Sweet sugary treats and tunes

Song I heard on my way home from school (Even though I don't like Coldplay actually, Charlie Brown is a pretty sweet song)





Tom Vek - Aroused Heard this song while I made chocolate candy for the first time (white chocolate with coconut rasps)

How shall I call him?

Team assistant S. and I had our break. We sat in the little kitchen which is for the nurses, the glass door closed to keep away disturbances, noise and everything that keeps you away from your sandwich.
(Not that patients give a bloody shit though. Most of the times someone opens the door (without knocking of course) and says: "Oh right, I see you're eating but could you do (insert random shit here) for me?" In the past, I choked down my food and left the table to do that, but not with S.
She forces you to sit down again and says with a very polite voice: "I'm eating." and if the patient did not get her message (even though there is nothing to be misunderstood) she repeats "I'm eating." This sentence includes the promise: "I will eat you, if you don't fuck off and leave me alone asap!"

But what I actually wanted to write was this:

We sat in the kitchen, the glass door was closed. We talked about this and that when suddenly one of our three Doctors appeared in front of the glass door. He shielded his eyes with his hand, peeking inside, saw us, smiled and started to do the moonwalk and some dance moves in front of the door to entertain us.

I don't have a nickname for him yet. Like for Dr. Mumble in the hospital where I underwent my apprenticeship. I think Dr. Coffee will do the trick though, the German word for coffee sounds a bit like his name and the first thing he says is alway: "Heeeey ladies... Oh, you've got some coffee left! Sweet!" Needless to say, we do get along pretty good.

Cleaning up - the dirty way!

Hope you all already finished your breakfast?
Then there you go:

Yesterday a new patient arrived at the ward I'm working at.
He seemed pretty rude and not very nice in any way. A man who was with him (we did not know if and how they were related to each other) shouted at one of our nurses in a way, that made me want to hit him. With gloves on, of course.

When we had our break, my colleague and mentor A. suddenly screamed: "Oh fuck, I know him. He's been a patient here before.. He always said that he was suffering from constipation.. So one day he made himself an enema.
With. The. Shower head!"

Tiny: Wow.. The customary shower head is pretty big. How did he.."
A: "He's gay. "
Tiny: "Oh ok."
A: "We had to replace the shower head, the hose, everything. Plus the shower had to be disinfected completely."

What's worse: Watching him doing something bad or forcing him not to do it?

Something I hear on my way to work after getting up at 4:20 am.
Yesterday on my way home I got stuck in a traffic jam, I wondered: "Maybe an accident or something bad happened?" But then, under a bridge with seriously no way to drive around the obstruction (because it was on an Autobahn..) I saw what caused all the anger and stress.
A little car broke down. And while I dodged the car, driving app. 15 kmh per hour, I saw the driver and his passengers. Old people, looking confused..

Call me mean, but that did not surprise me.
Probably they did not even have a mobile phone to call for help. They stayed in the car, without putting up a warning triangle or anything.. Ohhh.. Old people.. We get along so great before we met at work, didn't we?

Anyway. What I really wanted to blog about was something we had a discussion at work about today.
There is this man, he is maybe as old as my mum. He will die. I don't need to be a magician to see that. He is allowed to drink one litre per day. He drinks maybe four because he forces his wife to bootleg coke, snacks, Capri pouch packs, cold Sauerkraut in cans. Yum. And then he complains about the water dripping out of his pores on his legs. No fucking lie. It's like a human fountain.
I told him to stop drinking so much, because his heart just can't take it anymore. The other nurses told him to stop drinking so much. Every doctor told him to stop doing so.
Our team assistant told me today: "You have to throw away all of this snacks and drinks!"
and I replied: "Um.. No? Is he a grown man? I think so. Plus: He is neither suffering from dementia nor is he under the control of psycho-social care or whatever.
I told him to stop drinking so much, he continues.
I'm not his mommy.
Plus I think there is a certain personal responsibility concerning his illness and his treatment."

She did not agree with me.

I found two quotes which suit this whole situation:

"If something is bad, the opposite doesn't has to be good. That's reasonable, isn't it?
The opposite of bad is not always good, but sometimes it's even worse." - Watzlawick

and a little part out of a poem of Erich Kästner.

It's called "The violence"

"Violence does not begin if ill people get killed, violence begins if someone says: You are ill, you have to do what I tell you..."


Update:

He is dead. He died one or two weeks ago at our intensive care ward.
Even though he already lost twelve kilos (because his wife was not allowed to take her bag inside) his heart just simply couldn't take it anylonger.

Not exactly, a lot of handicapped persons can open a thermos jugs.

Patient: "How can I open this thing here?" Points at a thermos jug.
Colleague *whispering* "Is he suffering from dementia or what?"
Me *whisperingback* "No, I just think he's one of those men whose women do everything at home for them.."
Colleague: "Awful.. Like a handicapped person."

Me: o.O ....

Something to think about

“Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?” — Friedrich Nietzsche

“Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“People need to be made more aware of the need to work at learning how to live because life is so quick and sometimes it goes away too quickly.” — Andy Warhol

Being friendly is the new black... or not.

On Monday I had late shift. One of the docs stood in the room where we prepare infusions.
I said: "Hey!"
and he was like: "YEAH! What is it this time?!"
and I replied: "Um... nothing, I just thought it would be nice to say hi and do not want anything at all from you. Not the usual: Hey, can you do this and that?.. Just nice and simple saying hello.
He looked at me like I'm a total nut.