Respect

So despite my telling of stories, physiological explanations and 6 months of chatter to Toshi about my job, apparently he never really got it. It being the seriousness of my new position. It being the level of acuity that I deal with on a daily basis. It being the never ending battle, life and death.

My roommate works with a nursing student. He was talking about me and where I work to his co-workers at which point she cut in with "He works there!? That's like THE ICU."

He came home and told me he finally realized what it was that I was doing. 6 months of talking about my job and all it took was two lines from someone else. :P

On the other hand, it's nice to know my Unit is held in such high esteem. Prestigious even. No pressure. :P


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Location:Base of Operations

Homebodies

In an effort to cut down on our expenses, Toshi and I have decided to rent out the spare bedroom. Karma as usual, quickly provided an applicant. After a rigorous screening process we opened our doors to him.

He's a barrista. For Starbucks. Once a week he gets a bag of coffee or tea, and the left over sandwiches which aren't fit to be sold to the public anymore.

Since I've started my July run of nights and constant work(literally, I have more on days than off days this month) I haven't seen him. When he moved in we didn't need to rearrange the house either since he had no furniture. So, I haven't seen him since moving day. A different pair of shoes appears at my front door and change position slightly every morning. There is now a bag of coffee sitting in my fridge and a couple of prepackaged Starbucks sandwiches.

That's it. So far, he has to be the lowest impact/footprint roommate I've ever had. I had to send him a text to see if he's been okay living with us.


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Location:Base of Operations

A Dream Too Far

One of the tints I've noticed about my vampiric lifestyle of sleeping the dead sleep of the undead during the day is that I don't dream. Or if I do dream, I don't remember them at all. I lay my head down on my pillow, close my eyes and then my alarm goes off 9 hours later and I wake fully refreshed and ready to go.

When I attempt to sleep at night like the rest of the world however, I have horrific horrific nightmares. Things that happen during the night that I find interesting all get jumbled up and processed during my brain defragmentation.

For instance, for the two day shifts I did this week, the first night I had dreams about a patient dying of leukemia, with Cordelia from the series Angel chatting away and my boss constantly asking if I was okay and able to deal with the emotional impact of what I was going through (someone else's friend in real life, the tv show that i've spent my time off watching, and a moment of work related chaos that occurred last week).

The second night, was the robot apocalypse from Robopocalyse, a book I have just finished reading and particularly enjoyed, with elements of mine craft and terraria, two sandbox building games that I've been playing a lot of lately.

There is no deep obscured Freudian meanings to these nightmares. I can see the elements of my waking life being incorporated into them as my brain sorts and files away the knowledge and experiences that I have gone through in the past two weeks. It really is just a defragmentation program for my psyche. Unfortunately, the defragmentation process itself triggers the night terror physical adrenal reaction that turns them into nightmare experiences. The first nightmare wasn't even scary but I constantly had the feeling of panic and woke up bathed in sweat and shaking anyways.

Quite frankly, if every time I sleep at night I feel worse after I wake up, I'm perfectly happy with my dark and dreamless day coma.


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Location:Base of Operations

Long Walks in the Night

So on my breaks at night, since I don't sleep like most of my co-workers, I go for walks to the nearby 7-11, since it's open, and has a hot beverage dispenser.

Tonight on my 3am stroll though the newly renovated nasty part of New Westminster (the hospital is in an area that previous had a lot of bars and crime, it's gone down since they installed giant floodlights all down the street.) I came across a coyote. It marched nonchalantly from the front yard of the hospital, across the road and vanished into a dimly lit park across the street.

It was too dark, and it happened too quickly for me to get a picture. Would have been nice though, my little taste of the feral wild deep in the heart of urban Vancouver.


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Location:New Westminster