Early Morning Conversations: Turning Patients Medical Conditions into Hilarious Jokes

So I just got off a night shift. My eyes are blurring and, since there's no food in my house, a Tim Horton's breakfast sandwich is sitting happily and heavily in my stomach. I don't have to think about work again for 11 glorious hours. However just before I fall into a coma I'd like to share an early morning conversation I had. Is it equally witty if you aren't a massively sleep deprived nurse? Probably not. But that's not my problem.

Anyhow, for the purpose of this story lets just pretend that I had a patient named Smith overnight. And, because this always happens to me, Ms Smith was sane and coherent all day long only to spiral into an abyss of confused, thirsty delirium all night long. A delirium so deep she couldn't figure out how to use the call bell and instead lay in her bed yelling "LISA!! LISAAAAA!!! HELP ME! I'M FALLING! I NEED WATER! HEEEEELP!!!!" every 5 minutes. All. Night. Long. Usually I frown on writing whole sentences in caps lock, but there's no other way to write in Smith-speak.

I was giving report to the day nurse, who had been Smith's nurse while she was sane in the morning while the most adorable doctor ever invented sat behind her at a computer looking at some nasty looking x-rays. Here's how it went:

Day Nurse (DN)- "So she's crazy again?"

Me- "Oh, yah. I taught her how to use the call bell, but it fell of the side of the bed and I just never put it back because it's easier to ignore the person than the bell."

DN- "Right...... I just don't know how she went crazy again. She was so with it before!"

Me- "It's a special thing she does for me . Days go by and she never ONCE tries to climb out of bed to board the skytrain. I come on shift and all of a sudden the walls are waterfalls and she needs her rain slicker. It's a curse."

Enter the Super Cute Doctor (SCD)- "Would you like my clinical diagnosis? The patient is allergic to you and displaying the rare allergic reaction supercrazititis. Alternatively you have developed a horrible case of the Smiths and are imaging that your patients have gone insane. Either way, you should never work with this patient again."

Me- "Would you care to explain your diagnosis to my charge nurse?"

SCD- "I will write you a prescription for a patient load made up entirely of finger amputations and AVM's (easy stuff) until the symptoms clear. Otherwise you'll need surgery, and that would suck."

And that, right there, is why I sometimes love my job.

Imitating a Washing Machine and Other Fun Things To Do When Your Roommate is a Shithead.

So my roommate moved out. After all the initial drama caused by her surprise announcement that she was doing so I'm pretty glad she's out of my hair. Her family came and moved her out at 8 am on Saturday, a time when I am not exactly known to be at my very most chipper. At first the fact that she left me with absolutely no dishes, furniture or storage space (she took most of the cupboards) made me angry and the way the eerily empty apartment echoed whenever I walked freaked me out a bit. But then I realized that not having any dishes means I won't have to wash HER dishes and a completely empty livingroom translates into a brand-new, hardwood floored yoga studio, complete with candles (she took the lamp). So yesterday I bought a frying pan, a plate and a fork and today I turned Mates of State way up and danced around the gloriously dog shit free kitchen.

Then I decided to do some laundry. When Tian moved out she took the nice, new washing machine with her and replaced with some old funky looking thing that is probably from the same era as Claire's old stove, just less of a cheerful harvest gold and more of a depressing cold porridge brown in color. Tian, her mother and her sister (who all look disturbingly like the same person) assured me it worked. I'm naive. I fell for it.

So I took all my clothes and threw them in and poured in a generous cup of expensive-ish yummy smelly laundry soap. And then I tried to turn it on.

I've never heard an appliance sound constipated before. I makes this weird, low pitched, "I'm going to blow up soon" type buzzing when set at the "wash" part of any setting. At the rinse and spin cycle it rattles like an unmedicated Parkinson's patient but remains mysteriously free of water. In short, it is not a functional washing machine. And now I'm really angry.

I washed my clothes tonight by dumping them all in the tub and walking back and forth on them like I was making wine. I am now reduced to backpacking-through-Asia standards of hygiene, except there, if I shelled out the 50 cents, someone else would walk on my clothes for me. Since I don't usually get angry I no longer have appropriate ways of dealing with my anger in my repertoire of social interactions. Would someone with more experience being upset please tell me what to do?