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?
I learned that being a nurse and being a caregiver are two totally different things. My husband has terminal pancreatic cancer and has decided that if the chemo they want him to go on doesn't kill him, it will make him wish he were dead and he wants no part of it. As a nurse, I can maintain a clinical distance and discuss these things intelligently with his doctors; as a wife, I'm scared and sad and I don't know the first thing about any of it.[/quote
I'm so sorry! ((((Viva))))
I do understand his point of view, but so sympathize with you! I will be thinking of (& praying for) y'all.
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.
I still have family in Seattle and they have been affected by quakes. Just minor stuff, a few things knocked off the walls and no significant damage. Still, knowing that the threat is there now, I would think twice about moving there again.
I'm learning this week that there must be some big, deep, dark hole out there in the universe that swallows up all the snow shovels that were purchased the previous year. Like they become an outdated model or something??
Am watching the TV weather news clips about folk running out to buy snow shovels - didn't they have any last year? Are they the wrong color? I still have my original 1992 snow shovel - works fine.
I am running late on this week's thread. It'll be up sometime after my darling wild children have been tranquillized. :\
I had a relative (by marriage) who was a nurse and worked nights. Before her kids were in school all day, she would dose them with chloral hydrate when she was ready to lie down so she could get uninterrupted sleep.
They were the ones everyone looked at and said "Those kids ain't right..."
ETA: Before anyone gets out their indignation, this was 50 years ago. The times, they have a'changed...
Dogen
897 Posts
Sounds like the beginning of a post in a thread called "What I Unlearned This Week."