up that mess, and there isn't much indication that will change with the new year.
It may sound odd that I don't list my own blood as having been a traumatic death for me, but the stark truth is that I barely knew the man; he was always doing his own thing whenever we visited, and had a gap with the rest of my father's side. He drank. He was arrogant. If he ever was closer with the rest of the family--my immediate ones included--it was when I was too young to really be aware of it. Though, according to most stories told at his funeral and after, that wasn't the case. His time had already passed before I was even born. His death was also a peaceful one, in his sleep due to heart failure. His girlfriend found him when she went to go to sleep. He was already cold.
As far as my job is concerned, there wasn't any noticeable growth there, though I'm sure that some had to have happened, as my field is one of those that never stops changing and I'm still new enough to gain from each day that I spend at the hospital.
The latter half of the year was spent in turmoil, with the hospital going through some dramatic managerial layoffs and reshuffling of leadership while on it's way to building the new hospital and gaining more status for itself in the state. I lost my manager, the one who ran the float pool, got another one, who was then let go as well. We've had the third one for the longest now, though eventually I am sure we'll get our own manager, as the current one also runs two other busy departments. The hospital seems to enjoy heaping responsibility onto the backs of those who agree to it. The scuttlebutt around those events of course pertains to the choices that were made in the layoffs/resignations or whatever one wants to call it...all the good ones are now gone. I mostly agree with that sentiment, though.
Only within the last two weeks have new managers been hired into a few of the vacant positions. Within those same last two weeks, many regular staff have now begun to fear for their jobs, as suspensions and terminations become the norm.
It's made for a rather hostile work environment, one that I began to feel as soon as more than one manager was laid off. It isn't a great leap of imagination to assume that they won't leave such business to stick at the top levels...everything always eventually trickles down to the regular people, except, of course, money. 
If 2009 held any great leaps and bounds for my relationship with The Man, they must have been subtle, because I am not really aware of anything. We are still sturdy. If anything, we talk more openly about certain things. Of course, we got the puppy for ourselves, and that has changed our life together, as is natural. I wouldn't have expected anything less.
I had my own little breakdown concerning that and have since moved on. It seems the natural order for me to do this thing, as The Man pointed out to me. Whenever something happens in my life that is going to bring change, I seem to have to have a little meltdown about it, and then I am fine, mostly. It stems, I think, from being a generally nervous person. Not really nervous so much as uncertain. I put up a fine bravado about knowing what is going on and what I'm doing, but for the most part, it is just that. It's just that life itself is so uncertain and things can change so fast. I've learned that since living on my own and out of my parents' secure nest.
I recall having such a breakdown when it came time for me to actually move out. It took a talking to from my father to reassure me and get me through it, but this time, with the dog, I had just myself and The Man. He isn't the best at offering reassurance, his idea of it is to point out what he thinks I need to do to improve instead of just reassuring.
It isn't what I'm used to in that department, or what I expected, but it worked. We became more of a team because of it, as I had to get off of my chest what was bothering me and make him see it so that I wouldn't just hold it in and let it build into some fierce resentment. I'm too good at doing that and then he gets madder that I feel that way about opening up to him.
It had to change with me, though, during 2009. Heck, we moved twice during last year, had some financial crises to get through, and now had the dog to get on board with. Those situations required me to strengthen my spine and realize that I do have a right to express my feelings.
Of course, with him, I had to learn to do it in the right way, because he is quite quick to take umbrage, which only made me feel worse and then it would degenerate into an argument. So, I guess it was a good year for us. I learned that I can speak my mind, and that I should trust him with that. Don't really know what he learned out of that same scenario, but I'm sure it was worthwhile.
One of the things that I told myself I would work on when 2009 began was to get some idea of my future. Start getting some ideas for what I want to spend the rest of my life doing, and do the internal work required of me to discover my passions.
I am happy to say that some of this has come true. I have finally gained a vision of what I would like my future to be, along with what might just be an inkling of my true purpose in life.
In short, I have started dreaming again, and it feels good. I have ceased to be depressed about the way I am and instead began trying to teach myself to direct that energy into what I want to be, and where I want my life to go. It is a refreshing and liberating feeling, and one that I hope to carry with me until the dreams become reality. And by then, I hope to be so adept and setting and keeping goals, that I can just easily create more to achieve.
Ironically, I have had to become a little bit more grounded in reality to do all of this. I had to realize that some idle desires were just that. Not nonsense, but they definitely had to be separated from what was more important. And serious, I guess. It's still kind of hard to express, that sense, and I don't know if I'm doing it properly, but some goals have just become more solid, while others stayed the same. I think that has helped me to separate the two. A kind of "eh, that would be nice to do" from the "i won't feel complete unless I do that someday" type of thing...or maybe more of a "that's what I was put here to do" feeling as opposed to a "that would be cool to do, for a bit." feeling.
As far as the year ahead is concerned, it is finally time to put a stop to the dead-endness of our life together. I am done with school, and so he needs to start it. I think he is finally fed up with things enough to gain the proper motivation to make this happen, too. Why do some males need to be so damn late to bloom? Some aren't, it's true, but those that are can be infinitely frustrating. How hard is it to get yourself to college so that you can have a satisfying, well paying job? Why does that step require years of loafing first at dead end struggles, especially when you've known what you've wanted to do with your life since you were single digit aged? It's mind boggling.
But whatever. I am determined to see that this year ends in college. Hopefully starts in college, too. It's the only step, short of starting his own business, to ever get out of where we are now. My goals for a happy life aren't that big. I want the simple things. A house. Some land. The freedom to do what I want with said house.
And sure we'd be able to do all that if he never went to school. It would probably just take four times as long as it would if he just finished college, already. I don't want to be in my fifties and finally buying my own place. My fifties are getting closer by the year, too.
So he has to go to school and finish. It's been long enough. I have decreed this. (luckily for me, he agrees. )
So, that's about it. I have some short term goals for this year, like get some savings, train my dog to be kick-ass, get in shape, etc etc. Nothing life changing.
That's saved for the long term goals. And we'll see how it all works out, and if I have one of my meltdowns when I finally get to buy a house. 
| | |
| Well, it's been a little over a month since I last wrote in here (things have been hectic, what with the two big holidays and regular life carrying on as it does) and we're all coming down to the end of another year. It's almost time for a 'year-in' type of post.
I don't know if I'll be doing another one of those, but it is kind of cool to see how much of the last year I can recollect and view a bit of the changes that have occurred.
We'll see. Right now, I'm dealing with a nasty cold, so I don't have the energy to be doing much of anything. Which, I suppose, is why I'm here instead of at work.
It's been really cold out. The brook that runs through my backyard has gone from totally full to iced over most of the way, then we had a thaw of sorts and it went real full again, destroyed all the ice and snow that covered it, and now it's back to being mostly frozen.
Also, I got a new puppy to add to the bedlam of animals in my apartment. Yes, it must have been a momentary lapse in sanity, because as my grandmother-in-law said, we needed a dog like we need holes in our heads, but eh, what are you going to do? We've always wanted one, we finally have an apartment that allows us them, and we have the freedom for it. May as well. And then, like serendipity, there was these puppies for sale at a local feed store where we sometimes go to buy crickets for our lizards and turtles. And now, we have our own dog. She's four months old and loads of fun.
We brought her home two days before Thanksgiving, which, incidentally, we had agreed to host at our apartment this year. Busy doesn't even begin to describe that, but it all went off without a problem. Thanks to my step niece and nephews, she didn't spend much time on the floor at all. I'll say one more thing about her that will work to our advantage in our life together: she's a great people lover.
It's been an adventure, however, to have her with us. We have both had dogs in our childhood, The Man and I, but neither of us have ever been solely responsible for training and meeting the needs of a puppy. It's amazing what they get into. It seems every few seconds, I'm either removing something from her mouth that she's found to ingest, or wondering if she peed somewhere and how/when I'm going to find it. Getting a little tag for her collar was one of the best things we've done so far second to just bringing her home, because now I can hear where she is, and know that I have to go looking if her tag is quiet for any extended period of time.
I've also read three Cesar Milan books in prep for having a better understanding of dogs in general. I read the first two earlier in my life, when getting a dog was still one of those "one day" thoughts and nothing close to a possibility. But, I picked up the third most recent one after putting the deposit down on her. Took me about a month to go through it and it's packed with good info, as well as some stuff I just have to take with a grain of salt, because it just doesn't make much sense. I have to remind myself that this guy lives with dogs 24/7. His whole life is dogs, and his home environment is suited to dogs. They are his living. Of course, housebreaking in such a set up would take no longer than a week or two, at most. You're home all day with your dogs, dude. You have an entire pack of housebroken dogs to show the new one how things work.
Most people don't. And there's some other tidbits of advice in there that I take in much the same way, but overall, it wasn't a bad buy or a waste for me to have read it. She's getting there.
Christmas went off great this year. It was the first christmas without John, The Man's uncle. As such, things were different. Normally, since I've been with him, his family celebrates on Christmas Eve, and usually over at another Uncle's house. Has been the same uncle for all the years I've been with him. But this year, his parents decided to stay home, much because of our swindling, because after Johnny died, the uncle who's house we usually go to for the holiday turned into a vulture. His behavior has been beyond despicable and we wanted no part of him. So, we convinced his parents to have the holiday at their place, and they did. But, nobody else was agreeable to coming up there for the holiday, including the matriarch of the family, who had formally lived with Johnny and depended on him as her caretaker. She's not in a senior living center and complaining bitterly about the smallness of the place and how she never should have taken it.
Funny situation, that. I don't know exactly how his family views us, but it seemed like we had good ideas for turning things around after the uncle died, and they all fell on deaf ears. Unless we just plowed ahead and did what we knew was best, thus shocking and surprising the family. If we left it up to them, they just ignored us. It was a weird thing, and still is. But now, her house is sold and she's firmly entrenched in that little one bedroom. Imagine, 80+ years of life, crammed down into one small single bedroom living space. No wonder she isn't happy. It's shameful what we do with our old in this country.
But, I still have a bit of resentment for how our ideas were treated. It seemed like we were the only ones with her best interests at heart, yet she-and the rest of them-consistently shunned them. A few months before he died, Johhny acquired a house in the pocono's with a rent-to-buy lease, and started to move her up there. The former occupants were the owner's elderly parents, so the first level was perfect for Grandma: no steps, open floor plan, large master suite with bathroom and a large, even surfaced shower that she could get right into without stepping up. The upstairs had three decent sized bedrooms, another bathroom, and a loft overlooking the first level living room.
After he died, and because it was so perfect for her to get around in, The Man and I offered to move in with her and take over where he left off. We could handle the utilities and rent, the only hurdle would have been the second sixth-month payment for the "to-buy" portion of the rent, which would have been a couple thousand dollars. Turns out, one of his aunts' had given grandma that same amount, which she used for other things in getting the old house ready to sell for picky buyers, even though it was listed as "as is."
Our next idea was for her to rent the apartment underneath us. It was on the ground level, another open floor plan, and large. Twice the size of the place she's living in now, if not bigger. Three bedrooms, a bath of good size, and large living room. No go on that, too. You live too far away, she'd be up in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, except for the fact that we'd be right above her, literally. She'd only to bang the ceiling and we could come right down. Shop for her, peek in a lot easier than we can now. Eat with her and just generally keep her company. Not to mention that she hasn't really left the place she's in now much at all, either. Even though it's oh, so much closer to everyone else. Plus, she's surrounded by possessions that she didn't have time to parcel out. Being in her place is like being in a warehouse...there's only so much room to get around in. Little paths through the myriad boxes and parcels of stuff. But no, the apartment below us was not good.
And neither was the plan to have a bunch of different yard sales to help her declutter and get some extra cash at the same time. Or the offer that The Man made to come down and clean up the yard...after she rejected the yard sale idea because she said she didn't like 'strangers wandering around' she hires a bunch of strangers to come and clean up the yard and fix things in the house, wasting a few hundred dollars for what her grandson was willing to do for free. It was a very weird situation. But, now the apartment is rented, she's entrenched in a place she doesn't like, and the pocono house is gone. We go to visit and listen to her complain about all that she doesn't like, and play the pity game with her. It's terribly sad, really.
My feelings about it are that she won't hang on too much longer. I haven't mentioned this to anyone else yet, but the subtle signs are there. She's depressed, a little more frazzled than usual. Sharp as a tack, she usually is, but lately, kinda dulled. The cared for usually follows the caretaker fairly quickly in these types of scenarios...it's just that normally, it's more of a husband and wife type thing, instead of a son and mother. But, as with everything else, we'll just have to wait and see.
Sure, it would have been better if she was right below us, or with us directly, but as she's not, we have to make as much good of the situation as we can. That's usually all we can do with ourselves, right? So, we visit, and we pick up and try to make neat out of a mess, and we try to keep her occupied while we're there. We do little favors for her like pick up cat litter, or cookies, or whatever. We offer to take her out. But you can tell she's a changed woman.
Such is life. I don't know what to make of that anymore, so we just go on with it.
She didn't even make it out for Christmas, which is where this entire sentence was heading before I got lost in my tangent about other things. She was feeling under the weather. But, The Man and I had already planned to bring his cousin her gifts, so we did that on Xmas eve. Leaving his parents house for a bit before dinner and playing Santa at the uncle's. It went off well. There was no snarky comments being flung around or anything. T'was nice. Was weird being there without the dead uncle, matriarch, and other aunt/uncle couple, though.
But, nothing ever stays the same for too long, now does it. I guess that's what life sometimes tries to tell us. That by either death, or general people movement, things just don't ever stay the same.
Christmas was small this year, which made it even nicer. Of course, we didn't keep it small, but we enjoy buying things for people that we expect they will like. Like an auto-emergency kit for a step-nephew with a not so hot car. Or a snowball maker/carry-case for the younger ones. And a leaf-blower for the landscaping mother. ;p It was a good holiday, spent with family in good spirits, like it should be. I got two new books, one that I bought myself which is huge, and one that was given, written by an author that I love. New books are awesome. Always a good way to go with me. Also got some money, that I'm already crafting a list for in my head as to what I can spend it on. I want to make it count. Haha.
So, now that it's over, we look ahead to the next one along the timeline. The next holiday of sorts to distract us from winter's cold grip, for when it passes, we will have naught to look forward to but spring, which is still quite a few months away. I don't really go in for Valentine's day or anything, Easter is kind of fun, though. But not like Christmas and Thanksgiving are.
I'm going to try and keep my resolutions simple this year, as I've a horrible track record for keeping them, or even really remembering what they are from year to year. Maybe this year, I'll get an app on my smartphone to help remind me of my resolutions and keep up with them. So far, I've thought of three, and they are real simple. I don't think I'll change them, or add to them. They'll be better for my health, sleep cycle, and general well-being if I just leave them alone. And, I like that.
But, we'll still see if I'll make a year-in post or not. I can't really think of too many milestones of life that occurred this year. But, then again, everything seemed to have happened so fast this year that I haven't really thought of it as a whole yet. And until I do that, there will be nothing to write about.
| | |
| Recently, I had a patient at the hospital with a very sad story. A few months earlier, he'd lost his wife, with whom he had an 11 year old son with. Not a young man, I'd say probably old enough to have been the kids' granddaddy, though an younger one. But, his much missed wife had been younger than him by about 8 years or so. Now, he was with me on the M/S unit, facing a hospitalization that was clearly scaring the crap out of him and a diagnosis that did the same. I don't remember exactly what he had going on, I believe it was something chronic, but not fatal as long as he took reasonable care of himself, but his anxiety level was definitely up. It didn't help matters much that he had also somehow convinced himself that he was dying of cancer, which up to that point, he didn't have and it didn't look like he was likely to have, either. (though they were investigating that possibility).
But, the man was nothing if not convinced.
Now, I am a float RN. Generally, this means that each night I go in to work, my assignment is different, whether it's on a different floor completely, or if it is the same floor, usually down a different hallway with a completely different batch of patients for that night.
Not with this gentleman.
As some strange circumstance would have it, I was on for a three night stretch. And, all three of those nights, I was down the same hallway and had the pleasure of being this man's nurse each of those three nights.
And we got along great. He was a pleasant man, respectful if antsy. His granddaughter was a trifle pushy and somewhat annoying, but she did that all on her own, and probably out of fear for him. But, she cooled off after I sic'd my NA on her.
I respected his wishes for things, like me not discussing his condition in front of any visitors for fear that the knowledge of it would somehow leak back to his young son. He didn't want to distress the boy, though I think he was underestimating the child (after all, why does anyone get hospitalized these days if not for something serious?), after so recently losing his mother. I was as free as I could be in dispensing the anti-anxiety meds, which he appreciated quite a bit, because up to then, he hadn't been sleeping and his physical discomfort kept him upright and pacing in his room all day. I didn't give him a hard time about wanting them, and he respected the fact that I couldn't give it any oftener than the MD had ordered. We even worked out a schedule so that he could get them when I came on, and then again at bedtime. It was good.
He even showed me a picture of his dead wife that he kept in his bedside table. I remember complimenting her hair, and then he cried. He did that a lot, too. And it was funny, because with this patient, I felt something change in myself, too. Usually, at signs of distress like that (ie-grief) I clam up, but it was easy to offer comfort to this man, and say all those things that I find abhorrently cheesy that they teach you about in school. Can't say if it helped or not, but he seemed to appreciate the gesture.
In short, he was a good patient.
Somewhere along the line, I'm not sure when or how, he got it into his head that my name was Jo.
Like I said, I don't know how; my real name does not in any way remotely resemble Jo.
At first, I thought he'd just given me a nickname. He was older, he had the right. He'd call me Jo while smirking, or introduce me to his visitors as such while kind-of half laughing. So, I thought it was his idea of a joke, and I found it amusing as well.
Especially since I wear a large badge that dangles freely from a landyard, where my first name is honking huge right beneath my picture.
Admittedly, said badge spends most of it's time with my name facing my body and not the world at large, but some of the time, it's right side out. Surely enough of the times during those three nights, it must have been fairly obvious, I would think.
But, I think by my third night with him, it became pretty clear that it wasn't just a nickname he'd given me. This was because he asked me point blank if I preferred Jo, or some other derivative of that name, like Joanne...I can't remember the actual full name that he threw out there, but it went something like that.
Semi-confused and caught off guard, I think I told him that I didn't mind either way. He crowed out something like, 'Alright, JO!' and did whatever I was in the room at that particular moment to do.
What made that exchange slightly weirder was that as he was asking me what I preferred to be called, I could have sworn he stared right at my badge for a few moments, as if trying to see the full name that was printed there.
Either this guy had a case of dementia that manifested itself in some weird, memory/name infiltrating way, or this is pretty strong testament to our brains' ability to see only what we want/expect to see.
After having spent three nights with him in the hospital setting, I'm inclined to believe the latter of this fella.
Not only did he thoroughly convince himself that he had cancer, to the point that he needed medication to take the edge off his anxiety, but here he was, staring straight at my badge, which was this time facing right side out, and asking me if I preferred to be a called by a name that doesn't sound (or look!) a thing like my own.
I didn't have the heart to correct him and be like, 'Actually, my name is this, not Jo'...not after three shifts of him calling me by a name that I thought was a nickname, but in fact was what he erroneously thought was my real name. I didn't want to embarrass him. I didn't mind, either, it wasn't insulting. It's not like he chose to call me 'dumbass' or something. And I had gone along with it for so long, I didn't want him to think I was making fun of him, or anything. I thought that if he wanted to give me a nickname, then it must be helping him on some level to relax and get through his time in a hospital.
Maybe I looked like someone he knew who was legitimately called Jo. I didn't know, and I didn't want to take it away from him, whatever his reasons were.
Besides, a patient had never nicknamed me before, and I found it cute.
How wrong I was, though.
And now, I wonder if I should have corrected him when he asked me that. I wonder if it was more fair or gentle to let him continue thinking that my name wasn't what he thought it was.
I don't know, and it isn't exactly a big deal. I'll probably never see him again, unless he ends up back where he was when I took care of him.
It isn't much, but it's one thing that has stuck with me so far.
T*m says that I should have corrected him and told him what my name really is. He says that would have been more fair, and went on to say how the guy might have been referring to me as Jo when telling other staff about me, and that they would have looked at him strangely.
I doubt that would have happened, because even though we got on famously, it's not like he would have been speaking about it to anyone. Patients have oodles and oodles of nurses on that floor, especially the longer they stay. My blip on his radar was only for three shifts out of hundreds of other nurses, so I don't think him trying to tell other staff about the nurse named Jo is going to be any sort of issue. More like a non-issue.
But still...I feel sort of bad now that I never set him right about my name.
It's too bad I wasn't faster on the uptake, and didn't realize sooner that he wasn't just tagging me with a moniker that he liked.
But mostly, I just wish I had the balls to say 'Now wait a minute...' when he was asking me what I preferred to be called.
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