Numbers for the neurotic

you'll have to forgive me, but everything seems poetic at 2am.

Just a side note: the hospital wifi is painfully slow. I arrived at 1:30 and it is now 2:20...see how much I've accomplished in 50 min? good thing I have lots of time....

It's amazing how suddenly I'm an expert at this nursing thing. Of course I know just as much or more than the nurses, heck I'm even wearing scrubs to play the part...the beautiful thing is that when I get home, I won't even have to change to go back to bed. And numbers have become our life. Every day it's a different number that worries our bald spots, or, in my case, our stomach ulcers (now that I'm a nurse, I can more accurately diagnose it).

Tuesday morning at 1am in the emergency room, it was blood pressure numbers in the 200's that knawed like a teething child at the holes in our stomachs. 225, 212, 201. sometimes we were lucky and got a 195 or even 185. That night there was also the oxygen levels to worry about, though not as much. 85% or 90%. Somehow Tuesday seems distant and passe' compared to the gaping hole that the last day has left in my stomach lining. This time it's all been about carbon dioxide levels. Let me tell you, if it's not one thing it's another. Some ambiguous number of "50" is what we're aiming for.

having the numbers constantly updated like tickertape right in front of me for 2 hours probably makes me a bit neurotic. The blood pressure monitor might sit at 160 for an eternity of minutes before it finally obeys my telepathic command to retreat.

I find that playing thumbwars with dad distracts him from pulling at his tubes and the "jason mask" they are forcing him to wear. Every so often he will reach up to touch his parched mouth and re-discover, once again, that there is a mask in his way. Everytime it is the same: He will feel the valve in front of his mouth and then work his fingers up from there along the left side of the hard plastic, over his eyes and forehead, he feels the velcrow holding the mask tight to his face and you can see that he is briefly contemplating tearing it off. Sometimes he does. He continues randomly pinning my thumb under his even after I've long since assumed that he's asleep.

One time, I appologize to him for my cold hands and his reply comes out muffled through the mask that it's ok. Then he says something else that I don't understand. I lean in farther and ask him to repeat. "Is that the place where you died?" he says. I briefly hope I misunderstood him.
But I say "I haven't died yet, dad."
He pats my hand and replies, "you lucky kid".

As my shift nears it's end, I'm thinking that maybe I will wait and publish this later, just to make sure. I mean, it is 3:30 in the morning, afterall.

Arriving home, I find that somehow someone else has arrived at our apartment building between the hours of 2 and 4am and stolen my perfect spot. I momentarilly curse night shift workers as I drive around to the back of the lot to find the one remaining open spot. As I walk past the car that stole my spot and up the steps to my place, I mentally take back my cursing and count my lucky stars that I'm not the one that has to regularly be up at this insanely hour.