The Cheese Grates It: Victor and Me

At first glance, you wouldn’t think that Victor Henriksen and I have anything in common.

Victor is a tough FBI agent who takes on the most dangerous criminals.

I am a nurse who works with medically fragile children.

Victor can definitely kick an ass or two.

My body has so many things going wrong with it that it’s getting to the point where the only thing “tough” about me is my fuck you attitude and the consistency of my flesh.

However, Victor and I do have something in common nonetheless, and here it is.

“My job is boring. It’s frustrating. You work three years for one break, and then maybe you can save a few people…maybe. That’s the payoff...So yeah, sign me up for that big frosty mug of wasting my damn life.”

The nursing I do is not “sexy” nursing. It is not high energy, racing to save life and limb as quickly as possible ER nursing, although at any moment in usually stable case, I may have to drop everything and attempt to do just that.

The nursing I do involves caring for those with chronic conditions. I clean up a lot of poop, snot, and vomit. The patient I’m working with currently has a very rare congenital disease. This disease is terminal, but nobody knows how long this kid has because he is literally the oldest living person with the disease. Most kids who have this disease die before their fifth birthday. My patient will be twelve this year.

This kind of nursing is notoriously low paid. Home care nurses do not get paid time off. If I take a day off, it’s always on my dime. A lot of home care agencies treat their nurses like crap. The previous agency I was with asked me to work 60 hour weeks consistently and would have been fine with having me work a 72 hour week, but I drew the line. They had me work when I was sick. There was always the emotional blackmail of “the family really needs you.” Then when the inevitable happened and I fell asleep during a shift, both the family and the agency were more than happy to fuck me over.

You hear about the saintly nurse for whom the work isn’t about the money, it’s about the caring. I do care very much about every patient I’ve ever worked with. However, in many ways being in the medical profession is a big frosty mug of wasting my damn life, and no, it is not an option to just change jobs or to go back to school. I don’t know how to do anything else and nobody’s going to pay my way while I’m trying to get an education in some other profession. I can’t take the cut in pay to go work at a hipster cafe or new age book shop while I try to figure out my life’s purpose.

So that’s what Victor and I have in common. We both work in noble professions and have fuck all to show for it when the day is done.

I probably won’t die by being blown up, though. I’m guessing my kidneys will shoot the moon one of these days (fuck you diabetes) and I’ll be poisoned by my body’s own waste. Good times!

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~