I wrote this last night in reponse to someone else's post, but it sums up the past week well...

I'm tired. I'm fried. I want to either go to bed or go out and get drunk. Instead, I'll probably just plant myself in front of the Idiot Box for a while and fall asleep on the couch.

Work this week has been evil. I've had one patient that I've worked with for 5 weeks now... as my boss says "this is a hospital, not a long term care facility... what are they still doing here?!" And the new news? The one chance this woman had of regaining some quality of life might be completely out the window. The best rehab hospital in the area has decided that they won't accept her, and she's likely going to end up at one that just doesn't have the equipment/programs/skilled therapists that are needed to do the job right the first time. And another patient had brain surgery Monday, and her husband was told on Tuesday morning that she has an aggressive form of brain cancer that she will not recover from. She's making excruciatingly slow progress with recovery, and all he wants is for her to get well enough to go home where she will be comfortable. I think that the hardest conversation of my life was walking up to him and having a frank discussion about what his goals are and how we can help them. I worry that she isn't going to make it home. I worry that she won't make it the weekend.

I love my job, and I hate it. I love it for the rewards, and the challenges, hate it for the obstacles and road blocks. Love it for the people and the good things that happen, and hate it that the bad things happen to good people.

I think that was probably 5 minutes, and I was hoping that I might feel better now than I did before I started, but it doesn't seem so... ahh well...