The Second Oldest Profession

My friend Bev likes to say that nursing is the second oldest profession. She's probably right.

Saturday night, I worked adult psych, 11-7. The unit's lost a couple of full time nurses, so instead of working child psych these days, I usually wind up with the grownups.

The moon was full, or almost full, and while research studies seem to indicate that the full moon has nothing to do with weirdness, I'm not sure I believe it.

We had a lot of people who couldn't sleep, who were up and down and pacing and talking. Nice group, though; everyone was polite and friendly.

Mary, the nurse I worked with, is an attractive older lady, late 50s, elegantly (if casually) dressed (if you work psych, you can wear street clothes if you want), with lovely jewelry, manicured nails, nicely coiffed hair...and like me, she has a "fluffy" body shape (as in, we used to have hourglass figures but they sunk to the bottom). She has a kind and caring grandmotherly air about her, and most of the patients love her.

So here we are, sitting in the day room, working on our paperwork, every now and then redirecting someone who's up and a little loud, when a very psychotic female patient touches a male patient (whom she had just met that day) VERY inappropriately. When Mary redirected her, the patient said, "You hussy! If you'd just quit your nude dancing, my husband here would come home to me!"

She sent both patients off to their (own) beds, then sat down and looked at me with a mischievous air.

"You do know that I'd probably make a lot more money nude dancing, don't you?" she asked.

I think, O-KAY! It IS a full moon...

And then she continued, grinning, "Because they'd pay a lot of money to see me keep my clothes ON!"

If Your Opportunity Alarm Clock is Ringing, Don't Hit the Snooze Button!

"Does the Pope have more than one hat? If the Pope tells a monk to do pushups, does the monk have to do it? When the Pope dies, what happens to his hat? Does the Pope have a mechanic whose only job is to service the Popemobile? When the Popemobile is worn out, can someone buy the old one? If the Pope wanted to sing karaoke, could he?

"My history teacher says Walmart is run by Satan!"

"I bet if Harriet Meiers gets to be a Supreme Court Justice, she probably won't get invited to all the cool Supreme Court parties, just the boring ones, probably because she won't know how to hold the gavel, so all the other Justices will make fun of her."

There was more, much more...

Gavin spent the day listening to a motivational speaker at school (because of his schedule, he had to listen to it TWICE), and when I got home he started off by telling me how bad the speaker was (see title example) and then giving me examples of how he could do it better, complete with hand motions, body language, inane examples, and special voice effects.

Then, once he'd got started talking, he couldn't stop; probably because he hasn't had much to say for awhile. Between his school-work and my work-work, we've been pretty quiet here for a few weeks.

I've been working on an IND for a new study that one of the docs wrote. An IND, or "Investigational New Drug" is what has to be approved by the FDA everytime a new drug (or a new use for an old drug) is studied.

When I do a pharmaceutical trial, all this is done by the pharma company. But when I do this for the doc, I get to do all that lovely (ugh) paperwork, which is written in government speak. I think I wound up with 150 pages, and my brain feels soggy. Plus now I have to make up some data capture forms and make sure the doc and the residents fill them out each time, because when an IND is done by a site, then the investigator is ultimately responsible for EVERYTHING connected with it. So I have to make sure all our ducks are in a row...and then there's another study (written by the same guy, if he ever leaves I won't have anything to do) that I have to see if I can get donations of 7 different products (enough for 100 people), write a questionnaire covering all the data the doc wants to know, write a budget (with things like 800 spray bottles), and I had to have it all done, along with applications to 3 different on-campus entities, at 5 o'clock today...I did it with 5 minutes to spare...

I've worked late every night for 3 weeks and I feel like my brain has run a marathon.

So tonight was a treat. And yeah, I hope the Pope DOES get to sing karaoke if he wants.