nursepearl

When my boyfriend was in Liver failure he had ascities but the MD did not believe it was as bad as we said it was. He was a short gut pt. so he had NO intestine...his normal belly was caved in. When we went to the MD and showed him his abd, he said there was no ascities at all and he looked normal. So, my point being that sometimes they wont have a HUGE belly, but it depends on the pts baseline. He started to believe us once he had pitting 3+ edema.

As an oncology nurse our pts have either piccs or some kind of central line (ie. hickmans, groshongs) or a permacath. I use vaccutainers with all blood draws, unless I cant get any blood back and then I will try to used 10cc syringes. If that doesnt work and we cant get ANY blood back we will TPA the line....but thats another story.

I too look like a health freak while I am at work. I pack easy stuff like pb&j, grilled cheese and tomato soup, fruits, veggies, diet coke and water. People comment and say how healthy I eat, but I only eat that way because if I brought somthing heavy or buy somthing from the cafe I would fall asleep after eating.

I have been working nights for a few years now and it seems to work pretty good for me. I get home about 0830 and head right to be, usually watch some tv and fall asleep. I wake up between 12-2 and then I have to pick up my son from school. If I am not working the next night I can easily go back to sleep at a regular time (10-11). Sleep really isnt a problem for me. I can function well with what I get.

Hey guys, I have been a working on an solid, hematology oncology and bmt/stem cell transplant floor for three years. We have tons of new grads. I think it is a great place to start nursing. Although my floor also get a lot of med/surg over flow if we have room, so I have gotten a lot of med/surg experience out of it. The nurses on our floor become chemo cert. after 6 months. A huge thing that we deal with on our floor our infections, central lines, mucositis, and GVHD after an allo-transplant (stem cells or bm from another person). Also read about stem cell and bm transplants themselves and what to expect. If you work on this floor I would suggest you read up on those things. Also, when you go in for the interview you can ask what subjects they think you should brush up on. You can email me if you have an specific questions. Good luck and take care! Pearl

we get $4.00 for night shift and $2.50 for weekends

IN the hospital setting we do not add anything to the TPN and if the TPn order changes then we send it back down to the pharmacy to be changed. As far as the 70/30....sounds fishy to me. My boyfriend is on TPN at home and we add mulite vitamins and pepcid to the TPN ourselves...but of course this is at home.

hi there, I am a bedside nurse in a large university hospital and I work on an oncology. We mostly work with leukemia and lymphomas here but see a little of everything. I love oncology nursing because you really get to know your patients and there family and there is a special bond that happens with them. They also seem to really appricate you and what you do...as they really get to see what nursing is all about. On the down side, we see many patients die. This can be very difficult for many nurses and this can be a reason for some to leave. I love what I do andam going to try peds onc in the near future. Good luck in whatever you choose. Ps. please excuse any spelling errors at I nearing the end of my night shift and my brain is almost shutting down!:zzzzz

my bf has chronic pancreatitis, although it is TPN induced. They are going to do a nerve ablation to try to get rid of the pain....so we will see if that works. I hope you are doing better and get this under control.

I have looked this question up online but havent come up with an answer. So, why, if a spleen is functioning normally, would it be removed with a liver and bowel transplant?

I work on a hem/onc floor and our pts. have permacaths place for stem cell collection. We are allowed to use them just as we would any other IV. Most of them do not get hep. locked....we run tko@ 20 cc's. Only hep.locked upon discharge.

We run IVIG pretty much every wednesday with or stem cell transplant pts. We can run it two ways...piggy backed into d5w and also long-lined into d5w. Of course the IVIG has to be run through a run.

This is an inpatient problem as well.... My boyfriend was a pt. at the hospital I work at. I was supposed to give him a ride home before I started my night shift. I told the nurse over the phone that the d/c instructions had to be ready by 3pm. So I get there....they are NOT ready and I told them it would be too late if it was after 4pm (we live 35 miles away from the hospital and I had to be back by 7pm). So long story short he was getting 8mg of morphine IV and they were switching to 9mg dilaudid PR (chronic pancretitis) and they said even if I coudlnt give him a ride he had to leave!!! I said well there is no one else to give him a ride home so the only other way would be for him to drive himself and they said ok!!! I was shocked! So what ended up happening was he waited in my car til 7am when I got off of work!

It could also be what we call a "banana bag" which is basically a bag of fluid with vitamins. Somtimes we hang it with lipids....depending on the pt. We use TPN a lot here on our oncology floor as out pts have a lot of nausea and of course can be pancytopenic, so you dont want to cause any unescessary trauma.

As a hem/onc nurse I deal with piccs on a daily basis. Most of the ones here are arrows, power or groshong piccs. You can draw from either port using the same technique as several people have stated above.