Pity Party, Table for One

So here's a day in my life as a nurse.
Today was my first day back at work after 8 blissful days of vacation. Guaranteed set-up for disaster. First, I couldn't sleep well last night, got about 4 hours of sleep, and got out the door late. Which then required I take a cab to work. Which got stuck in godawful traffic on Queens Blvd, and over the Queensboro Bridge, and all the way down 2nd Ave. Leaving me at work around 7:50am. Just enough time to grab a breakfast sandwich, get stuck in the slowest elevator ever, get onto my floor 5 minutes late, and never get to eat said breakfast sandwich. And to make matters worse, I was assigned to the post-op unit, all by myself, leaving me isolated from the rest of the floor and unable to go anywhere, get anything done, or most importantly, sneak bites of that breakfast sandwich. Did I mention it had bacon in it?? Serious setback to my day!
So my morning was off to a rough start anyway, report took way too long, and I never made a dent in my charting before 2 out of 3 of my patients decided that oxygen was not a necessity for the day. Back to back, they both dropped their oxygen saturation from a very comfortable 95% to something more like 70%. Which sets off a horrific beeping on the monitor that could wake the dead, but apparently doesn't make people breathe any better. And requires a lot of intervening to make things all better.
Hours later, after multiple breathing treatments, 8 million new orders, and a lot of hand holding, peace and quiet was finally restored to my little post-op world. But I still hadn't eaten, was shaking with hunger and frustration, and was last in the lineup for lunches. And at this point, it's still only 11:30am! Slowest. Day. Ever.
I finally got to eat around 2:45pm, got no charting done and then got to go rounds with my favorite mean and nasty nurse practitioner about whether or not patients with dialysis catheters in the femoral vein can get out of bed (the answer is yes, apparently, although a little frightening to ponder). And my all-important charting? Got done at about 11pm, 3 hours after they stopped paying me for being in the building.
Long story short, that was one eventful return to the world of nursing. But there were some silver lining moments: one patient told me I was pretty, one patient brought us all mini cupcakes from Crumbs (yum!), and all that hand-holding is what I went into this job for in the first place. So all in all not a terrible day's work. Good thing, since I have to do it all again in less than 7 hours...