My Terrible Awful Weekend

Be forewarned: this blog post my contain some content with strong thematic elements, brief disturbing images, and situations of intense peril. (that sounds funny, but I'm really not kidding)

So my Saturday started off well enough. Overslept just a smidge. But got to work only 7 minutes late, and no one noticed. Started in on my day. Actually, more like I started in on a roll! We were knocking off our tasks left and right. Then about 10am I got an emergency call.
See I work in a nursing home and have 25 full time residents that I am responsible for direct care and medications for. However, I also carry a pager that alarms from emergency pull stations in about 250 other independent apartments on the campus. So I called this apartment to see what was wrong (sometimes we get false alarms. Someone bumped it by accident or such. Or I may need special equipment or someone to help me, so its a good idea to call first.) This lady answers the phone, very distraught sounding, and tells me to come quick because someone fell, and hit his head.
Not a big deal. Over half of my emergency calls end up being falls. And head wounds are not uncommon as well, and of course they bleed like crazy, so normally people get panic-y. I tell her we'll be right up.
Me and another nurse get up there and enter the apartment. He's in the bathroom, facedown on the floor. Half the floor is covered in blood, another fourth in bodily excrement. It looked like a freakin' CSI scene. We quickly check a pulse, but its soon obvious this gentleman has been deceased for over 4 hours (obviously I didn't do a liver probe or anything, that is just a rough estimate). I think in all of my experiences as a nurse, there is only two other times when my stomach turned as much as it did then (gas gangrene, diabetic foot ulcers in UG). Between the waste smell, the congealed blood (think jello consistency), rigor mortise, and the natural dependent blood pooling, we just barely were able to cope, and had to step out. We are good and professional nurses... but it took a lot to get through cleaning him up so the mortuary could get him. I muddled through the rest of my day, but it tore me up pretty bad emotionally.
*Up until that day, I wished that I would have went and looked at Grandma after the car accident. Now I'm glad I never saw her. I'm glad that I have a last picture of her sleeping peacefully in her bed when I woke her up to check on a bandage I had rigged for her: that beautiful white hair swept back in her usual pompadourian style bun, her eyes closed serenely, and that sweet smile.*

Then I wake up Sunday morning to go in to work a little early. My tire blows on the way there. So there I am on the side of a country road, 630am, in khaki pants, jacking up my car to change to the donut! Thanks to my dear friend BJ, (who when working on my car like a sweetheart, put all of my lug-nuts on with a freakin' torque wrench!) I had a bear of a time getting the tire off. As I'm finally getting it all squared away and lowering my jack back down, a guy in a truck pulls up and asks if I need help. I looked up, smiled really sarcastically, and was like, "Nah, you're a little late buddy! I think I got it from here!"
Top this all off with a lovely e-mail from the stand in boss telling me that I am unprofessional if I don't get all my shifts covered for while I'm gone on vacation. The vacation time that I put in for 6 months ago, and was okay-ed by my real boss'. Sometimes people are annoying.
All this was on top of trying to pack everything and get stuff squared away for my departure in a week. The stress level was deafening.
By the end of Sunday I was in such a tizzy that I literally sat on my red couch and just stared at the ceiling. I couldn't make my head stop spinning. There were so many thoughts going through my head and stress of all the stuff I had to get done, that I couldn't even finish a thought before I would be worried about something else. I felt like my head was spinning in a million circles, I almost felt dizzy. I don't think I have ever felt that way before, but I think that is what people with schizophrenia feel like because I would go crazy too if my brain was like that all the time. Someone said PTSD, and I think they may be close.

I think I'm feeling better now. Its taken quite a bit of prayer and love to get over all this... but I think with God's help I'm on the right track to healing the places in my heart that feel wounded and confused right now.
Hopefully that healing will continue... all the way through my ridiculously long flight across the ocean and while I'm again traversing the familiar sights of home!