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- Jun 23, 2003
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Man...I'm rolling towards the end of my week on...
I'll tell you what...I'm starting to feel this weird, eff'd up euphoria. Everything is funny. I just got done laughing at my shoe because it looks kind of like a duck's bill. It's like everything has magically become absurd.
I think I'm actually being driven crazy by working night shift. I have nightshift dementia. The last three nights, I turn into this happy-go-lucky, giddy, bizarrely happy version of Mike. The last night, I do nothing but smile all shift. It's hard not to. I have 7 days off in a row.
Granted, I have the "wednesday night depression" thing when I realize that I'm tired already...and I have to do this 4 more nights after...
...but starting on Friday night...it becomes magical. The drunkest drunks, the highest heroin addicts, the most obvious of script fakers...they come out of the woodwork...and they enrich my life as I can slightly amuse myself at the absrdity of it all. This is the most advanced civilization in the world. And I literally have 5 people waiting outside of my pharmacy waiting for 12:01AM...the day shift people told them "You can get it filled Friday." They start to gather late in the 23rd hour of Thursday night...when the clock turns midnight, oh, indeedy...its Friday. If for some reason all of the clocks inside my pharmacy went out...I would know EXACTLY when midnight struck, if nothing else. After fighting each other over who gets their insurance adjudicated first...when midnight strikes, I inevitably get that "hey, will you run my Percocet through again, its Friday."
I've coined them my "12:01'ers". I know them by name...and drug. Hell, they know each other. I like to imagine they all go down to the 24 hour diner down the road and sprinkle xanax and oxy into their burgers together...shoot the ****...have a good old time...talk shop and such...
There is an entire lexicon that I've invented. Some things that I never considered a night shift dude would have to deal with. The entire concept of people so oblivious to the obviousness of their drug seeking behavior that they will camp out at 11:45PM the night before their insurance will let their meds go through...an amazing sight the first time you see it.
One night, a girl, wafer-thin, likely an opiate addict (as if the perpetual percocet scripts aren't a sign)...comes up to the window...it's 2:45 AM...Thursday night...she's like 19 y/o, looks like she's about 14...she drops down $2.72 in a mixture of quarters, nickels, and dimes..."30 gauge, 1cc, short tip, please." Not only is she paying me for needles with exact change...but in pocket change. Exact pocket change. I can't help but wonder WTF? She knows how much a 10-pack costs? And the change? Was she panhandling somewhere all day? Does she own a metal detector? Nonetheless...its stuff like that.
The patently absurd.
----
And I kinda like it...the night...
...and all of the 10-pack syringe buying heroin fiends that come with it.
----
To be real, though...
The best part about night shift is that you can actually spend time talking to the patients that you do take care of. Want to talk about your meds, hemorrhoids, anger towards the deliciousness of salt and how it screws up your HTN? Well guess what. YOU CAN. You actually practice pharmacy. Uninterrupted. I've actually had counseling sessions that are like the mock counseling things you do in pharmacy school. A full 15 or 20 minutes...no phone interruptions...go over all the meds...explain how the disease works...explain how the drugs work..talk about which generics they could switch to that are cheaper. See, those mock counseling session weren't unrealistic and pipedreamish...they were mock night shift counseling sessions.
There's this one woman...she goes into work real early...she kept coming in to get her blood pressure at like 4AM...it was always sky high 170/108 one day...165/109 the next...she'd talk to me...and bit by bit, I realized what the problem was...after a few weeks, I educated her about the amount of salt in ketchup (she used to put it on everything)...not to eat TV dinners...I made her talk to her doctor about adding lisinopril to her regimen...just last night she comes in..."Hey, Mike, my blood pressure is normal! It was 129/85 yesterday." She goes over to the blood pressure monitor...sure enough 120s over 80s...she asks me if her insurance company will cover a home blood pressure kit. Yeah, sure I'll call Aetna...why not...it's not like somebody is going to call me at 4AM or a line of 4 people will all of a sudden show up.
I think back to the time at my hospital gig where I was the only person in the entire building that could figure out how to relieve a patient's pain...you know...that WAS rewarding...but only in the intellectual sense. It's like some sort of remote empathy that is only rewarding to you in a narcissistic way. You made a name and hospital ID number's pain go from a 10 to a 5. But I didn't see him. I didn't see his family's relief as he felt less pain. He didn't look at me and say "thanks, man, that feel better." Helping a woman you see a few times a week in the flesh...seeing her improve...feel good about it...start to trust you and your judement...it's much more empathetically satisfying...and less intellectually satisfying. It's not exactly high level therapeutics to tell people to not eat as much sodium....to ask their doctor about adding about blood pressure med...
Kind of a weird conundrum...the intellectually, but narcissisticly and emotionally removed satisfying experience vs the empathetically satisfying experience...
But to digress on that...
See, that **** is seriously rewarding as all hell. In the world of the 15 minute office visit and the busy as all hell dayshift pharmacy where the pharmacist is being twisted in all directions...there is still a way to be old school...be able to talk to people about their problems...I've beem doing this a month and about a dozen and a half or so people already know my name like I've been taking care of them for years.
You just have to work hellish hours and 7 days in a row.
And I'm fine with that.
---
The unbelievably high pay, ample opportunity for overtime and side PRN work with a week off every other week ain't bad, either...
I'll tell you what...I'm starting to feel this weird, eff'd up euphoria. Everything is funny. I just got done laughing at my shoe because it looks kind of like a duck's bill. It's like everything has magically become absurd.
I think I'm actually being driven crazy by working night shift. I have nightshift dementia. The last three nights, I turn into this happy-go-lucky, giddy, bizarrely happy version of Mike. The last night, I do nothing but smile all shift. It's hard not to. I have 7 days off in a row.
Granted, I have the "wednesday night depression" thing when I realize that I'm tired already...and I have to do this 4 more nights after...
...but starting on Friday night...it becomes magical. The drunkest drunks, the highest heroin addicts, the most obvious of script fakers...they come out of the woodwork...and they enrich my life as I can slightly amuse myself at the absrdity of it all. This is the most advanced civilization in the world. And I literally have 5 people waiting outside of my pharmacy waiting for 12:01AM...the day shift people told them "You can get it filled Friday." They start to gather late in the 23rd hour of Thursday night...when the clock turns midnight, oh, indeedy...its Friday. If for some reason all of the clocks inside my pharmacy went out...I would know EXACTLY when midnight struck, if nothing else. After fighting each other over who gets their insurance adjudicated first...when midnight strikes, I inevitably get that "hey, will you run my Percocet through again, its Friday."
I've coined them my "12:01'ers". I know them by name...and drug. Hell, they know each other. I like to imagine they all go down to the 24 hour diner down the road and sprinkle xanax and oxy into their burgers together...shoot the ****...have a good old time...talk shop and such...
There is an entire lexicon that I've invented. Some things that I never considered a night shift dude would have to deal with. The entire concept of people so oblivious to the obviousness of their drug seeking behavior that they will camp out at 11:45PM the night before their insurance will let their meds go through...an amazing sight the first time you see it.
One night, a girl, wafer-thin, likely an opiate addict (as if the perpetual percocet scripts aren't a sign)...comes up to the window...it's 2:45 AM...Thursday night...she's like 19 y/o, looks like she's about 14...she drops down $2.72 in a mixture of quarters, nickels, and dimes..."30 gauge, 1cc, short tip, please." Not only is she paying me for needles with exact change...but in pocket change. Exact pocket change. I can't help but wonder WTF? She knows how much a 10-pack costs? And the change? Was she panhandling somewhere all day? Does she own a metal detector? Nonetheless...its stuff like that.
The patently absurd.
----
And I kinda like it...the night...
...and all of the 10-pack syringe buying heroin fiends that come with it.
----
To be real, though...
The best part about night shift is that you can actually spend time talking to the patients that you do take care of. Want to talk about your meds, hemorrhoids, anger towards the deliciousness of salt and how it screws up your HTN? Well guess what. YOU CAN. You actually practice pharmacy. Uninterrupted. I've actually had counseling sessions that are like the mock counseling things you do in pharmacy school. A full 15 or 20 minutes...no phone interruptions...go over all the meds...explain how the disease works...explain how the drugs work..talk about which generics they could switch to that are cheaper. See, those mock counseling session weren't unrealistic and pipedreamish...they were mock night shift counseling sessions.
There's this one woman...she goes into work real early...she kept coming in to get her blood pressure at like 4AM...it was always sky high 170/108 one day...165/109 the next...she'd talk to me...and bit by bit, I realized what the problem was...after a few weeks, I educated her about the amount of salt in ketchup (she used to put it on everything)...not to eat TV dinners...I made her talk to her doctor about adding lisinopril to her regimen...just last night she comes in..."Hey, Mike, my blood pressure is normal! It was 129/85 yesterday." She goes over to the blood pressure monitor...sure enough 120s over 80s...she asks me if her insurance company will cover a home blood pressure kit. Yeah, sure I'll call Aetna...why not...it's not like somebody is going to call me at 4AM or a line of 4 people will all of a sudden show up.
I think back to the time at my hospital gig where I was the only person in the entire building that could figure out how to relieve a patient's pain...you know...that WAS rewarding...but only in the intellectual sense. It's like some sort of remote empathy that is only rewarding to you in a narcissistic way. You made a name and hospital ID number's pain go from a 10 to a 5. But I didn't see him. I didn't see his family's relief as he felt less pain. He didn't look at me and say "thanks, man, that feel better." Helping a woman you see a few times a week in the flesh...seeing her improve...feel good about it...start to trust you and your judement...it's much more empathetically satisfying...and less intellectually satisfying. It's not exactly high level therapeutics to tell people to not eat as much sodium....to ask their doctor about adding about blood pressure med...
Kind of a weird conundrum...the intellectually, but narcissisticly and emotionally removed satisfying experience vs the empathetically satisfying experience...
But to digress on that...
See, that **** is seriously rewarding as all hell. In the world of the 15 minute office visit and the busy as all hell dayshift pharmacy where the pharmacist is being twisted in all directions...there is still a way to be old school...be able to talk to people about their problems...I've beem doing this a month and about a dozen and a half or so people already know my name like I've been taking care of them for years.
You just have to work hellish hours and 7 days in a row.
And I'm fine with that.
---
The unbelievably high pay, ample opportunity for overtime and side PRN work with a week off every other week ain't bad, either...
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