No sleep was to be had during the night shift on call.
They were all crying last night. What made it unusual was that none of those tears felt real to me, and my reaction was disgust, embarrassment, and some kind of rage. I had a flash of turning one man's stretcher over with him in it.
Compassion fatigue? I don't know. I've been in and out of that for years. I don't think there's any avoiding it unless you get out of this work for good.
There was something false about these expressions of emotion. It felt calculated. Designed to have a particular effect. And it did.
There's an ugly entitlement here. Tantrums. Demands. Someone forgot to teach you how to suffer and shut the hell up about it. No one can fix it for you. Sorry.
All day since, I've been out of alignment with the way of things. Everything's annoying, frustrating, to be avoided if at all possible.
I went to the bank, did my laundry, got a school lunch together for my son. Let's call that victory enough and find our way back to bed.
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