The Fridge Nazi

Food is very important during chemotherapy. There are extended periods where you eat nothing, interrupted by brief periods where you want to suddenly eat everything. Unfortunately, the hospital food is typically made in mass and the target consumer is the elderly. That means no salt, no fat, no spices, and no flavor. In many other hospitals there is a refrigerator room with snacks, yogurt, soup, gatorade, fruit juice, or some other snack. Here, there is a small refrigerator akin to what some broke college kid might have in his dorm. And just like that fridge (sans beer), this one too is largely empty

Fortunately my lovely wife started bringing me food. She would cook enough for two or three meals, and I would store the leftovers in the refrigerator. On more than one occasion, I found the food in the trash, dumped into the sink, or left to spoil on the counter top. I did some investigating and determined that one of the staff was behind these acts. She was upset that I was taking up valuable fridge space and impeding her ability to stock said fridge. This is a bald faced lie, and I took several photos from my iPhone at different intervals to show that the fridge was mostly empty, and that my items never exceeded a capacity of five percent of the total volume of said fridge.

Suspend this thought for a minute.

When my blood counts are low as a result of the chemotherapy (a state of neutropenia), I get throbbing migraines. Neutropenia is painful for several reasons, but headaches are the leading and most reliable cause for me. Because I am not allowed to have Tylenol (no medication can be given that might mask a fever), I have to be very vigilant about taking the substitute pain medication, which I am allotted every four hours. If I miss a dose, the headache will return, and by then it's too late. I have to stay ahead of the pain.

I kept noticing that one nurse in particular was very slow to bring me pain medication--try four hours slow. Whenever I attempted to locate her, she was nowhere to be found. In fact, she was just rude and unpleasant overall. She came in during the morning to give me my meds, forcefully woke me up to get me on her schedule, tugged at my PICC line while taking labs, and just really seemed to exude an attitude of not wanting to be here. One day, I was so tired of waiting for my pain medication that I unhooked myself from the IV machine, walked over to CVS, bought a bottle of Tylenol, and downed half the bottle. I then stormed back into the ward and demanded to speak with her boss whom we will call Nurse Ratched. No I did not make a grammar mistake, the name "Nurse Ratched" refers to the supervisor who, believe it or not, is worse.

After five minutes of speaking with Nurse Ratched, I realized that our conversation was going nowhere and fast. She just looked irritated that I was whining about a stupid headache. Prior to leaving she asked if there were any additional comments that I might have. To this day, I don't know what compelled me to mention the above refrigerator incidents, but I did.

Upon hearing that I was using the fridge, she became livid and lost sight of everything else. Apparently, use of the fridge by patients is a major policy violation. She instantly demanded to know who gave me access to the fridge, but I refused to divulge my source. I also told her that I deeply regretted speaking with her, and that she could leave my room if she wasn't going to constructively listen to feedback.

I later learned that she rounded up the staff and chastised them drill sergeant style. To all my military friends, picture that time you were outside in the cold and rain for hours on end at 04:30 on a Monday morning because some idiot got a DUI over the weekend.

The result is that she made matters worse on both issues. She told the nurse of my complaint and then proceeded to put that nurse in charge of me on several occasions (talk about awkward). Second, I lost all access to the refrigerator, and the staff is terrified to lend me a helping hand. As if having cancer wasn't bad enough, she did her best to make things just a little bit worse. I really could have done without this drama.

In response to her poor, toxic leadership, I drafted a complaint and sent it to everyone in her chain of command, from her immediate supervisor to the head of the hospital. I informed them that she ignored a real patient complaint and an egregious offense in favor of upholding petty policies.

I've seen a lot of people like Nurse Ratched, especially in the military and the government. In an effort to excite their sadistic desires, they lord their pathetic authority over others and create little fiefdoms of power.  This isn't about a fridge, it's about control and toxic leadership. Rather than deal with an egregious offense, she decided to tackle the low hanging fruit for the purpose of instantly putting a bullet on her annual review. People like her go around making the world a worse place in favor of their career. Unfortunately, it's also people like her that will get promoted and eventually run the show.