My first day on the job was so full of excitement. Two days before I took and passed my test I was hired as a full time Aide. I was walking on air. They introduced me to the other full time gals and guys that would become my second home for 40 hours a week plus overtime. Day one they teased me, it was harmless right? Then I met the nurses. They all looked so tired. Nothing like the ICU nurses I remembered from my childhood but they still acted the same. Self righteous and better than everyone. My first day, such a whirlwind of activity. First day turned into first week, first week into first month. Light teasing into harassment. Self righteous into god complexes and those willing to walk slowly when a code was called.
This was what I remembered wondering about as a girl. How did they tear each other apart like rabid hyena's and still come together at just the right moment to save a life? Well the answer to that was, they didn't always. I remember going up to a nurse I had offended and begging her to come look at one of my patients, I thought something was wrong. What did I know I was a CNA. Hours passed, she told me she would get to it. She never did, not until I got a nurse from another unit to verify what I had been saying all along. Something had been terribly wrong.
Then they told me what had happened that day. Funny thing, I didn't remember most of it being that way. Then I was the bad guy because I called the state inspector. The thing that really got to me, I could live with poeple dying around me. It was sad but I could accept I had done all I could. As a CNA what I could never live with was the way the employees treated each other. They harrassed, sexually assulted, some slept with husbands of others, and all talked behind each others back. How could a field that is supposed to be about the greater good and helping others be just as equally about being self righteous and hateful? Why did they do it?
To everyone. Employees came and went like a revolving door except the five of us who were full time. No one was able to pass through without the gossip and attacks being directed at them just as brutally as they did toward those who they called close friends. After a time I started to become ill. It took me a while to figure out I was only ever ill on the days I had to work. I would vomit and have headaches. Part stress, part dehydration from the vomiting, I cut down to part time. For the second time during my work at this facility I had betrayed them. Until they hired someone else, they were short some days and they never let me forget. Not that I had an alternative life style, not that I had reported the facility to state, not that I had gone to my superiors for abuse and been told it was all in good fun.
I wasn't laughing. Eventually I moved states. I thought myself to be free of them. Even now one of them will text me or shoot me an email, why don't I talk to anyone any more, I told them, I wasn't laughing. Now for the second time in my life I am working as a CNA. I want so much for it to be different. Tomorrow is my first day all over again. I know it will be filled with excitement and new job joys. Even know I know somethings will never change. The nurses will be self righteous and 'overworked' the CNA's will pick up their slack and huff that the nurses don't work. I am ok with this. I know I do it to. I have saved lives. I say with pride. The patients think me proud and self righteous. It comes with the job. You have to be that way or they won't trust that you are capable.
My biggest hope? That this time I will not be walking into a den of wolves. That this time I will not have to call the state and tell them I can't accept what happened as part of life. They say ever facility is different. I have worked in one. Another whose opinion I hold dear has worked in six. In all she has reported that they still back stab and gossip like school girls. I am more willing to turn the other cheek. I have faith that there are those who go into nursing not for the pay but to do good in the world. They still exist don't they?
If any CNA reads this I hope you can leave me messages of hope. Something to say that it's not always this way. While bad things do happen there are those who live and act with good intentions.
Am I cynical? Am I jaded? Maybe.
Corset looking for the good in the world
Signing off.
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