Adventures in Speed Dating

It was one of those days when I was "busy" in the way that only someone standing around watching other people doing stuff can be. I've never really understood why they like me to stand there and watch them infuse drug. I mean, I can tell you the drug infuses at a rate of 480 with set volume of 50 (and now that I write that I'm not even sure that is accurate) but I can't tell you what that means, how it was calculated or why it's right. Yet they want me standing there all day "just in case." If there's a grammatical emergency I can help you, anaphylaxis or malignant hypertension, not so much. It's why I'm going to nursing school, but that's neither here nor there.

So anyways, there I was, busy watching other people be busy when a nurse on the unit, we'll call her Lori (mostly because her name is Lori) asked if I wanted to go speed dating. Now before you start judging let's clear up two things: the event would be free for me to attend and the day before I had found out that my ex-boyfriend was legit dating someone new. So stop judging.  However, in the very least I did  learn a few things:

Lesson #1: Couples and Married people think that Speed Dating "sounds like fun.

It’s kind of like how camping sounds like a hoot until you do it in Florida in July.  I do appreciate though that when I call them and say “I’m going speed dating!” they find a way to put a positive spin on it. They are very good friends. So while tomorrow I may try to convince you that I'm living Sex in the City, Gainesville Edition, there’s no question in my mind: love that person sleeping next to you and appreciate that you came home to them instead of going out speed dating.

Lesson #2: I am the asshole 29 year old who went to the 35 to 45 year old speed-dating group.

I found myself guiltily telling a series of lies, each one more egregious than the next, in order to atone for this.  Are you really thirty-seven?  I WORE SUNCREEN BITCHES!! I TAKE EXCELLENT CARE OF MY SKIN. It's  not exactly an unforgivable transgression, and I can always take some comfort in knowing that in fifteen or twenty years I'll be the 44 year old woman at her third round of speed dating thinking "that bitch is SO not 37." And I'll be right. It’ll serve me right for my assholetry.

Lesson #3: Going to the wrong age group means you meet people who are waaay too old for you.

Duh right?  Still, there was one guy who was marginally nice. He was charming(ish), good looking and had the ability to hold a reasonably entertaining 5 minute conversation. (It’s deceptively difficult.) Yeeeahhhh…his daughter is only three years younger than me. So there I was in the wrong age group and wondering if I can put a comment in my "no thank you" box that says "you aren’t repulsive but I'm a dick who came to the wrong age group and you could have begotten me with your first wife."  I went instead with a classic no thank you, it just seemed simpler.  

 Lesson #4:  Speed Dating is like a goddamn firing range.

 5 minute conversations, over and over, and over…and over again. Delivering the same less than cleaver platitudes: I got my master’s degree in secondary education because I thought I wanted to teach...until I started teaching!  Or, “wow, working with" cancer patients must be tough?"  "You know, it’s like any other job, good days and bad days."  After fifteen or twenty of these you can only wish that you were on the business end of a firing range.

Lesson #5: Ain’t nobody got time for this shit.

Free or not, chances are it won’t be happening again.

The Nurse Boom and Banana Farewell Tour

Nurse Boom and I went down to Orlando about a month ago for a weekend at the Annual ACRP (Association for Clinical Research Professionals) to get our learn on.  While not intentionally planned as such, it was a well-timed farewell hoo-rah as we've been conference going buddies for almost five years now.  Much like I already miss seeing her face every morning, I will miss the funsies of going to conferences together. 

Okay, so it's not a picture from the conference but still: Boom and Banana!



Before I get to telling you all about the impressive swag that we acquired there (and it's worth waiting for, I promise), we went to a keynote speech by Charles Sabine, a news reporter turned Huntington's Disease advocate.  His speech was, for lack of a better word, outstanding and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.  Mr. Sabine's family has been ravaged by Huntington's Disease, a hereditary disease that causes nerve cells within the brain to degenerate, resulting in debilitating physical deterioration and dementia.   It's a terrible disease for which we currently have no preventative or curative intervention.  Mr. Sabine has watched his father and uncle deteriorate and die from it, he is currently watching his brother deteriorate rapidly and he himself will someday soon begin to experience its symptoms and inexorable decline.  It is an area in which clinical research is much needed, hence why he was in Orlando talking to us.

If I related to you all of the things that he said (which are continuing to resonate even now), we would be here all day.  I'll spare you and just throw out there that which struck me as the most powerful:  the complete uselessness of defining a disease as incurable.  (The following is essentially a paraphrase of his speech this morning, a thing that I think he might be okay with if only because it might make 18 more people in the world a little bit more aware of this terrible disease.) Most illnesses and conditions that affect us are incurable: the common cold, influenza, depression, chronic cancers, heartbreak.  We cannot cure these things but rather, we’ve learned to ameliorate their effects, to minimize the lasting impact that they have on our lives.  Beginning a person’s experience with this disease by telling them that it is incurable does them a great disservice, it removes their hope.  Hope is what pulls us through the darkness, it what makes us look for something better and it’s what all research is built upon.

It's just a thought.  A thought that makes me proud of the very small part I got to play in heme-malignancies research over the past five years.  Thanks Universe. 

Now on to the swag!



ACRP swag 2013

That's a grand total of four bags, two t-shirts, three stuffed animals, two coffee mugs, two water bottles, a calculator, six pads of post-its, a medical dictionary, a calculator, three mini bottles of cetaphil body lotion, four pen sized hand sanitizer dispensers, three car iPhone charger, a desk iPhone holder, luggage handle, a ruler, a snap bracelet and five squeezy "work missile" balls.  Impressive huh? 

We also did some old-school Tebowing;



and even made some research-y friends:

 

So far as farewell tours go...it was pretty darn awesome.  I love you Nurse Boom!