It’s not glamorous and exciting. There’s no baby plopping out at the main entrance of the hospital or quick romps in the linen room. Then again, if those were my examples of glamorous and exciting, I shouldn’t be left in charge of the adjectives department.
My typical day at work consists of me asking people about their bodily functions and writing about it. If said functions involve producing fluids, that’s a fair amount of time spent on the details. Colour, odour, volume, consistency, frequency and all those other things you need to know to put you off having breakfast. From time to time, I’m brave enough to prescribe drugs. Brave like Courage The Cowardly Dog, that is.
But I’m not complaining. I like going to work. I still loathe waking up early, but I’m comforted by the fact that some of my friends are dog-tired, taking blood samples from grumpy patients while I’m still contemplating hitting the ‘snooze’ button.
I enjoy seeing patients every day, I love seeing them get better and I’m thrilled when they get discharged. That last bit is partly for a selfish reason, though; I’m happy that they’re fit enough to leave and lessen my workload.
One downside of working in a hospital is the wave of germs that hit you when you first start working. Some of them really do a royal flush on your immune system. I fell victim to an upper respiratory tract infection, which was beautifully diagnosed as acute tonsillitis. We’ll ignore the fact that I’ve not had tonsils for the past 21 years. My silver lining comes in the form of the fear of developing pneumonia. I was so afraid that I decided to fuck everything and take amoxicillin. Some of you may not know this, but I have an impressive list of drug allergies. I nearly died taking aspirin and penicillin was a pretty cruel bastard to me too. You can imagine how reluctant I was to take the meds.
Now that I’m almost done with my course of antibiotics, I’m pleased to announce that there IS a drug I’m not allergic to! There’s hope for me yet.
Next post: My attempt at juggling work and driving lessons. I predict a big crash.
