After last week's fun and games, I'm feeling rather boring!
Here is what I've learned:
1. Hepatitis, PVD and pyoderma gangrenosum are a horrible combination for medical history. HORRIBLE!
2. Chasing a person's heart rate, blood sugar and blood pressure all night long while this normally walkie/talkie person won't wake up, makes it a bit frustrating to have an extremely conservative hospitalist on board that night.
3. Going completely out of your way for a complex dressing change (moving slowly to let pain ease, knowing the lady in #2 will be crashing again soon) makes it incredibly frustrating to learn this guy complained about getting two changes in one shift. Dude. First time was for assessment and that shizz was nasty. Second time was because dude acted like he had compartment syndrome (he did not), and the bandage was again nasty.
4. I've been a city mouse in the country way too long.
5. My little girl does not want to be a nurse when she grows up, but she does very much want to learn nursing stuff. Her timing could not be more perfect. My son helped me study for my bachelors degree. Now she can help me with my doctorate!
6. That same little girl has been a wonderful wound care nurse for my biopsy site.
7. The original Siamese Twins had 21 total children. Their cause of death - one had a stroke and died a few days later. Apparently you don't survive having a dead person's blood running through you. Incidentally, they shared a liver.
8. Morphine is a hell of a drug.
9. It is actually possible for a systolic blood pressure to go from 90s to 190s and back to 90s in the span of a half hour without medication being administered and with absolutely no change whatsoever in patient or blood pressure cuff. (Would absolutely love to hear theories on this.)
10. People respond better to smoking cessation education when you cut them some slack.
11. Smokers can also sniff out a never-smoker from a mile away. I'm sorry to say it, guys, but many (if not most) of these smokers are tuning your out as soon as they hear, "quit smoking". It has nothing to do whether they're considering quitting or not. They know you don't know how hard it is to quit and they feel judged.
12. Scarlet fever comes with a white strawberry tongue.
13. If you're getting lidocaine SQ/IM, ask for a nurse to give it to you. I have gotten this stuff from doctors and they just go grab the biggest needle, draw a bunch up, and shove it in. This NP grabbed an SQ of reasonable size, injected a tiny bit, waited, then injected the rest rather slowly, making sure the first part was able to numb the rest. This is why nurses rock. We think of stuff like this.
14. Hope for Alzheimer's research: the brain of a mouse has lymphatic vessels, draining fluid and WBCs from the brain. Also, medications which enhance the "brain cleaning" system (preventing/decreasing the amount of tau buildup) are being researched. Unfortunately, those already known to be affected won't benefit from this research. But it is certainly promising for those of us being left behind by Alzheimer's sufferers.
15. Apparently a kid played a trick on his nurse mom by convincing her she won the Powerball. If any of you is that mom, I'm sorry. So, so sorry.
Alright, peeps. How about you? Learn anything good?
Meanwhile I learn that the fault line off the PNW coast is way overdue for a massive earthquake...like maybe an 8 or 9 on the Richter. Would also create tsunamis. I was so wanting to move there. Now it seems a little frightening.
Yeah we have fault lines in the Midwest but are unlikely to have a tsunami.
A quirky thing about the Midwest is "pop" used for "soda". When I used to go to Ohio as a kid there was something there called Red Pop. It tasted like cream soda.
A quirky thing about the Midwest is "pop" used for "soda". When I used to go to Ohio as a kid there was something there called Red Pop. It tasted like cream soda.
Yep we're pop people here.
And I remember Red Pop. Seemed sweeter than a lot of cream soda brands.
Meanwhile I learn that the fault line off the PNW coast is way overdue for a massive earthquake...like maybe an 8 or 9 on the Richter. Would also create tsunamis. I was so wanting to move there. Now it seems a little frightening.
Yeah we have fault lines in the Midwest but are unlikely to have a tsunami.
No, but they CAN make the Mississippi River run backward!!
Ok...that sounds fascinating (says the girl who's currently watching Outrageous Acts of Science on TV). I love learning random factoids.
Yeah, the New Madrid Fault line. Back in the early (?) 19th (?) 20th century, there was an actual earthquake and the river flowed backward for awhile.
Apparently the New Madrid has more damage potential than the San Andreas, but because it's in the center (sort of) of the continent, it's more stable.
I went to college in St. Louis in the mid 70s and one day the New Madrid shifted. It was around 6am, I was in bed, half awake, and all of a sudden my bed moved a few inches to the left, and then back. We were told it was a tremor-the university has a seismograph in the basement of the Earth Sciences building-amazing how much that pen can move around even for a little 8 second tremor lol.
I mentioned I have a cyst that needs intervention and my appointment is now next week. The inflammation is down but I'm afraid it's going to rupture. I'm trying to decide what to put over it.
Would be just my luck it ruptures and gets infected. Then there might be a scar. If that happens there goes my swimsuit modeling career.
Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.
I used baking soda poultices on mine. It's one of my grandmother's old home remedies. All I did was make a paste of baking soda and warm water, put it in a soft cloth and slap it on the cyst, then let it sit for about 20 mins. The baking soda draws out the yuck. It also makes it easier to pop the thing. It took me several tries with the baking soda to accomplish the deed, but when it finally drained, relief was almost instantaneous and the cyst never came back.
I wouldn't do it again knowing what I know now, but this was back in the day when I didn't have health insurance and couldn't afford to go to the doctor.
Farawyn
12,646 Posts
A quirky thing about the Midwest is "pop" used for "soda". When I used to go to Ohio as a kid there was something there called Red Pop. It tasted like cream soda.