Our worlds get smaller and things that never became important before become important now.
I was desperate to get back to work last night.
Desperate to have something of purpose to do
People to talk to
Characters to bounce off.
Social isolating cannot happen when patients need turning and made comfortable
The physical contact of colleagues are ties that bind.
Nurse humour cannot be beaten for sheer, undiluted gall
On one of her last hospital admissions my mother witnessed a brief meeting at the nurses station when an over tired support worked hissed at two very harassed staff nurses
" I've just found another one Dead!"
Whereafter all three burst into brief and somewhat hysterical laughter
In my mind tiredness, night nurse hysteria and overwork is often the reciepie for a good laugh.
I once had to take charge at the resuscitation of a man with severely contracted legs.
He had effectively sat in a wheelchair for months before his admission without benefit of lying down supine on a bed , and so when placed on his back his legs sprang upwards as if he was glued to a chair.
We tried our best to bring the chap back to the land of the living and the defibrillator and arrest team were all called but eventually after a heroic try the team agreed that we had been unsuccessful
Dejected and defeated the team looked mutely on until a support worked popped her head around the curtains and commented that the patient was in no way going to fit in one of the porters' body boxes .
Cue prolonged and by no means irreverent laughter .
A valve release to a very human situation.
And I would always prefer to laugh than to cry.
It's not the drama, or the blood , or the sheer mental anguish of some nursing shifts that binds nurses together.
Sure all these things play a part in team work and the shared experience thing
But it's humour that gets us through and gives us the chutzpah to skip through the shit.
Any good manager understands this
I think the public now knows it too.
I remember one time when I was a junior staff nurse when a patient everyone disliked intensely choked on half an apricot during a mealtime on a neighbouring ward . He arrested at the dinner table after a prolonged bitching session at staff and we could see that the nurses had everything in hand so waited to be called if we were needed
After a half hour or so one of the support workers walked into our ward looking deflated and dejected
"
How is he ?" I asked
The support worker signed
" He's fucking alive !" She shrugged theatrically
Cue ribald laughter .
I have a hundred such stories . And all are not disrespectful is any way.
Watch
M*A*S*H The original movie ....if you don't get it
Then you unbeliever, you may understand where I am coming from
Nurses humour, like the Film
Fight Club has its own rules
And What goes on it fight club....stays in Fight Club
