Nurse Ratched and the laws of karma

I tried to get onto this blog on Monday-with no luck at all. Talk about the laws of karma!!

For those of you who either aren't of a certain age or have never seen Jack Nicholson's movies-there is always Google!! Google is great...

I had a nurse years ago-before the gentamicin palaver-who was called Daphne. She was really evil-not only to me, but to all the other patients in the clinic. I nicknamed her Nurse Ratched-very appropriate, I thought!! And-I called her that to her face. I think that if you are going to call a spade a spade, or a bitch a bitch-do it to their face. And if they are bigger than you, prepare to run.

So Daphne (Nurse Ratched) walked around like she had swallowed a ton of prunes but still suffered from terminal constipation. She was nasty, and rude-and, at one point, another patient called across the room to me that I had given her the appropriate nickname (I sometimes get it right!!). One day I came into the clinic for my semi-annual exam and bloodletting, and Ratched wasn't there. I asked one of the nurses if she was gone, and I was told that she had retired. We patients all celebrated that day. What a great day!

And-I mention this for a reason. I got an email on Monday from a nurse I knew well in those Ratched days; Jess had moved on, but we email each other every Christmas, just to catch up and to send holiday greetings. It seems that our Nurse Ratched was walking along Whitechapel - just near the Royal London Hospital- and had a temporary lapse in concentration, and was hit by the 106 bus. Really, how funny-if I'm ever going to be hit by a bus (heaven forbid), at least it should be an upmarket bus, not the 106!! Jess said that people saw Daphne bounce (she's put on some weight since she retired-nobody to bully, I suspect). But the bus was only just pulling away, so Daphne wasn't hurt, just embarrassed (I wonder if any patients witnessed this and cheered). I wrote back to Jess and commented that it was too bad that she wasn't put onto a ward and treated by another Nurse Ratched just so she would be able to experience the same kind of damage she caused all of us...in any case, we had a good laugh over it.

Christmas, to me, is the season to be grumpy, pissed off, and generally cold (it's bloody freezing outside-and inside). And I start to think about what I wanted to accomplish during the year, but didn't. That makes me even more grumpy. So I thought about mortality, and how I need to let go of a lot of bad feelings and start really living in 2013. It's a new year-and each year I say I won't carry the same old crap around, because it's in the past and there is nothing I can do to change it. No resolutions, though-I break them all within a week!!

I thought about my grave, and my headstone (a bit macabre, that, but necessary at some point).

I decided that the inscription would read like this:

She lived to a hundred years old, and was completely healthy in body, mind and spirit. She was kind, compassionate, wickedly funny, and a good friend; she outlived (by some thirty + years) three incompetent medical consultants, some very stupid nurses, loads of completely braindead neighbors, a bunch of very obnoxious cousins, and one evil brother whom she called "the Antichrist"- and an ex-husband, about whom the less said, the better. She lived her life to the full, and the last words she said before she keeled over were: "at least I never got hit by the 106 bus to Whitechapel".

It will have to be a very large headstone. With very small printing.