more illness

so, in another attempt at team building at work, we all subjected ourselves to the same nasty cold/flu virus. at the same time. because we are that much of a team.

sometimes i think maybe we take this whole 'month of team building' thing too far.

anywho, every. single. person. was out sick on the same day. from our desk clerk to aides to RNs... so like, anyone who was trained to do anything or knew anyone. which is kind of a bad thing. ive never seen that happen, like everyone out on the same day, at any unit i've worked at before. the next day, me and LV2.0 made it in and at least tried to catch up on paperwork and the 110,000 phone messages, but by 2pm we were delirious with fever. we had drained an entire bottle of cloraseptic spray, later learning the directions say DO NOT SWALLOW. then we spent five minutes trying to figure out how to not swallow chloraspetic spray. in this process we swallowed more chloraseptic spray. we also decided luden's cough drops are superior to ricola in staving off nausea, but ricola actually helps suppress coughing.

a few of our docs are sick too, but i dunno what is up with doctors. it takes like a black plague or something to keep them away from work. they just keep going. they never call in sick. it's...weird.

our boss was gone for the day when we came back, so we didn't really know who had been filling in for us or if they had just rescheduled patients or what. doctors are really nonspecific about who helped them out the day before, like "some girl with brown hair" or "i think hes an xray tech on the night shift". come to find out it'd been some temps, and that they didn't really do a lot of anything while we were gone. except either hide or steal our good lotion. most likely steal. jerks.

here's something you should know about nurses and the nurses station and a nice bottle of lotion: that bottle of lotion belongs to the nurses. the hospital didn't provide it- those nurses chipped in and bought a bottle. that brand specifically was decided by committee, declared to be the best lotion, so you know it's the best lotion like, ever. and why would you take the lotion that people use all the time to soothe their aching hands from washing them 200 times a shift. because you're a mean, mean person.

now i've faced the lotion lift caper before, and it's now common knowledge that anything left on the clinic counters overnight the ukranian cleaning crew considers fair game. which is why we created The Bogey Lotion.
The Bogey Lotion is the 6 year old vaseline lotion that smells like grandmas* and nobody likes. There's also a similar Dove bogey lotion in the most accessible desk drawer. this lotion is kind of meh, like we would still probably use it as a second choice but if it was stolen it wouldn't be the end of the world. but OUR lotion, our lotion is kept in the secure cabinet! next to boring batteries! which is hard to get to (especially if you're preggers) because you have to lean over the printer to even open and reach into said cabinet!

anyway as i was saying, by 2 pm we were both really, really sick. and 2 people doing the job of 5 was not going well anyway. luckily the afternoon clinic was rescheduled because in the morning we still had our sanity and enough foresight to do so. then we took turns taking a nap while one person covered the desk. as i laid on my side (i remember the days when i could sleep on my back, i miss that) in a corner of one of the doc's offices, on the floor, on a pillow from an exam room, with a blanket from the blanket warmer, i was like really feeling like i wanted to die. but i was like, no, i have to finish drinking this water bottle. then finish sucking on this cough drop, and maybe then the burning sore throat will get better, and my stomach will stop turning, and i can stand up again, or i can die. whichever happens first. then i thought, wait, there's probably MRSA on this floor. so if i do survive, i'll probably have mrsa on my hands. so i need to wash those when i get up. but then i won't have good lotion to put on my hands, so maybe i should just give up and die and succumb to the virus.
then the next thing i remember is my cell phone alarm ringing wakeupppppp. the rest of the shift is a blur, but i do remember stumbling to the car josh picked me up in, so i must've made it through.

i'm back at home today, fever and my asthma preventing any heroics i would try in regards to go back into work again. or from like, standing. and breathing sometimes. i doubt anyone else from my team made it back either, so you know what that means... bogey lotion is probably gone, too.


*see teen girl squad reference Issue 3 - the thrift store.