A New Job and a Pee Cup

I don't wanna grow up!

(Summoned from the depths of my childhood...)

Anyway, it's not exactly that I don't want to grow up--I do. I want my own house decorated how I like, with an actual garage to pull in my own car. I want a real bank account that has more than $47 in it at a time. I want a refrigerator filled with food that I picked out and a kitchen that I can call my own. I don't want to report to anyone or be asked inane, parental questions every time I walk in the door. (I.e. Are you going to walk the dog? Where'd the cash go from the kitchen table? Have you eaten already? What are you doing tonight? Are you going to feed the dog? Argh!)

Dog.

However, I'm not so sure that I want to actually be an adult. I've just recently had my first foray into "Real Job" territory and I am not pleased.

A large hospital in my area was in dire need of OR staff after recently "cleaning house." They contacted my surg. tech teacher, who in turn asked a few of us from class if we wanted to interview for a job. She pulled me out of the OR last week with an application in hand and told me to get to the hospital as quickly as possible if I was interested. And because the other option was staying in the OR for 3 hours holding an elephant-sized leg up for a total knee replacement with Dr. Asian Prick-

Spacesuits and all- I hate ortho, I hate ortho, I hate ortho...

I decided to go interview for the job.

So, I interviewed with the Director of Surgical Services and felt pretty good about it. It was kind of nerve-wracking due to the fact that I've never had a real job interview, but I felt positive. A few hours later, even though I told them that I'm moving from the area in 87 days (not too early to countdown!), I was notified that I had indeed gotten the job and to meet with HR.

Oh, HR. Oh, the red tape. Oh, the forms. Oh, the signatures and dates. Oh, the HR women who seem to believe they've been cast in a Dolly Parton re-make:

Women of HR- Shoulder Pads are Out. 

I hate feeling like I don't know what I'm doing. It's the worst feeling to me. And that's how I felt trying to fill out the 59 pages of forms today, sitting in HR for an hour, with their greasy pens and itchy upholstery and HR people that freak me out.

While I was sitting in there, scratching out my last name and putting my first name and then my last name for the 40th time, a middle-aged woman was also filling out papers. She asked me how to spell "receive" and then a few minutes later, asked me how to spell "environment" and later, "clothes." So, in the middle of pulling my hair out, I'm being put through a spelling bee while also questioning our country and how it's possible that an adult doesn't know how to spell these words.

With all of the small font and big words on the forms, I really needed parental guidance, to be honest. But, I think I managed. Or I accidentally signed to opt into some hospital scam 401B or deferred my pay checks until 2050 or am now claiming 13 children via my W-2.

W-2.

401k.

401B.

W-4.

OMG.


WTF.

After that form-filling, stress-inducing debacle, I was dragged to another Office of Red Tape with another creepy, bouffant-style HR woman.  She demanded my drivers license, my social security card, my tag number, my immunization forms, my diploma, a voided check and my packet forms. I proudly handed everything over to her, patting myself on the back for remembering to bring everything.

She feebly held my FSU diploma still in its cardboard casket (which had been lain to rest under my bed last August) like I had just sneezed all over it.

"What is this?" Beady, HR eyes squinted at me.

"Oh! Well, the paper said to bring in my diploma, so...um."

With her eyes still focused on me, she let out a scoffing sound from her powdered nose. She dramatically flopped it onto her desk. I still don't know what the deal was with that. They asked for my diploma, so I brought my diploma. Whatever.

After more scoffing and heaving and squirming and sighing, I was released from HR and sent to do a drug test. I had exactly 10 minutes to get there or else the results would be void--and the world would cease to exist. I skidded into the parking lot and burst through the doors of the seedy little drug test place. And then proceeded to wait on another itchy upholstered chair for 40 minutes.

Finally, a blonde chihuahua of a woman barked at me from behind a glass window to come back.

Not exactly this, but just as 3rd world-ish. And Un-sterile-ish. 

...The blonde chihuahua leads me to a room and is like, "Go in the bathroom. Wash your hands. Don't throw away the paper towel." I oblige like the crack whore I apparently am. I come out with the towels- she inspects them. I stand there with my decently above-average IQ and try to figure out how I would cheat a urine test with a paper towel. Hm. She elbows me back into the bathroom and hands me a bucket-sized plastic cup. "Fill the cup to this line. Do not close the door. Do not flush the toilet. Bring it to me when you're done."

So, okay. I'm cool with medical stuff and bodies and the like. But, if Kevin's within a mile of the bathroom, I close the door. And we've been together for 3 years. So I go in and am trying to maneuver this large embarrassing pee cup and of course I can't go. I just can't. And I'm freaking out even more because I don't want her to think I'm taking so long because I'm trying to whittle a drug-free bag of urine out of paper towels. Many awkward minutes pass until I finally succeed. I hand her my cup, wanting nothing more than to get the heck out of that place.

"Sit on that chair. PPD." She motions to a dirty gray doctor chair.

Ugh, seriously? I've spent time at many different health facilities and each one has demanded a 2-step PPD, or tuberculin skin test, to make sure you don't have TB. Today, I had my 7th TB test. In two weeks, I'll have my 8th.

This test is every hypochondriacs worst nightmare because one- if the little pocket of TB they inject into you swells at all, they decide you've been infected with TB and ship you off to Sorok Island: The Last Leper Colony--or something like that. And two- if said hypochondriac develops any feelings of malaise or difficulty breathing, it is decided that the TB injection was not fully purified and now this person has TB. This said psychotic person will periodically check the arm lump every minute for the next month. Said person's stress level is already tipping the charts.

*Deep Breathing*

The next hoop I must jump through for my 4-month long, $12.58 job ($17 on the weekends!) is All Day Orientation on Monday. Business casual is required. Ughhh...give me scrubs or give me death!

SCRUBS.

DEATH.

I'm currently not sure how I'm feeling about being employed. I'm also currently juggling a million things at once. Overload.

But regardless, Erin to the OR in the AM!

3 Months to Live

So, I know I previously promised my experience at The Butt Hut, but I forgot about my first OR week in clinicals so I will just go through the highlights...can't leave any riveting moment out!

As a tech, we're responsible for setting up and opening the supplies for each surgery. This includes opening little packages of awkward-sized  objects in a particular, sterile manner onto a sterile-draped table. These awkward things come in "peel-packs" that are kind of like string cheese wrappers.

So, I'm at my first day in OR clinicals, awkwardly hovering in front of a sterile table being stacked with sterile stuff, not real sure what to do. No one's very friendly. One girl asks me if I can do anything and I jokingly say, "Well, I can't do much, but I can open packages!" She motions for me to proceed. I select a skin marker from the bucket and begin to carefully peel back the wrapper like I've been taught. The OR is silent, waiting for me to amaze them with my surgical tech skills...

Oh, crap. Too much wrist flick at the end of the peel. Rookie mistake. My stomach plummets to the sticky blue floor as the marker angrily arcs from its wrapper and pings off the back wall. The now-infected marker jets like a homing missile towards our sterile table piled with costly supplies.

The missile finds its target. Infected-to-sterile contact is made. Loud, frustrated sighs echo in the cold room. Everything on the table now has to be shoved into the trash, the process started anew. I am demoted to the nurse's prep stand.

FAIL. Multiply this scenario about 17 times. Biggest loser in room.

Later, I go to glove a rather large, impressive, intimidating surgeon. He towers over me with his hairy hand in the air awaiting its glove. He's saying something to me- I'm too nervous to comprehend so I just smile and nod- while I'm grabbing his glove and stretching the Latex open for him. He jams his hand into the glove in an authoritative, hurried manner and begins to extend his other hand. But, wait? What the--? Oh. Ha. Umm. Well. The glove is wonky, a thumb here, a pinkie somewhere else. He can't touch his other "un-sterile" hand to fix it, so it's up to me to awkwardly molest his hand and try to right the glove.

You are unintelligent. There, I said it. 

I pull the Latex this way and that, snapping his skin in the process and most certainly pulling a few hairs. The darn glove may as well be a 50,000 piece puzzle. A puzzle laying atop your boss's round, hairy stomach. It's difficult, sure, but mostly just super awkward to put together. It is finally declared that I have done the unthinkable. The Left Glove is on his Right Hand.

*Palm to forehead*

I also said a million stupid things that week...

"Oh! Hi Dr. A!" (I'm Dr. B...)
"Is that the ovary, Dr. C?" (Uhh no. That's the stomach.)

Needless to say, the week was long. Having my intelligence questioned by people I respect in a God-like fashion is tough. Wasting countless dollars of medical supplies due to my inability to open packages is difficult for this little Jew. A cloud of heavy failure followed me around the entire week.

So, when I was assigned a 6-hour long surgery on my last day, I wallowed. I wallowed like a self-absorbed, pathetic warthog. When I found out it was with Dr. Hairy Hands, it was all I could stand. Why ME?! Why is my life so cruel?!

The surgery was a Pancreaticoduodenectomy, or a Whipple, where part of the stomach, the gall bladder and duct, the duodenum, part of the jejunum, part of the pancreas and all regional lymph nodes are removed.

Although quite caught up with self-pity, I was also intrigued to see how this surgery would play out. My curiosity was peaked. So, after scrubbing, gowning and gloving myself, I watched the patient roll into the OR. He was a big, jolly man. He had cancer. We were going to cut it out. Once he was asleep, I stood at his side and looked into his open cavernous body. Slippery intestines and pulsing organs slithered like snakes in a hole. The room was much quieter than normal. I guess everyone knew what I didn't.

"Well, let's close him up."

Huh? It's only been 45 minutes! You got it out that quickly?! But where's my 6-hour long, impressive-sounding case?

The surgeon looked at my confused, naive face and told me that there was nothing they could do. He took my hand and wrapped it around something warm and hard.

"That's cancer. It's too far spread. I'll give him 3 months." And with that, the surgeon ripped his gown off and left.

My hand jerked out of the patient like he was on fire. Wait, what? 3 months? It was incomprehensible. This jolly man would not be here 4 months from now. The leg that I had rested my hand on for 45 minutes will not be alive soon. Gone. Forever.

KCi and JoJo's "All My Life" played almost imperceptibly in the background as the man was wheeled back out. (Wish I could make this crap up.)

I left the room in a daze. My thoughts vacillated between where good people go when they die and how much of a jerk I was for worrying about a darn glove being put on wrong. Like my gloving problems were actually important in a hospital full of sick or dying people.

To finish my week off, I went to have one of the staff sign me out for the week and he blew up on me in front of everyone about how I wasn't doing it right. He threw a pen at me.

<Insert the cherry on top.>

I made it hurriedly down the stairs in my new white coat before a tear pricked behind my eye. I burst out the doors to the hospital parking lot where I completely decomposed next to my car. Snot and audible sobbing were involved. I couldn't find my frigging keys. I looked up and saw a bleary image of a man sitting in a small truck in the spot next to me, watching me fall apart into a hysterical mess. I was psychotically flinging things from my backpack and crying so hard I was dizzy. I finally got into my car and called Kevin. I'm pretty sure he thought Tyson got run over or something.

As I curled up into fetal position on my bed that night, puffy and exhausted, I seriously questioned what the hell I'd gotten myself into.