Fardels

Things hurt all out of proportion.
It's because I'm so stressed out I guess.
I'm going to talk about everything that's wrong today.
Yesterday, I went to the gym to do my 20 minutes of aerobic exercise as prescribed by the Body for Life program. I had skipped Thursday and Friday. And somehow, I've managed to gain two pounds since last week. Normally, I walk around my neighborhood, but it was 13 degrees, so I decided to go to the gym and use the elliptical trainer. I picked the one at the end of the row and started up. Next to me was a really buff black guy. He had his I-Pod plugged into the machine (these are really nice machines) and I saw his playlist. The song he was listening to was "Let's all get drunk as fuck." He had his earphones in and was just trucking along, while I was stuck with the gym's music videos of Rihanna and Nickelback. I wondered what the song sounded like. It looked like it was really helping his workout.

He finished, and suddenly I realized that next to me was our vascular Fellow, Karina Smythe. Who didn't make eye contact with or bother to greet me. It bothered me to an almost irrational degree. Why don't the doctors treat the nurses like people? This happens all the time. The only person who regularly acknowledges me in public is Pierre Juneau--the orthopedic surgeon who used to be a trapeze artist with Cirque du Soleil. "'Allo 'Aley! You are good, yes?" Then, today, in Ernie's, I ran into two of the plastic surgery residents. Neither of whom made eye contact or acknowledged me. They were out with Jan, a social worker--girlfriend to one--and she said something, but the other two kept looking at their plates. I guess this happens as you get older--you become invisible. But it made me want to cry. I mean, even ordinary people acknowledge the people they work with, right? On the street, or in the grocery store? Is it so important to maintain the ranking? Are they that insecure? Or do they just not even recognize me? Are we that invisible to them. You know, that's probably it. I'm very quiet. I probably am pretty invisible at work. I'm pretty sure I am, actually. I work for that.

Okay. So that's one fardel.

What else.

Oh. Okay. I'm so stressed that I'm having my second period this month. Fantastic! And I've gained two pounds, despite working out like a fiend--or like a semi-fiend, to be truthful. And I have a paper due. And I have no money. Because I just paid Lilly's winter tuition to St. Xavier's and I gave all my cash to the stinky screamy cat lady so she could buy a bus ticket to the rehab center in Iowa to be near her daughter. Compassion opens like a flower, sometimes. But sometimes it hits you like a frying pan as well. Before I knew what I was doing I was thrusting the cash in her hand. She's been just awful. She smells, for one thing, bad--like old beer and cat piss. And she has no teeth. And she's done nothing but sit by the bedside of her daughter and pick on the nurses. But then, I was nice to her, and she brought in pictures of all her cats and of her crack addict daughter before the accident. She even brought in photographs of cats that had died several years before and told me their stories. We had told her that she couldn't ride along with her daughter in the ambulance (because she's so stinky and annoying, basically) but then the ambulance driver showed up and told her she could. Then our trauma nurse clinician stepped in and, without acknowledging her or making eye contact, said, no she couldn't. So the driver retracted it, making up a bunch of baloney. And I know she's a problem, but she's a person, too, and this girl is all she has. This girl and the trailer and the cats and the booze--and I know people make their own choices, blah blah blah, which seems to be the excuse the devil has given all of us for not helping someone out. "Well, it's their own fault!" So, ouch, down came the frying pan and out went the cash.
Hope she got there okay.
But then the rest of the day I was impossibly cranky. I was ecstatic for about 10 minutes. Then I was a BITCH.
You know, one thing I really know about is being poor. Not any more. But I've been there. I guess not really, not totally, because I've always had a safety I could have drawn on--I can't imagine what it would have been like without the safety. Without knowing that there was always some relative who could get me a plane ticket out of whatever hell I'd made for myself. But there are people who work without a net, the people who have it don't have any right to judge them. Because you do whatever you have to to hold onto that wire.



Who would these fardels bear?
That's my 1/2 hour.