The perfect ending....

....to a less than perfect day.

OH MY FREAKING GOD work was so hellish today it simultaneously sucked and blew. The Psychotic Disorders unit is a frakkin' war zone. I spent at least half the day dealing with crazy mothers of my crazy patients. I spent a good portion of the day getting told I was an ugly, fat, stupid, horrible bitch by my crazy pregnant patient. I spent, let's face it, the WHOLE day putting out various fires. And then I still had notes to write. The nurses were stressed out and understaffed and horrible today. My really crazy patient is now batshit crazy. My other really crazy patient has become crazy as a fucking bedbug. And my other other really crazy patient had electroshock this morning and though she calmed down for a moment, by late afternoon she was, to quote my medical student, "crazy as a shithouse rat." There's leftover Easter candy everywhere and I ate way too much sugar, which in some ways is sort of fortunate because I had to toss about half my uneaten lunch because it was getting to the point that if I kept trying to eat it between interruptions I was going to ruin my dinner. And I should have ran and hid except then one of my patients had a meltdown, so I pulled her into the rec room and we had a little therapy session.

But then, PenguinShrink and Chef (her boyfriend. Guess what he does for a living. Go on, guess) had me over for dinner. Chef cooked Indian food reportedly for the first time since culinary school. He made this fabulous curried chicken and saag and homemade paneer cheese, which is my favorite thing ever. I, quite seriously, could live on saag paneer and a little naan. We cooked and we laughed and we watched a cool movie. And I felt much better. Because by the time I left the unit, I was close to killing someone.

This poor patient with the meltdown today, right? Everyone thinks she's schizophrenic and apparently when she got admitted they told her that they were going to start her on clozaril, which is the big gun of antipsychotics, and it very, very carefully used, because while it's strong as hell, it has very serious and potentially life-threatening side effects. I almost fell off my chair when she told me this. Because neither my attending nor I thinks she's really schizophrenic. And so we had this long session in which, among other things, she recounted a past that was too much like mine. She told me that the first time she was molested was on this beautiful spring day, and that she kept thinking, this can't be right, because nothing so horrible could happen on such a really beautiful day. It may not have been the first time, but I remember a clear, cloudless night and a big, bright, early summer full moon. I remember that it was so surreal. Oh, I felt so bad for her today. Because I've been there. She's another one, you know...I always look at my patients, or my friends, and I wonder, what's different, you know? Why do some of us respond in some ways, some of us in such vastly different manners? Why can I manage to be higher functioning than those that I treat? I don't understand it. I don't know what makes us different when I know what makes us so similar.

Yeah...so that's a clear sign I need to go to bed.......