Published
1. All work and no play for seven straight days makes ixchel a mean girl. I think I may owe some apologies when I go back to work.
2. A young person is capable of being hypoxic to anoxic for so long their brain swells before their heart stops. (Particularly when they've had a lifetime of ignored asthma exacerbation so to get used to chronic hypoxia.)
3. Regarding said person, I have many cuss words for the people who could have done more for her.
4. Pools get slimy fast.
5. This person exists: VITAS - áõôьüþù ÑÂûõüõýт / The 7th Element - YouTube
6. I love the pet therapy thread! (If you haven't seen it, go to my profile and see threads I've started. I think it's the one I started before this one.)
7. I'm attempting to go off caffeine. I'm an idiot.
8. I want to be an FBI agent. Mulder and Scully just make it look so damn cool.
9. Apparently, a wonderful perk of working for a hospital is a fast-acting employee health department. It's good to know my potential HIV and Hep status quickly after a needle stick.
10. Press Ganey did not ask questions I hoped they would ask on our survey.
11. I'm not okay with the waxing and waning of adequate staffing, especially when they have yet to actually "officially" change the staffing requirements for my unit to what they "officially changed it to" two years ago. NOT COOL. This is actually what led to number 1.
What have you learned this week?
I second the self care comment Rose Queen. I find myself picking up more shifts, while cutting out exercising and eating more junk food because it's convenient. I have never been more tired or more crabby! I intend to start juicing again. I feel so good when I have green juice in the morning!I learned that my school's technology package is $495 ������������������ What in the world is in that package?!
I learned that elderly people will use their blankets as hankies when you're not looking.
I learned that having a cup of tea in the morning while snuggled up in a cozy blanket makes a world of difference in my mentality for a large chunk of the day. Go rosehip/hibiscus tea!
Crimeny...they should be giving you an iPhone or something like that for that fee! Ridiculous.
I learned that once again, the kid on TPN has a single lumen PICC, and 578678643874 antibiotics. I guess I needed a refresher from last week.
Oh, and I also learned that when my kids are ordered picky antibiotics that are only compatible with NS, the doctors obviously have them running on D5 1/2. And the ABX is always due the hour after they finally fall asleep and get off the call bell.... just so I can go and switch and flush the lines out, which will result in them waking up and screaming. But then they will fall back asleep around minute of 49 of their 60 minutes of abx, just so they can be really pissed off when I go back in and switch the whole mess back over again.
CURSE YOU DEXTROSE!
It's fun, too, to see what adult children will do when their parents are ill. The crazy comes out then, too.
I learned that when in the ED with my mom I'm not very good at assessing the life threatening nature of her injuries. I'm also one of those nurse family members that watches you like a hawk and points out that you put your sterile gloves on wrong and contaminated the sterile field. And I dug through all the drawers and cupboards when no one was around to find what I needed (chux, gauze, warm blankets) rather than calling someone. This wasn't my hospital, but blanket warmers are easy to find, right? So... I'm the kind of ED patient family member people hate.
I figured out that I don't give a flip about the role of nurses in health care policy development, and would rather drive nails with my forehead than read a book on the subject (much love to people involved with local government, though).
I learned that there isn't anything inside the walls of my unit that keeps a patient from burrowing through into another patient's room. So now we have two closed rooms, or one closed room with another room en suite.
OrganizedChaos, LVN
1 Article; 6,883 Posts
Ah yes. Been there, caused that seizure. :/