I Can do Anything For 12 Hours

When I was a new nurse, I worked nights on a post Open Heart Recovery Unit. It was a good job and allowed me to be at home during the day with my then 18 month old son, William. I would be soooo tired after just a few hours of sleep, but we had a new home with a mortgage. The nurses I worked with had been there forever and I was the youngest. Patsy was the only LPN on our floor. I LOVED HER! She had the funniest sense of humor and her best line was "I can do ANYTHING for 12 hours". That's how long our shifts were. When I moved back to Melbourne, I ran into another nurse that I worked with on that unit and I inquired about Patsy. She told me Patsy had died of cancer a few years ago. We talked about how funny her perspective on life was had a good laugh in her memory because this nurse remembered Patsy's famous line as well. I use this line in some fashion often and remember Patsy and how she could make a loooooong night shift pass a little more quickly.

It's 6am and I've been up since 0515 drinking Barium for a CT scan I'll have at 0800. That's "Ba" on the periodic table...I think. Anyway, I have to drink a liter of it in 2 hours. So I decided I would honor Patsy. I put a straw in it, drank some of it. Next I am going to pour it into this awesome martini glass that D gave me. It kind of tastes like coconut and I've decided it may just be like drinking a Pina Colada. Because "Ya know, I can do anything for 2 hours." Now where did I put those little drink umbrellas??