Quote o' the night

Quote from the doctor, regarding a patient I had that sat in his room and cried for 2 hours because his neck hurt:

"Give him ten of morphine and a sling for his vagina."

I love the Western mentality.

What's new...

I am an independent nurse here now, off of orientation.  Last night was my first night "on my own" and it went well, besides the fact that I am still not sure if I transmitted scabies from four of my patients.  Gross.  I have been working in the pod where all the psych patients go and am getting slightly tired of suicidal 15 year-olds and alcoholic 50 year-olds. 

The other night I accidentally watched part of a really bad horror movie that scared me.  How does one do this accidentally you ask?  Well it was one of the few cases I have seen where Netflix gets the synopsis very wrong.  I kept pausing the movie and re-reading what it was about, and finally turned it off when the main character had a gigolo in saran wrap and was going to cut his heart out.  So bad.  I turned on a children's movie about rainbows and slept with all the lights on. 

I made the mistake of getting my flu shot this morning after work and came home and went to sleep instead of using my arm like is recommended and now that arm is sore and dead-ish.

Finally, I am doing a Star Wars themed pumpkin this year - either Darth Vader or Yoda. 

Loco

The other day a man came in that had been attacked with a meat tenderizer...it took 3 docs 6 hours to sew him up.  Also, on my last night there last week a patient attacked the doctor.  A female patient and female doctor of course.  People are crazy everywhere.

Odd

Apparently last night I had a transsexual patient and when she checked out her insurance said she was a male.  The registration people were confused so they decided to ask me, her nurse, if she was a male or female after she left.  Seeing as how about half of the women I have been treating in the last year have had beards, I obviously had no clue as to the patient's real gender, I just assumed it was a female because of the name and appearance.  I felt slightly stupid not being able to answer what sex my patient was, after I had not even caught on that there might be something odd about the situation, but then I thought about it for a minute.  The patient came in for a non-reproductive organ issue so really, whatever gender that person identifies with, if it is not related to the complaint of the person it is really not my business.  Everyone else said "I thought there was something odd about that person" but I had no clue.  My friend and I play a male-or-female guessing game sometimes with pictures we find on the internet and I am pretty good at that but I guess this goes to show if it is in real life and I am not thinking about it, I am below average in that skill section.

Tangled

I watched Tangled last night, the Disney movie.  For some reason during the scene when Rapunzel is in the boat watching all the lanterns floating by I started crying.  Needless to say I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Today I went to the mall to look for parts to my proposed Halloween costume.  There were a few guys at a hair kiosk selling some kind of hair styling tool, and I am such a pushover, when they started talking to my about my hair before I knew it I was sitting down in their chair and they were both madly curling and brushing my hair.  It actually was looking cute, so I made small talk and asked them questions until they had curled all my hair.  Ha.  Now I didn't have to do anything to it before work.  Also, I just discovered that the mall here has a Sephora, and I am kind of pumped.

I had a first!

So at work last night, even though it was pretty slow (I can say the jinx word after the fact), I had a "first".  I had to administer an enema.  Holy cow.  Thoughts of returning to my old hospital in the South ran through my mind as soon as the doctor told me that is what he wanted...and I realized that I was going to have to be the one doing it.  Somehow in 2 years I had managed to never do one, seeing as how they were mostly (always, in my case) delegated to the techs or nursing assistants.  Apparently that is not the case here.  My preceptor helped me, bless her heart, and was able to re-focus me when I started dry-heaving so badly my mascara was running down my face.  Of course as soon as we finished that, the charge nurse came along and told us we could take our lunch break (midnight is lunch-time).  Right.  Like I am ever going to be hungry again.

This morning after work for the second time I joined my co-workers at Beer and Breakfast.  Because I live in such a classy place, the casino/restaurants that serve breakfast and alcohol open at 8am, so we are able to have breakfast with adult beverages after work.  I kind of love it.  This morning we brought a deck of cards and four of us played Egyptian Rat Kill for two and a half hours.  Trust me, at that point everything is hilarious. 

I fell off the blog wagon

I fell off the blog wagon and for that I apologize. 

The other day at work a patient came in because she found a dead mouse floating in her jug of root beer, after she had drank part of it.  So gross.  She brought in the jug and the poor dead mouse was floating around, matted fur, little beady eyes, pink tail...funny but so nasty. 

I got out my map to hang up the other day and realized again how many places I want to travel to.  If only I could aparate...apparate? I am not quite sure how to spell that. 

I bought some Freesia yesterday at the store...they really do smell heavenly. 

quiet night

Last night was...quiet and...uneventful.  Kind of spooky for my first official night shift back but very nice as well.  I learned a new diagnosis (hematochezia) and even found a little while to work on my Egyptian Rat Kill skillssssss.  Now I am exhausted and thoroughly ready for bed.  Goodnight.

TMI

I can't decide whether I really want a guinea pig or if I just want one because Halloween is coming up and I could put it in a costume.

My current favorite late-night snack is French green beans with goat cheese and cherry tomatoes warmed with oil and vinegar on top.

Today I helped a neurosurgeon drill into a man's head to relieve pressure built up from a head bleed.  The human skull is much harder than I originally thought.  It took him multiple goes with the drill while myself and another took turns bracing the chin.  The sound was disgusting.

Did you know power lines are just the government's way of keeping trolls in specific regions?  They work something like electric fences for dogs.  At least in Norway.  I watched a documentary on it.

when it's time, it's time

One thing I have learned in the ER and truly believe to be the case the vast majority of the time is that when your time is up on earth, your time is up...regardless of modern medicine.  Maybe just because the idea helped me sleep better at night as a new nurse, but in so many cases there was literally nothing else we could do.  There was another example of this at work the other day.  A male patient in his 40's came in, he was not my patient, (thank goodness) and he was bleeding out of most if not all of his orifices due to complications and non-compliance with medicines and a long history of every type of abuse to his body you could think of.  He was losing blood so quickly that he was hooked up to the rapid infuser machine that warms and infuses large amount of fluid (blood in this case) into the body in a very short time.  To put things in perspective, the average adult human body contains about 5 units of blood at one time.  They infused 10 (!!!!) units into this guy, he was losing it so fast.  Seriously, there was nothing a single person on the face of this earth could have done to stop his dying.  I hate to break it to people out there that think we in the ER have magic skills of some sort, but we are mere mortals as well, prone to mistakes and only capable of so much.  I really like the idea that when your time is up, it's up because that adds to the idea that there is some sort of plan or schedule or something happening, a big picture if you will, and I like anything that lends itself to the idea that life is not all chaos and random happenings.

My "special" day

Wow.  If my neighbors didn't think I was special-needs before today they all do now.  And I am beginning to wonder as well.  I decided to do some stuff around the condo today (aka the Bachelorette Pad) and had a pretty productive day over all, but I feel like some things took way longer than they should have. 
     I washed my entire downstairs floor on my hands and knees, hung some pictures on the wall, unpacked the guest room/office, hung curtains (including installing the rod) in my room, began washing windows outside, and took four loads of smashed down boxes to the construction site dumpster.  I also cleaned my bathroom, did the dishes, and emptied the dishwasher, paid rent and finally put two birthday cards in the mail.  Sounds pretty good right?  I left out the "special" parts, that's why. 
     I imagine watching me try to load the broken down boxes into my back seat and trunk looked something like one of those ants trying to get a stick in an ant hole.  I was sweating and trying to squish as many boxes in as I could and most would not fit no matter how hard I tried, hence the 4 loads instead of 1 or 2.  At one point one of the boxes unfolded into my face really hard and hit me right in the nose and it was all I could do not to cry.  Also, the construction site dumpster was approximately 8 feet high so I had to launch the boxes into it.  I really got a workout.  After that was finalized I decided to install a curtain rod and hang my black-out curtains in my room (night shifts are returning for me this week).  I didn't understand the directions (why do those things come with weird hollow plastic screws??) and had a terrible time with my power drill trying to drill holes into my wall (while standing on my bar stool, sweating profusely) until I realized the drill was on the reverse setting.  Awesome. 
     Finally, I decided to go outside and wash windows and locked myself out of the condo entirely.  I had my phone and some Windex and a role of paper towels and was stuck.  Being way too proud and too cheap to call my landlord (I didn't have the number anyways) I decided I was going to figure out a way in.  I tried all the doors and windows and since I am in a new subdivision I went over to the current construction site and found some wire, then stuck it in through my window and snagged the screen and jimmied it out so then I could crawl into one of the downstairs windows.  Don't act like you are not impressed.  Imagine if you were a neighbor of mine and saw me walk outside with cleaning stuff, then just stop as soon as the door shut behind me and stare at it, then run around frantically trying all the doors and windows, then sitting there for awhile, then wandering over to the muddy construction site in my flip flops and short shorts and picking up various pieces of wood and wire and then tramping back through the mud, sticking the wire in my window and shaking and lifting and pulling for 5 minutes or so, then taking the screen off and then taking my shoes off and crawling in my own window. Fantastic.  At least I chalked up a few extra Macgyver points, right?  And I kept all my clothes on while crawling in the window this time ; )