Also, be thankful for river otters. Because they are mighty cute.

Those words came from one of the 8 nursing students I had in my room at that particular moment, all of whom were accompanied by my nursing school clinical instructor. The student used her keen assessment skills to notice that my fecal collection bag was SO FULL of poop and gas (fart-in-a-bag, delicious, right?) that it was rupturing. RUPTURING. It’s always fun when the person who trained you how to be a nurse is in the room when something awesome (and completely avoidable, if you’re, you know, paying attention) happens. That’s a sure-fire way to impress a former instructor and a group of nursing students. Fumble some POOP. Super, super smooth.

Luckily, I managed the situation with some quick delegation (Ex: UUUUUHHHH, YOU**! GET ME THE BUCKET OUT OF THE BATHROOM!) and the swift aid of my instructor, who, thank God, happened to already have some gloves on. Sure there was some splashing involved, but luckily for me, I happened to be in the middle of bath time when the whole crowd of students rolled into my room, so there were towels everywhere. And, I’ll have you know, I used those towels preemptively. Not reactively. BOOYAH. NURSED!!!

*Almost every day has a new poop story. Almost every single day. Such is my life.

**In CPR training, they teach you that you should specifically choose one person to call 9-1-1. You shouldn’t just yell, “SOMEONE CALL 9-1-1!” because everyone will think someone else is doing it. Be specific, they tell you. As it turns out, emergency poop situations require a similar delegation technique. When there are 10 people in a room with an exploding poop bag, you have to pick a person to go get the poop bucket. You can’t just be yelling out for “someone” to go get the poop bucket. You have to be specific. Thank you, 9-1-1 training, for preparing me for these emergency moments.

And that, in a sentence, is why I shouldn’t have been surprised by the fact that I started my period today.

Don’t fret, though. I called Zack and apologized for my behavior this week as soon as I figured it out. I should seriously put calendar alerts into my phone or something.

Zack and I had dinner with some friends last night, and I told them about how well nursing was going. I was starting to get a handle on my time management, I told them. I was starting to feel a wee bit comfortable.

Words of death.

Luckily, my husband is smarter than I am. He must have taken note that I was mindlessly declaring my awesomeness at dinner last night. Because tonight, when I came home from work totally ragged — having not eaten anything more than a granola bar since my alarm went off at 5:10, having run my ass off all day long, never sitting down, never catching a break — he had dinner ready and waiting for me. And he had the margaritas pre-blended. And then, when I thought it couldn’t get any better, he turned on Crazy, Stupid, Love, which he rented just for me.

I’m so glad he’s smarter than me.

As nurses, we see a lot of people die. That’s part of our job. We get to experience life in its best and its worst moments, and death is a big part of that. Eventually, we see enough of life’s worst moments that we become calloused to them, and they don’t affect us as deeply anymore. But new nurses don’t have callouses yet. And we all know that we have to watch out for the first death.

My first death was months ago. An elderly patient who was well loved and well cared for. I thought that I would be sad about it, but I wasn’t. The patient had a good, long life, and was surrounded by a loving family. I kept waiting for the feelings of sadness to wash over me, but they never came. I almost teared up as the hospital chaplain prayed with the family, but just as I was about to cry, an alarm went off that I had to silence. Work comes before emotions when you’re in the hospital.

I’ve had a few deaths since then. Some were sadder than others, but nothing that made me cry after I got home. At-Home-Crying is the easiest way for me to judge my emotional involvement.  People tell me all the time that I have to learn to leave work at work and not take it home with me. Maybe that’s a skill that comes with becoming calloused. I try, I really do try. Most days I succeed. Today, I have not succeeded.

I picked up an extra shift at work today. I didn’t have to work, but I chose to–partly because we were short-staffed–but mostly because I really liked the patients that I worked with yesterday. Liking the patients that you’re working with makes all the difference in how difficult your day is. If you’re working with patients that are incessantly auditioning to play opposite Walter Matthau in the next Grumpy Old Men, it makes for a long day. If you’re working with sweet, gentle families, days go quickly and smoothly. I had sweet, gentle families and good patients yesterday, so I chose to come back today and work with them again.

Nobody died on my shift today. When I agreed to come to work today, it had never occurred to me that someone passing away on my shift was even a possibility. As soon as I realized that death was (not just possible, but) imminent, I prayed constantly that nobody would die on my shift. I really, really didn’t want anyone to die on my shift. But as the shift started to draw to a close, it became very evident that my prayer was being answered in a literal way. The patient was not going to die… on my shift. The night shift nurse was going to have to do their own interceding if they wanted to change their fate.

It’s hard to say why some patient’s situations hit home and others don’t. There are some reasons for my emotional reaction that I understand, and there are others that I don’t. All I really understand tonight is that I am having the reaction that I expected to have months ago when my first patient die. I am having this reaction even though it wasn’t my first time, and even though nobody died on my watch.

GAMETIME.
ROUND ONE: CATCH PHRASE
Set a timer for 1 minute. Each player has one minute to “Catch Phrase” as many of the clues/nouns as he/she can. After his/her one minute is up, a player from the other team takes a turn. Continue alternating teams until all of the clues from the bowl are used. Each team scores 1 point for each correctly guessed clue. (Note: In each round, when the last clue is answered, have the player yell “TIME!” so the timer can be stopped. That player will begin the next round, and will use only the time remaining. So, for example, if they used 30 seconds to finish the Catch Phrase round, they will have 30 seconds to play the first turn of Round #2).
Examples: (Clue: Crabs) “This is an STD! And also, SEAFOOD!”

ROUND TWO: CHARADES
Put all of the clues back into the bowl*. (*Using the same words again creates a ‘word bank’ which helps make the next three rounds possible.) Set a timer for 1 minute. Each player has one minute to silently act out as many clues as he/she can. Classic charades rules apply. No noise allowed. Continue to alternate turns between teams until all the clues are gone. Each team scores 1 point for each correctly guessed clue.

ROUND THREE: ONE WORD
Put all of the clues back into the bowl. Set a timer for 1 minute. Each player has one minute to elicit as many correct guesses as he/she can from his/her teammates by saying ONLY ONE word. Any “uh”s or “um”s count as the one word, and the players team must just guess by recalling as many of the words in the wordbank as they can. No gesturing of any kind allowed. Just the one word.
Examples: STD! (crabs); MUSTACHE! (Ron Swanson); BRASS! (Tuba); THRILLER! (Michael Jackson)

ROUND FOUR: SOUND EFFECTS
Put all of the clues back into the bowl. Set a timer for 1 minute. Each player has one minute to elicit as many correct guesses as he/she can from his/her teammates by only making noises. No words allowed. This round is undoubtedly the most difficult, because the OTHER rule for this round is that all of the player’s teammates have to close their eyes, so that they can’t see any gestures that the player is making. If the player is smart, he/she will not make any gestures, because the other team will most certainly be watching, and they will have an advantage if you get stuck on a noise that your teammates can’t figure out because they can’t see you riding your imaginary bucking bronco. (But, just so you know, not gesturing at all during this round? That’s almost impossible.)
Examples: Scampering noise (CRABS!); Tuba sound (TUBA!); Humming Thriller (MICHAEL JACKSON!) Humming Africa* by Todo (SARAH HOOD! [A girl on the ski trip who's about to move to Africa])

The team with the most number of correctly guessed clues at the end of Round 4 wins.

Y’all. Go play this game. Then come back, and tell me how much you loved it. It’s pretty outrageously fun. It should be noted, by the way, that I recommend using double entendres for all your nouns, (BUSH!), because that’s just how I roll. It makes the sound effect part way, way more fun.

*That was my brilliant move, by the way. Not an easy clue, but they toooootally got it. Booyah.