it's 6am

and all i can think about is the mcdonald's large sweet tea that will shortly be in my grubby little hands. i might forego the straw and just hook it up to myself IV style. i didn't sleep tonight/last night/this night(? it all starts to blur on overnights/ER). i had patients to take care of that i didn't wrap up until close till 4:30am, and now...what's the point? i'm "off" in 2 hours. i say "off" because i likely won't get home till 9am at the earliest.

i feel better tonight. better being the operative word. not great. last night, i thought of some ways to improve my end of things at the job. i implemented those today, and i feel like it made a great deal of difference.

see, it's not just the difficulty of dealing with irate and confrontational owners with no finances or putting down the 6th animal of the night for financial reasons or being told what a terrible, heartless person i must be to withhold treatment...it's also the fact that i've been having ... shall we say ... staff problems (?) lately.

this blog is anonymous, but i feel that i should be vague in exactly what this means. i also should try to maintain some modicum of professionalism. suffice to say that things are going on which have made me seriously question whether i will stay here next year or not. i suppose i will talk about these problems at some point. not now.

here's a post from a blog i read (ah, medical residency). it sums up some of what i feel about my job and why it can be such a weight. obviously - it's about human medicine and the experience is different - but some of the general ideas are the same:

"But mostly I’m just tired of the reality. Being confronted with society’s ills, in every sense of the word (because it turns out this job encompasses the literal medical ills, the economic ills, the social ills, etc., which is a lot more than what they advertise in medical school), on a daily and nightly basis is like (warning: over-used cliché alarm) being forced to push an immeasurably heavy stone up an unbelievably steep hill…only that the stone keeps getting heavier and the hill keeps getting steeper on a daily (or even hourly) basis."

and with that, i bid you good night. or good morning. or whatever.