Wow - a normal easy day at work. Extra pay for working upstairs with easy patients, and then going down to the ICU to take over a patient when the nurses other decided to behave badly and try to die on her. It was a pretty easy patient, and it gave me a chance to see if I remembered any sign language. I really don't sign well at all. I'm left wondering if the patient would have rather I quit trying. I think it helped a little. But I know so little of any other language a two-year-old would have a better time communicating. It went a lot better than me pretending to know any spanish.
It made me think of Victor Borge and his phonetic punctuation intro - how when people talk to each other we fail to understand each other clearly. Pretty sure whipping out some phonetic punctuation while trying to sign would have been a ridiculous disaster. I'll have to save it for home.
I did notice how often we tend to speak when walking away from someone. The patient would say thank you and I would say you're welcome while walking out the door and then think - "how stupid, they couldn't hear that". They were also on precautions for infection that we would normally wear a mask for. I went in with it on once and then thought- "this is dumb, they can't read my lips anymore! " I was glad to have a reason not to wear it.
It was a whopping 12 degrees headed to work this morning. I'm good with a light coat - must be due to that week at home :) - but scrub pants are much to thin for the cold. I think I'll start walking to the car wrapped in a blanket. That should do it.
No comments:
Post a Comment