ENPC, or "The Class You Should Never Take While You're Pregnant"

Sometimes I ask myself why I became a nurse because I have horrible, horrible test anxiety. Nurses are called "life long learners" for a reason - we have to take stupid classes every five minutes so we can keep our license and prove we're still smart. Or that we can at least fake being smart.

This weekend (my weekend off, of course) I was stuck in a class called ENPC - Emergency Nursing Pediatric Course. I say "stuck" because I hate this marathon, 10-hour-a-day classes where you spend the whole weekend in a strange hospital's basement with other ER nurses. In case you don't know, we ER nurses are not really a tribal community. We are territorial. I'd wager that the reason they don't use live patients in the classes is because each hospital-tribe would fight over it. "This patient belongs to the she-tribe of Community Memorial!" "Guess again, bitches! We claim this sickly one for the warrior-women of County General!" And so on. It'd be ugly.

Anyway, so here I am in a class that, put bluntly, is twenty hours of all the ways kids can die and what we're supposed to do about it. Now, we ER folk can all agree on one thing - there's nothing worse than the death of a child. Ever. Nothing. I don't think I really need to argue this point, because even people without kids can agree on it. If you know a really, really sick kid is coming in to the Pit, everyone sort of breaks out in a cold sweat; we breathe in a paper bag or busy ourselves getting the room ready, or whatever we have to do to keep that nauseating fear at bay.

But let's stop talking about that. That's not really a lighthearted blog discussion and I don't want to bring anyone down. The point is, this is the LAST class that I, Geriann "Please Sedate Me So I Can Stop Worrying" Bartz, needed to be taking while pregnant. I think my right hand was permanently attached to my little belly. By Saturday afternoon, I was entirely positive this kid is going straight into a Bubble like John Travolta and not getting out until he's eighteen. Public School? No way. I hope she likes Swiss Boarding School on the highest mountain in the Alps. I'll pay for the therapy when he's older and tearfully confesses her mother never let her eat a hot dog, it's fine. I'm preserving my child's airway, damn it!

Of course, the discussion came up, as it always does, about drunk kids. Ah, the Drunk Kids. We've had everything from drunk Cinderella to Drunk Naked Girl in the Pit. I've dealt with the lovey, happy drunks in their pretty prom dresses and a fifteen year old, ninety-pound cheerleader that kicked my ass even though I outweigh her by. . .well, by enough not to endure the humiliation of her beating me up. I've been called the worst of things by the worst of brats. But what kills me is that when most of the parents (most, definitely not all) show up for these kids, there's no death. The parents coo and coddle and smooth the hair of their precious intoxicated little hellion and apologize for her spitting in the nurse's face.

I don't get it. Maybe I will when I'm a parent, but I was of the impression growing up that if I showed up drunk in an ER, I'd be leaving it in a hearse. Then again, when I was a teenager I didn't know people went to an Emergency Room for being drunk. My mother wasn't even violent or mean or even strict (sorry Mom, you know it's true). I'd at least be grounded, if not on a ventilator. But most of these parents come in, tears shining, and they just tell their kid how much they love them and what a great kid they are for pissing on the gurney.

Is it a positive reinforcement thing? Is it trying not to make a scene? I always remember the parents that come in furious - one mother made her sobered-up fourteen year old apologize to the staff for wasting time on him when they were leaving. While that's a little on the harsh side, I can see and understand that slightly more than the child who faces no repercussions for being so utterly out of control. Can some parents help me out on this one, because I'd really like to understand; a lot of these parents seem like genuinely good people who care for their kids, but are these kids learning anything by the gentle hand? No, because when I say I see the drunk kids, I see the same kids. I'm watching these teenagers grow up one blood-alcohol-level at a time, and it's a disturbing trend I think needs to be seriously addressed in this country.