WHY YOU DON'T WANT A NURSE FOR A WIFE

My hubby likes to complain about me being a nurse and I can't blame him. When it comes to garnering sympathy from me for cuts and bruises, stomach aches, headaches, or other such ills, well, all he gets is a snort, an eye roll, and a pat on the back. "Oh, you're fine. I've seen patients with their jaws bitten off by horses and guts spilling out their nostrils. Take two tylenol and go to bed."

I will take that apple out of your mouth,
and your chin with it! True story

Anything less than being on the ventilator, paralyzed and sedated with 9 drips going at the same time- isn't worth getting excited over.

When hubby is in the presence of myself and a nurse colleague sitting at a table eating dinner, he knows it involves lengthy, unedited conversations involving play-by-play graphic detail of blood, guts, and other bodily fluids. Whatever it is that hubby is about to consume somehow finds its way into my description of something utterly unappetizing. Hubby sits there traumatized with the fork at his chin, eyes wide, mouth hanging open as he mentally visualizes the very horrific things I describe. For some reason I can sit in my patient's room for an hour cleaning out a rotting limb and still be thinking about what I'm going to have for lunch.

Brain jello consumed without hesitation

At work I'm like the Energizer Bunny on steroids. Sometimes it's "go, go, go" or else your patient might crash and die on you. For a critically ill patient who is taking a turn for the worse, there is seemingly no end to the number of bags of fluid, antibiotics, and IV medications that need to be hung, labs that need to be drawn, lines and tubes that need to be inserted, X-rays, EKGs, MRIs, CAT scans and other tests or procedures that need to be completed, monitors that need to be watched, vital signs, inputs and outputs that need to be charted, doctors and families that need to be notified.

Literally, there is no time to eat lunch, pee or even scratch your nose. I am running my rear off to stabilize the patient and there are a slew of serious, life-saving drips that constantly need to be titrated. I admit to a surge of satisfaction when pressing a few buttons on an IV pump can almost instantly bring up a patient's dropping blood pressure. But then again, there's nothing scarier than having a patient's life in your hands.

I know how to titrate human rocketfuel

That's why I crash when I get home from work- which, having had pure adrenaline running through my veins all day, is unavoidable. This means that hubby has a wife who can barely stand and barely stay awake, much less make dinner, go out, or do anything remotely productive. I am then a blob who sits in front of the television, shovels food in her mouth, and 10 minutes later, crawls into bed.

Thanks to hubby for his tolerance, his understanding, encouragement, and the tall glass of cold water he always has ready for me when I step through the door after work. You're the best.