It's not me, it's just the way it is hun!
It's a beautiful Tuesday and it's the 27th February 2015. The clock shows 11.40am and Jaime's here for lunch break since she'll be scrubbing for the next case which is a left arm AVG. It's an old man, probably with end stage renal failure and badly needs a graft put for dialysis. Jaime is supposed to be eating, having lunch, but erm, lunch isn't really that great either. Just another dog food day served by the hospital paid caterers. This is the second new caterers hired by the hospital and truth be told both were as equally horrifying and served 'edible only if you're damn hungry' food. Honestly, Jaime do realize how lucky they are to have food for lunch, however, it really doesn't feel nice to come down after a long dah inside the operating room with surgeons screaming at your face, demanding millions of hard to reach stuff and surviving a bloodbath only to come down for lunch that taste awful and unappetising. The other day Sam found a worm in her veggies. She posted the beautifully posing worm on her veggies on the work WhatsApp group. It's was erky. Really. 
Her mom used to pack food for lunch daily and Jaime would bring it to work everyday. But ever since Jaime's dad underwent a major Cardiac bypass surgery 2 months ago, it's all no-salt, no-sugar, less or no-oil meals that mom tries to prepare. I mean, if you think eating those tasteless food is awful, thinking on what to cook and how to cook them is mom's biggest problem. Sometimes, when Jaime looks at her, she honestly don't know how her mom does it. It's stressful to be her she thinks. Being a full time Principal enrolled nurse at a hospital in the radiology department, she wakes up at 5 every morning, prepares a healthy breakfast for dad so he could take his 20 over medications since surgery, and then packs some for her to eat at work and prepares some for me to eat before either head to work. She comes back home after around 7pm, quickly gets herself changed into her nightie, munches on anything that's lying on the table be it almonds, chocolates, fruits or just buns sometimes if she gets lucky(if Jaime buys some and keep it on the table), then straight heads to the kitchen to start cooking dinner. The usual dinner time at our household is around 9pm, although scientifically this timing is deemed too late for humans to wat before sleeping, we are quite used to this as time is something they're lacking in their lives ironically (sometimes I wonder if such research are even reliable or just stuff the government makes up for profit). After eating, she'd have to do the dishes, pack food for all three of them for lunch and fruits for next day and if there are clothes running in the washing machine, she'd have to dry them and only then will all of them head to bed which would be around 11.30 pm. So you see, not packing lunch for Jaime means lesser cooking time, lesser packing food time and earlier sleeping time. Plus, Jaime can't stand the tasteless food sometimes although hands down mom is and always will be the best cook Jaime had ever seen.
Hence, since lunch at work sucked today, Jaime's just sitting at the female changing room, thinking about whether she should pay the $120 to attend the Nursing Conference in April that Jaime is very keen to be part of. The question here is, since Jaime's a nurse, shouldn't the conference be something that's free of charge to attend? Well, Jaime approached her nurse in charge to inquire on how to go about the application to attend the conference and much to her expectation, her in-charge gets just brushed it off, telling her to see the nurse manager instead since she's the one that deals with trainings and talks for the staff. Thinking to get another nurse in-charge's opinion and help on this matter, she approached Brother Sean. It was in the morning and its the start of the shift. The usual scene would be seeing all the Sisters from every department running around, crowding the display area, where the board of lists of all the staff names and their assigned OR's for that day is.
Every morning, all the nurse clinicians and managers would be busy writing up names of staff who calls in sick on the board assigning staff to OR's. Jaime knew asking about the the nursing conference now to any of them would be a major regretful move. So she waited till the time was right. Around 10am, during tea break, she bumped into Brother Sean. She asked, "Morning Mr Sean, I would like to ask you something" and reaching down her pocket of her jacket she took out a printout of the conference poster and showed it to him. "I'm very interested to attend the nursing conference on the 5th till the 7th April. I don't mind just going for it for just a day I would like to just participate and learn more as I've not attended any trainings past 3 years" Jaime said. Brother Sean stared at the printout and then just looked at her silently "well are you nominated" he asked. "No" replied Jaime. "Well then, there's nothing I can do about it cuz I'm not in charge of assigning staff to attend all these things" said Brother Sean. "The least you could do is give a word to the nurse manager about my interest and maybe she'll consider it" Jaime thought in her mind but didn't say it out loud. But just as she was about to leave, the nurse manager in charge of her general surgery department walks by and glanced over at Brother Sean. "Shit" Jaime cursed inside her head. "What's going on here" asked Sister Penny. After an akward silence, Brother Sean responded "she's talking about the nursing conference". "What about it" she asked. He was quiet, Jaime was wondering why doesn't he open his blessed mouth and give a word for it. So Jaime spoke up and said "oh nothing, I was just talking to Brother Sean about this nursing conference next April that I'm very interested to go about. Was just wondering how do I go about it". Deep inside, Jaime felt like this little discussion would just be another good riddance for them and blames her bad luck on bumping into her. "Well are you nominated for it" asked Sister Penny. "Erm, no actually" replied Jaime hesitantly. "I mean, come on woman, I want to join this conference why would I ask you if I am already nominated for it *face-palm" thought Jaime. "So you can't go then" Sister Penny said with her raised left eyebrow. "Knowing that this was expected and Jaime didn't want to waste her time reasoning with her as she has to report back to her OR to scrub for the next case she said "oh OK. Thanks sister" and walked away. If it wasn't for her future promotion consideration and to avoid being one of the name in Sister Penny's 'list of bad sheeps', she had to say thank you. Cringe!
So, this was just one of the stinky days at the OR. But Jaime stayed positive throughout the day and ended her shift well that day. But wait till she gets home, it's just one after another.
Stay tuned
By
Jessica John Posko
Jessica John Posko
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