Mind games

So I've often wondered if working in the ER is going to screw me up in some sad way. Like maybe I'll be so crusty that I'm no longer compassionate, or I'll become so immune to broken dead people that others will think I'm cold-hearted. Perhaps I'll deal with drug seekers so many times that someone will ask me for a tylenol and I'll internally wonder if they're going to ask for dilaudid next.

There is so much blood, death, sadness and emotional trauma that there is no way I won't be screwed up somehow.

Well, tonight I discovered that yes, I am screwed up. The ER has forever changed me - there is no going back.

I recently pulled an insect out of someone's ear. While it was gross and gave me the heebie jeebies like whoa, I sort of put it out of my mind. Until tonight. When I was laying in bed, in my minimally air conditioned apartment because I'm a cheap bastard, I could hear a buzzing.

It might not even have been an insect. But then again, it might be. So instead of getting up like a normal person to open the door, or look for it, I panicked. "Oh sweet mother," I thought, "this insect is going to buzz around my room and wait until I'm asleep and then crawl down my ear canal so far and I'm going to wake up and hear it and feel it and have to go the ER and be sedated because I'll be spazzing, and everyone will think I'm ridiculous and then I'll be forever scarred because there was a BUG in my ear and I won't be able to function at work and then I'll be fired and then what will I do?!"

And then, when it was 95 sweltering degrees outside...I pulled up the down comforter from the bottom of my bed and slept under the covers with my ears securely covered. The entire night. FML.

I am scarred for life from the ER. But hey, at least it's an earbug-free life.

***
And by "night," I mean 9am to 430pm, because that's my sleepytime, suckahs. It's also the hottest part of the day for normal people.