NurseChick

My 15 year old daughter goes through so many ice cube trays full a day it drives me crazy! She only puts in about 1/4 full of water to freeze them into small cubes. I originally thought about pica too, but then dismissed it. The crazy thing is that she had lab work done last year and she was slightly anemic. How interesting!! I had gotten her a chewable vitamin supplement, but we have both forgotten about it by now. I think I'll get the bottle out to remind me to have her start taking it again. Thanks so much for your information!:loveya: :loveya:

I was working one afternoon at a LTC facility and hadn't been and aide for very many months, and therefore hadn't seem many dead people. A lady was sitting in the hallway in a geri chair, and she had just gotten back from a Dr.'s appt. I happened to glance at her and thought she looked really pale compared to what she normally looked like. I kept studying her for a moment to see if she was breathing and then finally went and asked another staff member to look at her because she didn't look right. We took her into the nurses office right away because she was actually dead. When the lady that had drove the van to take her to the Dr. found out she was dead, she was so upset because she had been talking to her in the van, but didn't notice she had passed away.

I work in a LTC facility and we had a lady one time who called 911 to tell them she couldn't get her bra off. The dispatcher got a chuckle out of it also when they called to tell us they had her on the line and could we please go check her. When I went and asked her why she called 911 about her bra, she just acted like "well, isn't that what I should do?" We also have another lady who has called 911 several different times because no one was coming to answer her light.

I noticed one night when we were watching one of the medical shows on tv, and it was pretty grafic. The kids and I were all eating popcorn and just watching tv. I looked at them and told them they could all be in the medical profession because they were eating and watching a gory program at the same time.

I work in a LTC facilty on night shift and I have a few to share! Several years ago when I was an aide, a gentleman had passed away. Not too long after that we were having a severe thunderstorm one night and a great big clap of thunder was heard. His light starting going off just as the thunder clapped. We all new that it had to be the storm, but it still freaked us out that it was his room light that rang! Now we have a room that we all think is haunted. During the day or night this room's bathroom call light will go off. The 2 ladies that live in this room are not able to walk, so it's obviously not them. One night the light in their room and in the bathroom had gone off several times. Someone finally mentioned it to day shift and they said it happens to them also. Just the other night I turned off the bathroom light myself and they were both snuggled in bed. I hurried up and got out of there after I shut the light off! The other strange thing that happened in this room is that one of the ladies like to chant the number 6 over and over. One night the aides had been in the room several times because the other lady had put on her call light. She had done this right before rounds and when the aides went back in the room a short time later to check on them both again, the lady that had been putting on her light was completely turned around in bed. Her head was at the foot of the bed and the covers where just as straight as could be. This lady could barely move so it's interesting how she got herself turned all around in bed and then to not disturb the covers! Another night when I was working a few weeks ago we were having the same problems with this room with the call lights going off in the bathroom and the room itself. The aides were getting freaked out which also got me giddy too. I was in another part of the nursing home and the aides came running up to me all breathless saying that so and so's bed was levitating off the ground. I told them I wasn't going in there!!! But since I was the one in charge, had to put my anxiety away. We all go to the room and kind of peek around the corner and sure enough the whole front of the bed was off the floor, the wheels and all!! I walk in there and the headboard was hooked on the roommates bedside table. When they had raised the bed up to check the resident and then started to lower it, it must have moved a little bit so that when they were putting the bed down, the headboard caught the table and all they could see was the bed staying where it was and the wheels raising up! We all had a good laugh over that! After that, the light stayed off in that room, thank goodness!!

When I was 17, I was diagnosed with Grave's Disease or hyperthyroidism. I also drank the radioactive iodine and have taken synthroid ever since. I go in for yearly bloodwork to monitor it. If you ever have to have your dose changed, they will wait for about 6 weeks before they do another blood test because it takes awhile for everything to get evened out again. I have also been asking for a copy of my bloodwork. I had been going to a Nurse Practitioner for several years because she is in the town that I live in, so I started having her do my bloodwork. Every year after she got my results back, she would ask if I was feeling ok. I was, so I always said yes. About that same time I also found my birthmother, (I'm adopted) and she has hypothyroidism. She is the one that told me I should get copies of my labwork. Well, when I did, I noticed that one of the results had an asterik by it and it said "low". I then went back to my regular MD just to have a second opinion and he did a repeat lab and then decreased my dosage down 50mcg. He said it wasn't really that much, but it makes your heart beat just a little faster if you're on a higher dose, and that isn't necessary. He also said that not everyone understands what the difference between a 'High" value and a "Low" value mean. If the value on your labwork says "high", it means your pituitary gland is sending out a lot of signals for your body to send in the thyroid hormone which means that your thyroid is low and you need a boost, so you are hyp"O"thyroid. If your value says "low" it means that your pituitary gland is not sending out much of a signal for thyroid hormone because it already has enough, so you need a decrease in your med or you are hyp"ER"thyroid. When I was younger and had first started on my thyroid pills, the Dr. told me that if I miss a dose one day, I should take 2 doses the next. I asked my Dr. that I have now about that and he said that since the medicine is rather slow to absorb into your system, that it wasn't necessary to take 2 doses the next day if you missed a dose. That's not to say that you should be lax in taking your meds, but it's not an end of the world type thing if you do miss a dose.

When I started nursing school, I had been and CNA and then a Med Aide. I think it helped me a great deal to have some knowledge under my belt before I began nursing school. Granted, it's not much knowledge, but every little bit helps! Some of the other students that had never been in a nursing situation were always worried about every little thing. I think they had more work to do because they were learning everything all at once. At our college, they started a new rule that you had to be a CNA before you could start nursing school. Some people take the CNA class right before nursing school and never have a job in the nursing field, so I don't know what good it does to get your CNA because they go over everything again while your in your first weeks of class. As far as not working while in school, everyone has to do what works for their situation at the time. I am married and had 4 kids, so I just figured out the hours that I had to have to make certain payments and that is all I worked. It's amazing how little you can actually live off of when you need to!

I work at a LTC facility and we had a CNA, that the staff felt, was having a relationship with a gentlemen there. Other staff would walk into the room and find her laying in bed with him. Other times staff would witness him groping her chest and she didn't seem to mind. She is vietnamese and in her 40's. (I only mention the vietnamese part because maybe there is something about their culture that I don't know about, I'm not being prejudice.) The few times that she was actually called on it, she would say that he was like a father figure to her. She also bought him AND her husband fancy rings one time. The family loved her to death although who knows if they knew what exactly was going on. She came in on her days off to visit him and bring him things. She also had invited him to her house. She was finally fired, but it went on for over 6 months. As far as we know the husband never minded or knew about what was going on. They have moved out of town now.

We had a male CNA that started at our nursing home. He would wear white scrub pants with white boxers that had blue polka dots underneath. The problem was that you could see them at all times! He was quite a large fellow, over 6 ft tall and 300lbs. The staff thought maybe we needed to add "How to dress for work" into our orientation training.

I love working night shift! My husband works every weekend from Friday through Monday, so my schedule is basically the same except for I do rotating weekends. I am off during the week when he is. I am also home during the days if I want to do something with the kids during the school day, I just sleep around the kids schedules some days. Lucky for me my body does pretty good with sleeping when I need to. Sometimes there are so many things going on that I want to do that I might have to wait a day or so to really get some good sleep. You will be suprized how many times you will say to another night shift worker, "I got 4 hours of sleep today!", and you will think it's alot! LOL You will have to find out what works best for you. Not every day is going to be the same as far as being able to get the same amount of sleep, especially if you have kids! I do try to sleep until about noon on my days off, that way I can spend most of the day with the kids. But there are some days when I wake up and there is just no keeping my eyes open, then I know I must be needing some extra sleep and I'll sleep a few more hours. Good luck in working night shift! :zzzzz

Is there some type of hippa policy for employees? Our D.O.N. talks to staff members about people on our staff. She has told one LPN about another LPN and told her to keep an eye on her. (She had held down one of the resident's hands when she was trying to give them their meds because they were trying to grab the spoon.) And it's really obvious that the D.O.N. doesn't like this particular LPN because when she confronted her about holding down the persons hands, she did it at the front of the building right in the middle of everything and yelled at her for 5-10 minutes. Her office is only about 15 feet away, she could have very easily taken her there, shut the door and discussed it that way. At this same meeting she was telling us about 5 new people she had hired. She had these sheets that had their names, information, wages, etc. on them. She was holding them up in front of us and talking about each of them. So of course we new exactly what the new people were making. One of them was a med aide and was going to start at only $1 less than me. She also had these papers at a meeting with the team leaders at our facility. (They are med aides with a "special title" and are supposed to take care of the little stuff that is not necessarily something the LPN's have to deal with. So they also knew what the new people were making. I wouldn't want everyone in the buliding to know what I was starting out at if I was a new person. Especially the girl that was making over $10 an hour and making more than most of the other staff! One time a med aide left the door on the narc box open because an LPN had run off with the keys. The D.O.N. of course came back and found the door open, chewed out the med aide and proceeded to go up to the office area and tell about 5 staff members what the med aide had done, and then said, "Duh!" about that staff member. She has told us LPN's about a new hire one time and that she had a criminal record for stealing. She had taken some of her boyfriends stuff, or whatever, but she told us just "in case" we happen to notice things missing, although she didn't think it would really happen. One day we had an LPN and RN meeting. She told us about one of the RN's that wasn't there and that she was on probation and that she had hired another RN to train, and then she said, "May the best girl win." When her and our administrator were discussing the wage increases, she never shut her office door. There is a resident room directly across the hall and staff is constantly walking by. I had one of the aides tell me what my new wage was. I was just a new LPN and my 90 day probation period was over. It wouldn't be that big of a deal, but her mother is also an LPN, and I new the minute she got home she would call her and tell her what I was making. It is very uncomfortable for the staff members when she is talking about other people because it's stuff that really doesn't have anything to do with how we do our job. Plus, it's totally inappropriate. It makes you wonder what she says about you behind your back when you are not there. I know that if I ever had any personal things I needed to discuss with her that I wouldn't be able to because she would blab it to everyone else. Thanks for letting me vent!:)

My husband works 12hr shifts every Fri-Mon, so his "weekends" are Tues-Wed-Thurs. Those are always my days off too. I work night shift at a LTC facility, so I feel I have quite a bit of time to do as I please, as long as it's not after 10:00 at night! During the summer it's really nice because we both have the 3 days off and we can take time to go trucking with the whole family. It works out well for us right now.