Dear Good Hours.
I guess, tonight, I feel compelled to write about your opposite. The few bad hours that happen and define a lifetime. I know we’ve added a lot of new readers here in the last week or so and this is going to be either relevantly or foul play and some will stay for the sideshow freak and others will leave.
I’m OK either way.
******
This conversation is between me and my higher creative self, my time in the shop, my “good hours.” I’ve found as I get older that o process best by writing over nearly anything else. This is my outlet for mostly the creative things I’m up to, different from my blog at OldwolfWorkshop.com, this is also a place where I let myself write about whatever the fuck is stuck between my rotting teeth at the moment. That means sometimes (not often) it’s a place where I work through my CPSD from almost 30 years of working in an Operating Room, the things I’ve seen, the feelings I’ve had to compartmentalize away.
If you’re new here… this navel gazing doesn’t happen often. I’d guess twice or thrice a year. Feel free to skip them when they occur. I just need the outlet sometimes, of for nothing else, for my ability to put one foot infront of the other tomorrow and the next day.
*****
I was in the Operating Room Core the other day (a special space - where the supplies and instruments are stored and basically the nerve hub for the OR’s surrounding it) and I missed the charge RN and a few others poking fun at me. They were kidding around about me having a “bad day” because I was in a busy room that was going to run long.
I clued in when the charge said something like “oh nothing bothers Derek…. That’s why we love him.”
Once I clued into the fact the group was ribbing me, I answered. I told the charge RN and everyone listening, “that’s because I’ve never had a bad day here yet.”
*****
I’ve heard a similar sentiments before.
Some think I’m bullet proof. Which is wrong. Give me a minute to explain what a Bad Day at work is… I’ll Keep it to a few.
A bad day at work is spending 20 minutes taking your turn at doing chest compressions on a elderly woman who decided to end her life by cutting her wrists, groin, armpits, and neck, with a knife, under an oak tree, possibly in her yard.
I know it was an oak tree and I know it was fall, right around Halloween because my minds eye still remembers the turned oak leaves sticking to her skin with her blood, piled under her body, and generally pervasive everywhere you wouldn’t expect.
(Author’s note: I am catching myself writing using the”You” instead of the “I” I’m sure this is my brain protecting me. I’ll try and catch them all, but if I miss a few, you know what’s going on)
Now, while I was taking your turn at chest compressions, for what my memory says was an exhausting 5 - 10 minutes…. Chest compressions are fucking exhausting! And the whole while, because I’m away from my Mayo Stand and my Back table, I’m counting compressions and also trying to tell a worthless 2nd year General Surgery resident where to find the vascular clamp the surgeon wants.
“It’s on the…. It’s on the left side of the stringer……. The line up of fucking clamps right under your hand. No the left side…. The left side….. the other side of the goddamned line for fuck sake! Yes that one.
Why the fuck did you give it to him upside down?”
A bad day at work is sweating and shouting and working as hard as you can and watching someone die anyway.
******
A bad day is having a young woman be rushed up to the OR straight from Emergency after she’s been hit by a train. A big part of my job at the field is anticipating what the doctors will need to do the job, minute to minute, sometimes less, and communicating it to non sterile staff, so they can gather the supplies and instruments needed.
I was running this trauma like a fucking boss. I had a dedicated runner there listening for my next ask, and the whole team was clicking. We saved this girl who was foolishly, or maybe purposefully, walking on the train tracks wearing headphones.
Then I showed up for my next shift, only to find out the ER staff who transported her up and then hung around looky-looing. In their “Post Incident Huddle” identified me as “there was one guy at the field who was very bossy. He was shouting orders and demanding things. He wasn’t even one of the surgeons.”
And fuck you…. I am the link between the surgery and the supplies, and in those situations I need to be the one anticipating the surgeons needs and getting them before they even know they need them.
I thought we’d done well, but people who only know a little about what is actually going on decided to judge the things that needed to happen on our part. The nurse who was my main runner, the person the ER staff thought I was abusing, was every bit as surprised as I was.
A bad day is when you think you’ve done good work and the world doesn’t agree.
******
A bad day at work is working hard on an emergency surgery for a difficult surgeon who is both poor communicator and proud of his ability to intimidate people, mostly (in my completely unprofessional armchair surgeon psychotherapy opinion) because he is severely bullied by his own wife, who is also a surgeon, just one of greater skill, specialization, and renown.
The day turns bad when, even though you’re working hard for this asshole who is proud of being an asshole, you run out of hemostatic clamps (Kelly clamps to clamp and divide the bowel’s mesentery and blood supply, so you turn to your back table for a second to gather a few more…. you have them right here…. There won’t be a delay….
And you turn around to this cucked surgeon standing in your space. He presses his face into yours. Your masks crinkle and distort against each other.
“Don’t you understand this patient is bleeding?” He screams at you. Noses mashed together.
Time slowed to an absurd stop, like the moment in the first Deadpool movie where he wonders if he left the stove on, and all my brain says is “he’s gonna flat out punch me! I’m going to get punched at the field, at work, and have to help him put on a new sterile glove after it’s over.”
I didn’t react at all.
He turned back to the patient and we kept working, but my mind was drowning in the moment that just happened. Every few people have gotten into the space he did without me either fighting or fucking them.
As we kept working, I decided I was leaving. Fuck my career as a surgical tech, fuck him and fuck this patient even. I didn’t care. I’d walk out and he could figure it out himself. I’d go hang shingles somewhere. But…
But the other person in the case, the one holding the asshole’s retractors, was a grandmother figure named Judy. She’d only recently., returned to work after having Open Heart Surgery and she emitted the most wonderful, wholesome, grandmother vibes.
I looked at her and knew if I left the heat of the sun would fall on her…. And o couldn’t. I decided to stay even though it was a bad day.
*****
The last two I have are toss up.
*****
A bad day is working a weekend night shift in the OR and getting the worst call ever.
There’s an organ procurement we need to do. The team is already or almost here. It will be pancreas, kidneys, lungs, and heart.
The donor (a fucked up word we use) is (was) is 6 years old. He was resuscitated after drowning in a local public pool. The shit went too long.
I spent several hours helping kill and butcher a child, for a greater good I believe in, but still….
When I got home that morning, my wonderful wife, love of my life, met me outside.
“How was last night?” She asked
“I helped kill a child.” Was all my exhausted mind, soul, and body could muster.
“Uff…. I’m sorry” she said, “go in and try and go to bed.”
“Naw…. I’m drinking some whiskey first.”
“Of course… go ahead”
That’s a bad day.
*****
(I have so much more, but this is the last one.)
A bad day at work is when you’re helping in a room for the first case of the day. You’re not scrubbed in, but you’re helping do all the little things that get surgery going.
And the charge RN steps in the room. And worse she’s holding her phone out to you.
The thing I haven’t told you, your father is sick, sepsis, and he’s admitted to the hospital where you work. Last night, after work you debated going up to visit him…. It was a Saturday night, he’d responded well to the IV antibiotics and he was going to be going home the next day.
Sunday.
I decided to suck up my tired and go up and visit him, if even for 15 minutes., and I did. We didn’t talk about anything important. But I made sure, for whatever reason, to say “I love you dad.” When o left that night.
That wasn’t the normal for us…
He answered “I love you too.”
And I left I went home. I never talked to my dad again because that phone call the next morning was from the weekend hospital administrator/RN. They’d called my mom after they found my dad, dead on the floor or his room, and she wouldn’t let them tell her no. She needed me. She needed me to help take care of this.
I handed the charge my work phone and went up to the 5th floor. I met with the administrative RN and the attending doctor. I already knew, but hearing it hurt so fucking bad.
I went to his room. I held my dead father’s hand. I fucking balled.
Fuck I’m balling right now as I remember.
I called my wife first. Saying the words to her nearly broke me. “Baby…. My dad is dead.” Oh fuck.
After that I started rallying to my brother and sisters. I got them all. We all pulled together. My sister picked up mom. My other sister and my brother made their way into the hospital…
We all sat there, with my dad, until my mother called it.
I clocked out as I left that day. I’d only spent an hour, maybe two working, and most of the rest holding my dead father’s hand. Fuck that hospital….they stole enough from me that day. Four hours of pay isn’t anything.
That’s a bad day at work… one I’m still recovering from.
*****
There is no reason in this world. Almost 30 years of seeing good and bad things happen to good and bad people…. As much as we all want there to be… there isn’t a plan, there isn’t any reason. There is only good luck and bad luck and whatever side of the coin you and your’s randomly end up riding.
“It’s all chaos. Be kind!” (Michelle McNamara attributed by Patton Oswald)
All that means is you should hug the fuck out of each other every fucking hands you have. And for fuck sake, say the words “I love you” my da sand I didn’t say this understanding out loud much… I’m so fucking glad we did that night.
My face is soaked. My nose is running. I’m done for the night.
And if you’ve made it this far, and you’re a new subscriber… for fuck sake… not that much of this is this dark or self absorbed, hold on, there’s more about woodworking on the way soon!
But for tonight. Have a good day at work tomorrow - especially if you’re working at those good hours, just like I will be.
Love Derek
Ratione et Passionis
I love you so much ❤️
Derek, buddy this was a rough read. I started this three times and stopped during the first two because I knew it was just gonna get worse near the end. Dude, you have must utmost sympathy about your dad. At least you got to exchange some words with him before he passed. When my dad passed at the end of 2018, nothing could have prepared me for that. I used to think that I was a mentally strong man, but ever since then, it was almost like as if I was Superman and an arrowhead of Kryptonite pierced my skin and I wasn’t able to get it out. It really weakened me, made me more sympathetic to everything. Maybe I needed that, but now I’ll get teary-eyed over the littlest things. I’m glad to hear that you were close to your dad and also at the same time, I’m still hurting for you that you’re hurting over your dad’s passing. Even though it was a good while ago. Some things like that, you’ll never get over. You’ll move on, but you’ll always remember. And the good thing is, all the shit that you’ve learned from him over your like will resonate with you forever. Sometimes when you have to make a decision, you’ll have to put yourself in his shoes and say, “What would the old man do?”