Some Nurses Sometimes

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Much of the old zest has been back the last couple of days. Sometimes the keenness is so emphatic that it feels like a drug high but none of my medications have psychological effects. Better to feel a bit manic than like something that should’ve been buried long ago.

Being away from hospital nurses helps. I know that sounds unkind.

After my first hospitalization as an adult I became an admirer of nurses. The ability to present an amiable front amidst all the messiness, repetition and neediness seemed like a super power. One I could never imagine having myself.

More hospital stays led to meeting less able nurses. No really bad ones thankfully. Reality merely left me less worshipful.

My recent sojourns at Durham General and DUMC left me aware of - I’ll resist calling it a flaw - characteristic of hospital nurses. They can be so attentive and perhaps untrusting of the patient’s ability to do anything for himself that he begins to share that doubt. I found myself having to fight becoming completely inert.

Feeling incapable and fragile deepened the sense of illness. Makes for a low mood and is tough to shake off.

I don’t know what can be done to fix the problem. It would be awful if nurses didn’t adequately attend to their patients’ needs.

Telling the nurses was futile. It was if I were babbling away in an unknown tongue. One of the weaknesses of American retail medicine is patients are expected to be as uniform as retail products on store shelves.

When you step out of script doctors and nurses often just switch off. It is almost as if a deaf and blindness force field flashes into existence about them. Your only response is an unintelligible murmur.