Finally!

[AliRae]

After a year and a half, yesterday was finally the day that my own kid coded on me. Granted, it was only a 3/4 code (we never ended up doing compressions), but it's the first time it was MY kid that went from AAOx3 to tubed, lined and paralyzed within the course of my shift. And I survived it! I've been having nightmares about this day since I started, and now I just have to think about it and laugh.

We were actually coding 2 kids at the same time with only one attending and one resident. It started in another kid's room, where the docs were happily placing a chest tube. My kid dropped her heartrate and turned grey. I ran across the floor leaving the nurse who would become my faithful scribe with my kid, and grabbed the resident. God and the attending had told me to draw up meds earlier in the day, so we were ready and started pushing meds on orders through a telephone held up to the sterile-gowned and gloved attending on the other side of the floor. She eventually made it to our room and we pushed a few more rounds of meds before deciding to intubate. As we got everything ready and mixed up drips, anesthesia was intubating the other kid for us. We had him up on our monitor, and when his sats dropped to 40, the attending booked over to his room, leaving us alone again. She extubated his stomach, intubated his trachea, did a little CPR and ran back to our side. You can't make this stuff up, seriously! We intubated my kid (three times until we got a tube in without a leak the size of a wind tunnel) and started out drips and finally got a blood pressure back.

I have never been prouder of my PICU team than I was last night. It's so sweet to know that, when the poo hits the overheads, there are a ton of people who've got your back. And maybe, just maybe, that difficult mother you've been doggedly bonding with for the past month will seek you out after it's all over and quietly apologize for being so needy when other kids are so sick.

Long-winded, and I'm sorry. Anyone else have a good first code story? I can't believe I had to wait so long for mine, but I think it's one I'll be remembering for a while!

[RN BSN 2009]

Congrats on the good work.

[pcicurn7]

Way to go! I hope i "click" into work mode as you did when i get my first code...you did it!

[NotReady4PrimeTime, RN]

Good job, AliRae. Can't say I'd be quite so excited about having patient code on me, but now it's happened and you know you can handle it. It sounds pretty chaotic, rather like the last one I attended. Our newish Brazilian fellow intubated the esophagus on a little cardiac kiddie who rapidly progressed from respiratory failure to full arrest and couldn't be convinced that the tube wasn't in his trachea. She also couldn't be convinced that the ECG wave on the monitor was PEA... The two nurses doing compressions did an outstanding job, but it was a real gong show. He survived, but not without a month of ECLS. Hopefully your little one is mending rapidly.