"You made a mistake."

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"You made a mistake." whispered my friend and co worker. I wondered what that could have been. She whispered "the gabapentin, you made an error". I mentally went over the list of medications for this patient-it was short less than 10 but no gabapentin. I racked my brain, I hadn't taken any new orders from the attending. It was hard to concentrate it was so loud. The phone was ringing, customers were lined up at the counter to pick up their doughnut carryouts and there was a delivery guy standing there telling me his truck needed the AC worked on. My task box was overflowing. Call lights everywhere. Standing there with a piggyback in my hand spinning in a circle.

The cat jumped up on the bed and then I woke up in a cold sweat. Two years off the floor and I still have anxiety dreams :banghead:

Yes - had those types of dreams as a floor nurse.

Still wake up thinking I'm hearing tele alarms (nearly 7 years later - but we have those alarm sounds in the OR too). I hear all kinds of alarms in my dreams now - the ventilator/anesthesia machine, any number of the alarms on monitors, the phone... I also have dreams I'm the one in charge at work and I CANNOT FIND the trauma pager. I can hear it, it keeps beeping (someone set it to continuous alarm until cleared) and I cannot find it so I don't know what we're expecting nor do I know when to head to the ED to check out the trauma room (or delegate).

While we're on the subject...pagers. Oh my, the pager farm. Used to nag me if there was a pager I unnecessarily ignored all day...at least in my dreams. Sometimes I do ignore it, rightly so at the time (emergency of our own - code, emergent case, etc) but most times I check them and address them. I had a dream I got stuck babysitting one of our surgeon's pagers indefinitely...our transfer center staff was not accepting of the answer that I was only an RN, and not working WITH Dr. (so and so) at the time, so I could not even be their proxy.

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