Friday night

This week has been relatively uneventful. My first full week on the floors, making rounds and whatnot went by pretty smoothly. I had some awkward encounters, I have managed to attract every dirty old man in the hospital, so that's always fun. I have actually helped people and been able to minister to them and pray with them. I've listened to a lot of great stories and heard many complaints about 'kids these days'. It's been a fairly good week. 


Tonight I opted to take the evening shift. Instead of coming in at 8am, I came in at 4pm. Yes, it was a Friday night, but I got to sleep in this morning. I had a wonderful morning of sleeping in and brunch with friends, followed by a quick nap. I came into the hospital expecting a crazy night, and it wasn't as crazy as I thought it would be. I didn't see the violence I was expecting, it was mostly just sick people. I became familiar with death paperwork as I had to go through it 3 times tonight. I am officially a chaplain after tonight because I've managed to do much of this on my own. Ir has been interesting to see how different families handle death. There really is no standard of what people do when their loved ones die. Being with families during this time isn't as difficult as I thought it would be. Families are generally easy to read in these types of circumstances. I've become very interested in how people deal with things and its not as awkward as I once thought. 


The problem I see myself having tonight is that I'm coming home from the hospital and I have to go to bed shortly there after. There is not a lot of time to decompress and let today sink in. I'm exhausted, but I'm still awake. I couldn't call anyone on the way home from work, because it was almost 1am. There is literally nothing on TV for a distraction. I'm stuck thinking about today instead of passing out. Luckily, this shift won't be a regular part of my week and I will be able to resume some sense of normalcy before going to bed. Tonight, I'll be an episode of Law and Order and games on my phone.