5. The Night Nurse
Employing the arts of self-defense—against my medical “care”-giver.
Continued from: BRAIN GAMES
The staff are switching out Day Crew to Night Crew. As my new nurse looks me over, she blinks hard. Screws up her face with that same kind of bafflement that hit Day Crew upon our introduction. But then she looks down her nose at me.
My heart skips a beat.
I know that look.
“Wow,” the Night Nurse says. “Looking at you, I would have thought you’d be, like…32…35?”
Yes. This is usually the assumption. I nod.
“But then we looked at your chart.”
Yes. I was there. I just watched it happen.
They get me back into bed. The moment Day Crew is out of earshot, she turns her back on me. As she leads the others out, I finally hear her say it out loud. That thing she’s been shouting with her scrunched up nose, her side-eyes, and her overloud thought-bubbles.
“What is she even doing on this floor?” she sneers. Her assistants shrug and give me their own side-eyes in lemming mode.
My narrowed gaze tracks my new caregiver across the shadows of the room.
Do you have any idea how sick I am of having to defend myself from the very people who are supposed to be helping me?
On with the brain games…
MAY 6, 2024
My 5-Day In-Hospital Continuous EEG with Video Monitoring: NIGHT 1
7:37 p.m.
Gonna try to legit sleep again. TRY being the operative word. Haven’t gotten true, restorative sleep for three days.
7:47
Night Nurse is back. Wow. Tornado warnings coming tonight. We’re at Watch right now. If we reach Warning I’ll get to move downstairs with my leash of a gazillion cords tying to me to the big computer and video camera stand, but can’t take my own computer. Freakin’ joy. Really hope we don’t get blasted.
Also. I like Day Crew WAAAAY better. This woman is snippy, condescending, and sometimes downright rude. Zero bedside manner.
8:18 - R leg jolt
8:39 - big neck jolt
9:03
Huh. I guess now we are subjected to safety checks every couple hours. That’s interesting, because Day Crew said it was every four hours. Whatever. This is exactly what we’re here to test. Me: stressed, sleep-deprived, and having ever-worsening brain symptoms.
Giving up on trying to sleep. Even Delta Waves can’t knock me out. While the Night Nurse is here, I ask her to help adjust the video camera so I can move back to the lounger chair. She says it doesn’t need to be adjusted—that it’s motion-sensored and will track me as I move around the room.
I inform her that I’d been told I wasn’t allowed to move around the room without assistance, and that they have been adjusting the camera all day.
She keeps insisting that this isn’t how the camera works.
I tell her that EEG Crew also told me that the camera would need to be adjusted to ensure that I’m caught onscreen 24-7.
She tries to tell me that it moves on its own. I tell her that it has never moved on its own once since I’ve been here. As she tries to convince me that I must not have noticed, she glares at me like I’m annoying and crazy and nothing but an overly theatrical attention-seeker.
Does she truly believe that I want her in my fucking room for one more millisecond than is necessary for the most base functionality of my time here?
At least she gives me the clearance to get up out of bed on my own whenever I want. More like she chastises me that I am not on Bed Restriction so I shouldn’t be calling them in for frivolous things like this.
I inform her that nobody ever gave me ambulatory clearance. She sniffs down her nose again and tries to assure me that I probably just didn’t hear them or understand them or remember or something. She does a lot of muttering under her breath. She does even more clamping her mouth shut upon her words. That’s okay. Her rolling eyes speak louder.
Whatever. It means I will not have to call her for One. Single. Solitary. Thing anymore.
Thank the diabolical NeuroGods.
10:00 p.m.
trying to tie brain y answering emails. Stupid stripe shit. Then my swipe stoppers working.
Melts it in. WTF!!!!!!! Bbbbnbb CB
Meltdown
FFS
11 sat in B dark trying b again
Yes. That’s a copy-paste of the notes I managed to type into my phone. This kind of message is an instant Code Red signal to my loved ones. When they start receiving text messages like this from me, they know that the Really Bad Stuff is happening, because I lose the ability to read properly or even know how badly I’m mis-typing.
Allow me to translate: Since I couldn’t sleep and since I was purposely trying to tire out my brain instead of the tap-out, shutdown, and self-care maneuvers I would normally employ, I was attempting to handle the problems I’d been having with verifying my identity for Stripe. When the swipe-to-text function stopped working, I had to chuck my phone aside before I threw it against the wall, then sit there, mouth-breathing in the dark because recycling air and blood was all I could manage.
11:17 jaw. I’ve been ha Bond others this whole time jaw n fingers but I wanted to try to just start still n sleep. No dice.
11:30 vitals n w change
11:49 shooting star r hand
Translation: I was having other sleep-seizures this whole time in my jaw and fingers but I gave up trying to document them in the hopes of falling—and staying—a-friggin-sleep. No dice. Night Crew woke me up for another vitals check. Then I was woken up by a bolt of nerve-pain shooting through my right hand. FFS.
MAY 7, 2024
12:01 r fingern thumb
12:15 Dammit! I was almost fucking out! Someone loudly opened my door fur nothing. Scared the shit outta me. WTF!!!
12:20 there it is! Seizure back of skull big head jerk. This one was weird. Triple side to side . That’s new.
I’m going to stop copy-pasting my notes now because they become hard to decipher. Full of janky, profanity-laden shorthand that I would just have to translate for you anyway.
*Jedi hand-wave* This is the seizure you are looking for…
At last! It happened. The type of seizure I had been hoping (dreading) that we could capture on the EEG.
These bigger episodes feel different from the sleep-jolts. They are often preempted by a distinctive itching at the back of my head, most intensely in my right occipital bone.
(You know—where my cerebrospinal fluid apparently slows down to a drip and backs up inside my skull because of the subluxations in my cervical vertebrae. The place my chiropractors all nod about like “duh” but that many people in NeuroLand wrinkle up their noses and stare at me like I’m off my rocker when I suggest that my neck could be a huge part of my brain problems. 🤨)
Well, I felt this one coming on. I buried myself under the eye mask and the blankets to take away all semblance of light. I did breathing exercises. I tried to stave it off.
Nope.
There was no stopping this one. These kind of seizures have plagued me since 2001, eight months after getting rammed by a drunk driver. It feels like a shockwave rises up from the base of my skull, shoots up the back of my head, and cold-cocks me. My head snaps to the left. The wave is a blinding, crackling light inside my skull. The sound is like a jet engine rushing over me and clearing my head by inches.
And then…
I’m…
DONE.
Exhaustion. Marrow deep. Disorientation. Slowed breathing. Slowed blinking. Just wanna sleep.
Unfortunately, I have been instructed to—not only push the EEG button to place an alert marker on the feed—but I am also supposed to call the nurse’s station if I experience one of these.
I do NOT want to call that woman in here.
Not her.
Not now when all my defenses have been blown apart. But this is the episode we’ve been waiting to capture.
So I stab the EEG button and then pick up the long controller bar that has my bed and light buttons, as well as that darn call button. I stare at it. It stares back at me. I know I have to push it.
Closing my eyes, I take in a deep breath and I fucking do.
The Night Nurse’s reaction to me is unsurprising. Pooh-pooh-and-guffaw in the back of her throat. Sniffing down her nose and brisk movements like she is ever-so-busy and can’t be bothered with a hysterical female like me.
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you,” she snips, staring at me through the shadows with her assistants in silhouette behind her. “Your heart rate didn’t change, and I’m sure the EEG didn’t go off. They would have called us if you’d actually had something happen to you.”
Actually had something happen.
I keep my fucking mouth shut and confine my fucking movements to one tiny lift of the head, so she knows I fucking heard her and will get the fuck out of my room post-fucking-haste.
As she strides toward the door with that lofty head-waggle she likes to throw around, she mutters something to her assistants about, “…been melodramatic all night.”
And that is my final straw.
RAGE.
Once I am blessedly alone, I stare directly into the unblinking eyeball of Big Brother and thrust one spear-of-a-finger toward the door. Since nobody ever told me if the video camera also captures sound or not, I snarl-hiss, “I hope you caught that. Just in case you didn’t, she just grumbled to her assistants something about ‘melodramatic all night.’ She had better not be talking about me! That had better be a passing comment about somebody else because you do NOT speak about a patient like that when they can still hear you. Honestly? If you’re speaking about your patients like that, what the fuck are you doing in the medical profession at all! You do NOT roll your eyes at patients. You do NOT condescend them. You do NOT treat them like they’re melodramatic and overreacting as you try to gaslight them into believing that the video camera has been following them around all day, when the EEG guys and the entire Day Squad said that they have to actually move it.”
I’m gonna feel really dumb if there’s no sound to what these people are watching, but screw it. I do not care what I look like. I probably look unhinged with my hair everywhere in a halo around my head and my eyes blazing like I’m possessed by the NeuroDevil.
Because this EEG video is no longer merely the evidence of what’s going on inside my brain. Now it’s the evidence of a medical (un)professional who needs to be reported.
And make no mistake.
I will.
As soon as she gets the fuck off this floor in the morning, and I am no longer dependent upon her for my welfare.
Looming up closer to the video camera, I bare my teeth and add, “Oh. And yes. I know. If she’s right and the EEG didn’t blip for epilepsy, yeah…I’m totally fucking faking all of this because this is just so fucking fun! This is exactly what I want to be doing with my life! I have nothing better to do than to sit in a hospital bed all hooked up to ‘trodes so I can get psychologically smacked around and gaslit. Because, ohhhhh yeah, that video camera has absolutely been tracking us around this room all day.” *snort* “Guaranteed, it’s been following the nurses as they move around because it’s motion-sensored, don’tcha know.” *snigger* “I just haven’t noticed it because I’m whack!”
Bet the lights aren’t flickering inside my skull either.
Enraged, I slink back down into my hidey-hole of a bed, wrangle my ‘trode cords into the free-and-unsmashed position, put the eye-mask over my face, and try to sleep.
Again.
26 minutes later…
12:46 a.m. - neck jolt.
No itch at back of skull. No big blinding wave like last time. But neck jerks are back to being side-to-side now, not the vertical head-pops like I’ve been having for months. Fuck. I have not missed these cold-cock seizures.
1:11 - oooh, magical hour!
Just did an experiment. I’m at the sink. Have been for a minute. Still waiting. Still waving my arms. Lo and behold, the video camera has not followed me like Big Brother sensing my every motion and tracking me.
Now there’s a shocker.
1:24
On and off now—back of skull zinging. Itching. The pain in my head hasn’t stopped since 10:00 this morning. Sometimes the stakes stab through both sides, not just the right. So much pressure inside my skull that my forehead is compressing my eye sockets.
Oh, but I’m nothing but a melodramatic faker. I should be transferred to Psych Ward because there are people with reeeeeeal neurological issues who deserve this bed. I’m just:
REE! REE! REE!
1:51 R hand
2:01 spine
Why the hell did she ask that upon first glance? “She was actually scheduled for this?” So much incredulity that my issues could be so well documented and ongoing that I would be put on the schedule for this test in advance. The others who worked with me all day treated me like: “Uh yeah, if her neurologist sent her, obviously she needs to be here…”
Trying to say my neurologist is as whack as I am?
2:11 - spear in L eyeball
2:17 - jaw
2:46 - finally! I snored! Woke myself up but I snored.
3:24 - vitals. Blah. I was asleep I think.
3:39 - spine n L hand
5:36 - startled awake. Sorta. R hand numb. L eyeball swollen almost shut
6:21 - neck jerk
Dobby…is…FREEEEEEE!
Okay, not free. But almost free of the Night Nurse.
6:52 a.m.
I hear the door open. I dread seeing that woman’s face, so I remain motionless. Pretend I’m conked out. I wish.
Her tone is totally different this morning, full of baffled “concern” as she tells the people with her, “She’s got that over her eyes…I guess because the light’s bothering her?”
You guess? How new are you to Neuro Floor? And if this is your first rodeo up here, how did you ever get put in charge for an entire night if you don’t know that photosensitivity is one of the staple symptoms of people with neurological issues? You guess…?!
What a crock.
She starts describing my “incident” last night in too-familiar language that demonstrates how prejudiced and ignorant she is about non-epileptic seizures—that they are genuine and serious medical issues, not psycho-whack figments of our imagination designed to garner attention. Yet she retains that overblown “I just don’t know how to help her” tone, and suddenly I realize why.
Because she’s not accompanied by her sweet, meek, big-eyed lemmings. Nope, this is shift change. She’s catching up my new Day Crew Nurse.
Halle-flippin-lujah!
When Nighty-Night touches my shoulder, my body can’t help but recoil. That’s okay. Just looks like she startled me out of sleep. She’s ever-so “apologetic” for waking me, like any proper gaslighter is while monitored by someone of equal or greater status.
Her eyes are ever-so huge, and she verges into an almost-smile as she says, “I was worried that you weren’t breathing because you were so still as we came in.”
Yeah, babe. That’d be the small, venomous viper lying in vigilant, motionless wait as the raptor circles overhead. Because rest assured. I am going to bite you. But it’s going to be at the time of my choosing, when I am safest to do so.
I say nothing. Just lift my head like I’m too sleepy to respond.
She continues her explanations of where we’re at this morning. When she gets to the part about me having to call her around midnight, she doesn’t use the word “seizure.” She calls it my “incident,” and goes off again about the fact that my heart monitor didn’t go crazy.
Right. Which means that I must be the one off my rocker—oh, excuse me. “Melodramatic all night.”
My new nurse takes in everything and gives a nod, refers to my chart, looks me over, asks me a few questions without a shred of condescension, skepticism, snootiness, or nastiness—gee, what a concept.
She nods, perfectly satisfied with my answers. And that’s that. She tells me that she’ll check in on me later and heads off to her next patient.
I’d really love to deflate my mile-high ramparts in a gust of relieved sigh. But no. Not yet. Not until I am certain that the Night Nurse is gone and I am back in the hands of attentive, professional caregivers.
Naturally, on the way out the door, Nighty tries to get in one last shot and poison the waters with my new nurse. “I’m not sure why she’s here doing EEG monitoring.”
The door closes before I can hear how my Day Nurse responds.
Me? I want to bellow, “Because my neurologist ordered this test for me, that’s fucking why! Because she is a thorough medical practitioner, unlike the first neurologist I saw, and refuses to issue fucking epilepsy meds without confirming that I have fucking epilepsy, that’s why!”
I AM NOT INSANE!
I AM NOT A CRAZY-MAKING, HYPER-THEATRICAL, MELODRAMATIC ATTENTION SEEKER!
I AM NOT A LIAR, MAKING ALL THIS UP!
I AM NOT IMAGINING THIS!
HOW IS THIS HAPPENING ON NEURO FLOOR?!
And for that matter, why did they say “check out on Sunday” not Saturday when I’m only scheduled for five days? Is it gonna have to be five nights under Gaslighty Nighty’s watch?
And why am I not getting the scheduled walks that the hospital computer system says I should be getting?
And is denial of pain meds, along with purposeful sleep deprivation all part of this test, like the strobe lights and the breathing exercises WTF!
All through the morning, my sleep-seizures continue to keep me awake, sometimes every 2 minutes. Now that we’ve captured what we needed on the EEG, I stop being religious about documenting every little episode that requires a push of the EEG button.
I also take out my Invisalign in the hopes that the jolts will calm down and let me sleep. Nope. Since it doesn’t help, and my teeth wind up really sore, I put it back in.
At 8:32 a.m. the night-terrors start, so at 9:30 I give up and call for some help to move to the chair.
Alas. It looks as though the video camera might not have been in the proper position to have captured everything going on in my bed all night, when Nighty Nurse refused to move it back for me. I guess we’ll see.
When I mention this to Day Crew, they all look at me like it’s a big ole “duh” that they have to move the camera every time that I move position. That no, the camera most certainly does not move itself.
Hah. Vindication is mine.
Further vindication: Day Crew asks several times a day as they’re checking my vitals: “Do you know why you’re here in the hospital?”
“Yes,” I answer, thrilled at this question and at the gentle care in my caregivers’ demeanors. “We’re hoping to rule out epilepsy.”
Each time, they give me a satisfied nod, as though this is precisely what they hoped to hear me say because it means I’m alert and functional enough that they can leave me in the room alone.
This is exactly the type of reaction I hope to see from them, too, because it means they friggin’ get why I am on Neuro Floor doing continuous EEG monitoring.
So there, and thhhhpt!
At noon, I am finally, officially taken off ambulatory restriction.
So yarp. Turns out that was another of Gaslighty Nighty’s attempts to convince me that things have happened but I just don’t remember them. (This is a common tactic of coercive control and psychological abuse when it comes to we TBI survivors—oh-so convenient to blame it on our disabilities.)
Because I had NOT been given that clearance yet.
As such, my magnificent Day Nurse positions the camera in such a way that it can capture me when I’m in the bed or in the chair, so I’m free to go where I want, when I want.
After so many guilt-trips and shame-bombs last night, her kindness, generosity, and efficient manner are a godsend. She, like yesterday’s Day Crew, brushes off my every hesitation in asking for help, which lets me finally come down off Code Red.
I also feel safe enough with her to make my official complaint about the Night Nurse.
My Day Nurse is stunned, appalled, and quite fanged that her patient was treated this way. She apologizes on behalf of the entire staff, then assures me that she will make a report and that I will not so much as glimpse that woman for the remainder of my stay in this hospital.
To top it off, I have become so adept at ordering my meals, that the lunch lady comes in with my ginormous salad that I cannot wait to sink fangs into. Upon entering, she stops in her tracks. “Wow!” she gushes. “It smells so good in here. Did you put on some sort of oil?”
“Uh…nope?” I shrug and grin. In fact, I have been doing PT and stationary dance drills on and off all morning, so I haven’t yet gone into the bathroom to use the baby wipes. This means my body is still coated in the stress-sweat from last night. Even so…
“Did you spray something?”
“Nope.”
“Oh! Well…usually all I can smell in these rooms is the glue from the EEG electrodes but…wow.”
I can’t help but blush, beam and purr at such a compliment. Turns out I really am like moss—if you give me the chance I’ll grow on you. Because now that I’m not wasting entire trays of food and making extra work for Lunch Crew (which I really hated doing), she is a peach to me. Every body is a peach to me, just like they were all day yesterday.
Hence I am back to being a peach to everybody I encounter, no matter the pain I’m in.
Another bonus: they’re stunned that nobody ever brought me the promised Tylenol, so in the afternoon they bump me up to a full dose and have it delivered right away. They also inform me that, no, purposely trying to prevent me from sleeping and denying pain meds is not SOP for this test. It was just an oversight.
Well, I guess the NeuroGods wanted to see me symptomatic as quickly as possible so we could get some answers. Now that we’ve captured my symptoms on EEG, everything seems to begin shifting onto the downhill slope. The pace seems to relax, allowing me to breathe again.
The Beast remains in her dungeon, devouring the carcass of last night’s fiasco while I digest a…less than satisfactory salad. Limp lettuce, powdery eggs, tasteless tomatoes, nasty cukes. Gah. Whatever. The Beastie still licks her claws clean from the decisive, take-no-shit way I handled such mistreatment. As such, I deftly order a cheeseburger for dinner and hope it drips down my friggin’ chin.
When Bed Crew comes to change out my bed for the fancy newfangled ones that the floor just received, I’m already in the lounger chair. As they work across the room, they murmur some rumors about somebody receiving a huge reprimand. Although they don’t look at me, I get the feeling they know exactly who issued the complaint. They also mention something about this individual having kids and the worry about job safety.
The Nice Girl Recovering Doormat in me almost has a heart-attack of guilt over that. The rest of me?
There is no guilt here. If you are a professional caregiver, then your job is to conduct yourself in a professional manner as you care for those under your watch. No surprise to me that she’d risk the stable care of her children. It sucks for them, but that’s on their mother. Not on me.
As the sign on my hospital room’s sliding bathroom door says:
SEE SOMETHING
SAY SOMETHING
And don’t treat your patients like that. Because not all of us in these beds will just lie here and take it in the teeth without response.
Get knocked down 99 times…
Get up 100.
And never stop believing in yourself.
’Kay?
Rad.
🤜💥🤛
UP NEXT: THE DIAGNOSIS - I finally get the official word about what’s been going on with my brain for the past 24 years.
© 2025 Hartebeast
Damsel to Dangerous 2
“Hey, Bella, so since you’re a black belt now, does that mean nobody has been able to do you harm ever since?” False. Not remotely. The belt guarantees nothing. Even excellent training guarantees nothing. Just ask my Special Forces and combat vet buddies. But it's sure better than...
It’s so strange that someone like that night nurse would take a role as a care giver... you’ve gotta wonder about some people!
You tell this harrowing story well :)