Actually...appropriate!

I felt a little uncomfortable at the chemotherapy education session at the hospital last week. I mean, it WAS my day off, so if I wanted to wear denim shorts and my Deadpool t-shirt, why not? I was also rocking my blinged-out skull and crossbone earrings.

When I arrived in the conference room and saw the other attendees, I had to hide a wince. Most were wearing business casual clothing. The others were in scrubs because they were coming off shift.

I felt like I stood out like a sore thumb. Then, as we progressed through the presentation, I came to a realization. Chemotherapy is poison. So my awesome earrings were totally appropriate. And Deadpool? Man, he became a super...hero (?) because he was dying of cancer and desperate for a cure! How perfect was my t-shirt after all!

So I stopped worrying about it and absorbed all the info. Besides, who cares what other people think, right?

A funny thing happened on the way to the medcart...

The doctor summoned me urgently to the patient's bedside. He pointed to her ileostomy bag and said,

"Please page the ostomy nurse, STAT! It looks like pieces of her intestinal tissue or stoma are sloughing off into the bag!!!"

I whispered in response, "It's watermelon...she had it for breakfast!"

He blushed and said, "Well, don't I feel silly!"

To be fair, the patient had no teeth, so she regularly had pretty big chunks of food in her collection bag!


Then there was the patient who didn't seem to be arousable. Calling his name, gentle shaking/jostling, nothing was working. So I fired up the good, ol' sternal rub and hoped it would work its magic...

nothing. I kept rubbing and rubbing, harder and harder, knowing I was surely hurting him as he was pretty damn hairy.

Without opening his eyes, he suddenly said,

"You're rubbing the wrong spot..."

Alrighty, then! Gotta love the night shift...

God save me...

from brand-spankin' new residents! This is my first year dealing with this phenomenon, and I don't like it. Having to page someone fifty times before getting a response, having new admissions languishing in their rooms for several hours without orders, trying to parse exactly what the "doctors" are trying to accomplish with the orders they actually place, and trying to explain the most shittiest of discharge summaries to a patient, among many other issues, has wrought havoc on my work the past three days.

On the other hand, they sure are sparky and enthusiastic!

I'm beat. I had two simultaneous discharges and two admissions that showed up within half an hour of each other. Luckily, I work with an amazing team of colleagues! I had a lot of assistance and managed to get everything done that needed to be done.

Of course, I was charting until 2030...

When the old battle-ax of a charge nurse tells you you did a good job, it means something. :)

I think I'm going to like working here...

I'm orienting for a new per diem job at a large local family practice clinic, and the first thing I noticed in my MANAGER'S OFFICE was the following:

I think I'll fit right in. :D

Nursing Protip

When you're in a patient's bathroom at the end of your shift, emptying the graduated cylinder of its contents, it's a really, really bad idea to exclaim,


"OH, MY GOD!"


even if you glanced in the mirror and got a good look at your end-of-night-shift, slept-on-wet hair, which resembles a coiffure Medusa would envy.

You're likely to hear panicked shouts of "What? WHAT?" coming from both your patient and her sister, and only if you're really lucky will you get laughter in response to your meek, "Oh, sorry. It's just my hair..."

Haiku

your pain is over
I fear mine has just begun
rest in peace, dear Ray

Every breath you take...

I'll be watching you.

To see whether you're actually dead, that is.

I had the honor and privilege of holding a patient's hand while he passed. His family was with him and were bawling. Finally his wife asks, "Is he...dead?"

Um...

Eyes open. Pupils fixed. No visible breaths. Palpating his wrist...is that a pulse?! Shit! Is he or isn't he?!

Where's my stethoscope?! Where it always is, around my neck. Duh. Listening...listening...listening...

You don't know how long a minute really is. You really just don't know...

I hear nothing. Yes, he really is most sincerely dead. I page the doctor and go back to my computer, mentally going over the next steps in this whole process.

About an hour or so later, the charge nurse and I are performing post-mortem care.
P. is trying to grow a pair, because she's always been reluctant to do this very important task on our unit.

As we are carefully washing our deceased patient (and I have it on good authority that I'm NOT WEIRD for talking to the ones who have passed, so there!) I notice a flicker of movement...

P. jumps back with a squawk and I admit, a tiny noise might have escaped my throat.

*ahem*

I belatedly realize that the fancy-schmancy pressure-redistributing mattress doesn't give a flying fuck whether the body that's lying on it is alive or dead, it keeps on with its task of preventing pressure ulcers...by systematically deflating and inflating sections of itself, causing a rippling movement not unlike that of a water bed...incidentally and quite freakishly causing movement to our patient.

P., once she's come down off the ceiling and caught her breath, states, "That's the freakiest thing I've ever seen in my LIFE!"

Oh, Honey...you may have more experience as a nurse than I, but you ain't seen nuthin' yet!

Putting me on the spot!

As I was bustling around my patient last night, hooking her up to various IVs, etc., she looked me in the eye and asked," Am I gonna die?"

I fumbled for a moment and then spouted these words of wisdom," Well, we're ALL gonna die, eventually..."

I'm surprised she didn't punch me in the face.

I knew exactly what she meant to say.

I have a patient with expressive aphasia. When I walked into her room this morning, the very first thing she said, while looking into my face with a huge smile, was

"Happy Birthday!"

I replied,

"Happy Mother's Day to you, too, Iris!"

What a wonderful way to start a shift!

It was very satisfying...

as long as I held my breath!

I disimpacted a patient for the first time, w00t!

I don't think I needed a bachelor's degree for this, though.

Why can't I just get paid to hang out with my friends, chat, and stuff my face?!

Enough to make a sailor blush...

Oh, the things one overhears at Phlegmfest!

Out of context, they are by turns disturbing and/or raunchy.

"I love restraints!"

"Just the tip is in the mouth, you know it's not all the way in."

"I'm sorry I put my fingers on your wiggly bacon!"

It's one of those gatherings where several fascinating conversations are going on simultaneously, and you just wish you could listen to and participate in every one.

Quotes are being tossed around and people break out into song spontaneously, and nobody bats an eye.

And the food? Scrumptious!!!

I'm having a blast!

And I'm very thankful that despite dozing off every evening among the crowd, I have yet to wake up with a dick drawn on my face in sharpie. True friendship.  Thanks, Y'all!

Leaving on a jet plane...

Heading to TEXAS for Phlegmfest!

Dunno what kind of shenanigans might ensue, but with THIS crew, anything is possible!
I might or might not keep you posted, depends on many factors, one of which is my disdain of typing large amounts of text on my phone. Ugh.

I'm so excited to see so many of my friends who live so far away. I missed Blogorado last year, which made me sad, but I'm hoping I'll make it this fall. I already put in for the vacation time. ;)

Here's hoping my trip out is uneventful...car, bus, plane, car...we'll see!

Ugh.

I had the worst day ever today. I thought yesterday was bad, but today was several orders of magnitude worse.

At the end of my shift, after giving report, when I FINALLY started documenting, a long-time unit secretary/CNA (yes, she does BOTH) came up to me and asked, only half-jokingly,

"Whose oatmeal did you piss in to get THIS shitty assignment?!"

I dunno...God's?!

It wasn't supposed to be a bad day, but my patients had other ideas.

One died. One crashed. One was discharged (yay!). One's anxiety made him a huge PITA. And throw in an admission right at the end, and I was completely wrecked.

But, I work on an awesome unit where everyone pitches in to help, so that made a tremendous difference. Everything got done. All meds were given. All my patients were safe (yes, even the lady who died). Documentation is a nurse's bane, however.

I finally clocked out at 2107, picked up Tally, and headed to a local Irish pub. Good food, good music, and now I'm for bed. Luckily I don't go back to work until tomorrow night, so I can sleep in.

I just hope that the feeling that I don't know wtf I'm doing wears off soon...*sigh*.

I'm a REAL nurse now!

Clocked in at 0640 and didn't pee until 1905.

Why I became a nurse.

I admitted an elderly gentleman early yesterday morning, about half-way through my overnight shift. He came from the ED, extremely cachectic, with a diagnosis of "Failure to Thrive", which I thought only applied to newborns and infants.

He was withdrawn and monosyllabic, and I felt bad to be poking and prodding him with my admission assessment and placing of pressure ulcer preventatives, etc., when it was obvious he just wanted to be left alone.

When I came on last night, my third overnight in a row, after receiving report I walked into his room and reintroduced myself,

"Hi, Mr. Top! Do you remember me? I'm Christina, and I was the nurse who took care of you when you arrived on our unit last night."

He smiled slightly and said,

"You're the lady who got me all that apple juice!"

That he remembered me for THAT of all things, something nice I did for him, rather than the various indignities I subjected him to, absolutely made my day. Nothing got me down for the rest of my shift, not even when a patient's ileostomy bag exploded.

These moments are totally why I became a nurse. It makes everything worth it.

Merry Christmas!

So, all my children are here for the holidays, yay! (Actually, TallyAngel, my older twin, moved in with me the day after Thanksgiving, so she was already here...).

Unfortunately, Silver (my oldest) has had a wicked sore throat and can only talk in whispers (99% sure it's NOT strep throat, so I'm not dragging her unnecessarily into an urgent care, even though she wants me to).

Work is going well. I've been working a lot of nights lately, and except for the sleep deprivation, I like it. It's more peaceful. So to speak.

I had my first patient die. It was expected and welcome (he was on Comfort Measures Only), but I wasn't expecting him to die on my shift, nor was I anticipating that I would be the one to discover him, moments after he passed. He was still very warm. It was a good experience, though, and he died at peace and pain-free. My charge nurse said I did a great job, so there's that.

In other news, if you're friends with me IRL/on Facebook, you know that Tucker, one of my pups, has been very sick and almost died. As a matter of fact, he's definitely still not out of the woods, though he's holding his own right now. He has idiopathic autoimmune hemolytic anemia. That's a mouthful! (That's what SHE said!)
His own body has been attacking and destroying his red blood cells, for no known reason, leading to extreme anemia and all that goes with it. I'm taking him in this coming Monday for more bloodwork, so hopefully the labs will reflect what I see in him, namely that he is improving! He's eating again (and pooping!), and he wants to go on walks, even though he's very slow. He still gets fatigued really easily. And the steroids he's on make him drink and pee excessively, but that's just how it goes.

And that's about all I've got right now! My life is pretty boring. ;)

Have a very Merry Christmas! If you're Jewish, I hope your Hanukkah was awesome! Ditto with Festivus and Kwanzaa! (Have I covered everyone? Oh, wait! Wiccans, happy Winter Solstice!)

And for EVERYONE: I hope 2016 brings good health, happiness, and prosperity to you and your families!

And dear GOD, please don't let Trump or Hillary or Bernie be president!

I'm a BIG girl now!

The training wheels have come off! I just completed my first full week off of orientation!

No preceptor anymore, just me...all by myself...trying not to kill any of my patients.

*gulp*

So far, so good. We'll see how it goes later this week, when I work three days in a row.

I just had my first overnight shift (by myself), it was excellent, actually. Though  now I feel like a zombie. I think I'll watch the last episode of "Jessica Jones" and go back to bed.

Nighty-night!

Nope, not tea.

Then there was the elderly patient who asked me politely to dump the contents of his cup down the drain before he could accidentally drink it. When I asked him why he was worried about drinking his iced tea, and that I could get him some more ice, he told me he thought he had mistaken his empty cup for a urinal in the middle of the night and peed in it.

I carefully set the cup back down and said, "Let me get some gloves..."

And I made sure to document the dark amber color of his urine.

BTW, he had THREE urinals at his bedside!

Winning!

Mission: To make a jaded, seen-and-done-it-all male nurse blush.

We're transferring an elderly patient from a crappy foam bed (thanks, ED!) to a fancy-schmancy Envision bed.

I'm on the opposite side, so I have to lean across the Envision bed to slide the patient towards me. Right before we begin the transfer, aforementioned male nurse says to me:

You need to spread your legs.

My reply:

Yeah, I hear that a lot...

Totally inappropriate, I know, BUT I made my colleague blush and the other two nurses laugh their butts off, so I'm calling it a WIN!