funny bone

Just got home from an exhausting Sunday eve in the E.R. and before I watch “Entourage” I need to vent about the CHALLENGES OF COMMUNICATION, specifically about – –

Being HEARD!

It’s the 5:00 to 9:00 shift and I land in the waiting room from hell! Anthony Chan is being particularly pissy. Multi-tasking, he takes vitals of a SOB (in E.R. speak that’s “shortness of breath” guys) and answers the phone abruptly but he keeps getting interrupted by this 60ish man who looks like he’s about to blow a gut. The gut blower demands that Anthony listen to him NOW.  Anthony snaps condescendingly —

 Sir, please take a seat!

This makes the man MADDER and MADDER and he gets LOUDER and LOUDER, leading to a head-butting encounter between Miguel and the Mad Man (he’s no Don Draper btw.)  Miguel’s Security Guard macho-ness enflames the situation even more.

So I come to the rescue.

Yes – me!  Maybe it’s because I’m just starting my shift and haven’t been hammered all day by complainers, coughers and catastrophes. Maybe my morning beach run and yoga class actually did put me in the zone. But basically I just LISTEN to him vent about his wife’s long wait and how she’d been in the Cancer Center all night getting transfused and how he can’t bear to watch her suffer in a freezing E.R. waiting room for three hours where nobody gives a…

FLYING F_ _ _ !

I head over to the wife with an apology and blanket and tell the couple I’ll be right back after I look for a room.  I find one (thankfully) and call EVS (Environmental Services) to clean it. Then I sweet talk Anthony into letting them go next. The man feels heard. The wife feels like we care. And I feel like NURSE NIGHTINGALE! (Usually I feel like Nurse Jackie — ahaha, just kidding!)

The E.R.’s kinda microcosmic in terms of the world in general.  See, we may be different ethnicities with different levels of education experiencing different levels of stress, but —

We all just want to be HEARD!

We want someone to CARE. We want to MATTER.

So whether it’s a couple battling Cancer or two countries battling each other or our significant others NOT listening, we escalate internally BIG TIME if we feel ignored. Thing is, we need more than…

Chillax!

Blowing someone off is NOT funny!

Are you listening?

(Okay, so what makes you feel dissed? Share in the comments!)