Noooo.......

I still have a week left until I'm on my own on the unit. For now, I do almost everything on my own, and my preceptor Nadia silently watches me from the outside and answers any and every question I have. And she yells at me when she sees me do something wrong. No really, she's so awesome and I couldn't have asked for a better preceptor. (Love ya, Nads!)

So today I come to work, like I do every day, and the first thing I do is check the patient assignment board to find her name, and what patient assignment we have for the day. There she is!

Nadia
Nadia
Nadia
Nadia

And then, right underneath...

Kristine
Kristine
Kristine
Kristine...

Um... excuse me? I didn't' realize that you were stripping me from my safety zone quite yet. I'm not ready for this. I started to panic. I had to get organized! What do you do, Kristine? Stay calm. Think. Okay, first things first, go get your information from the charts and get ready to receive report.

So I walk down the hall to my patients rooms. I walk pretty far. Holy crap, I'm all the way in the back of the unit where no one can see me and I'm no where near anyone else. Why did they put me all alone back here on my first day alone?? I swear I just saw a tumbleweed blow by.

Okay, find the charts. First one. Second day post-op, no problem. Second chart... was a big one. Big, stuffed charts like that mean super complicated, long term patient with lots going on. Why, oh, why would they give me a patient like this? I'm convinced my charge nurse hates me. And she seemed so nice. What a bitch.

I manage to free it from it's little cubby hole. What's that little sign on the front? A closer look....
_____
Chart
1
of
2
_____

I think my heart just stopped beating for a second. I started to tremble. The tears were getting harder and harder to hold back. I seriously start to think I might have a nervous breakdown.

Here comes Nadia! I see her down the hallway. I must have looked absolutely terrified, because instead of her usual chipper greeting, she takes one look at me and says "What's wrong?"

"I'm on my own today! And look at this chart!" The tears were starting to spill.

"What? No, you're not. I'm going to talk to the charge nurse."

So I remain where I am, clumsily flipping through the chart, trying to find out what the hell is wrong with this stupid patient that I don't want to take care of. Nadia comes back.

"Kristine..." and then she bursts into laughter. What was her problem? I actually wanted to hit her. This wasn't funny. I was trembling with terror, and she was laughing in my face?

"Kristine..." then another bout of laughter. She actually doubled over. I was going go freak out.

"Kristine... there's another nurse on the unit today, who floated from another floor. Her name is Kristine, too, you ding-dong."

All right, you little hooker...

This chick made my life a living hell today. She was the biggest nightmare I've ever dealt with in my life, pre- and post- nursing career. I took report from the night nurse, and she warned me, but I'm pretty good at sweet-talking people out of bad moods and persuading them to like me. Not this bitch.

She was in pain. I could see that, and I can sympathize. I can also give her medicine for pain. What I can't do, however, is give her the specific pain medicine that she wanted. Lady, that stuff is reserved for patients who just had major surgery, whose bodies we've literally filleted open with a scalpel and then stapled back together again. All right, you little hooker? We're not going to give you Demerol for that little boo-boo in your side. No matter how much you cry and complain and demand it.

I'm sorry, when you come into the hospital because you're hurt, and then demand certain drugs and refuse others that will help you, you need to go home. Especially if you're refusing the medicines that the doc's ordered that will prevent you from becoming septic and dying. If you're not going to let us treat you, give someone else this bed that will. We're not a Walgreens drive-through pharmacy. I can only give you what the doc's have ordered. And when I try to give you advice on different things you can do to make herself feel better (like trying to relax, watch a little TV, or whatever), and you tell me "Thanks for the fucking lecture," yeah, you're immediately not my favorite person in the whole world.

Oh yeah, and thanks a lot for calling patient advocacy on me because I was sooooo rude to you. Sitting in front of a case worker with my nursing license on the line was FUN. And thanks for filing a complaint to my nurse manager. You know what came from that? She told me I was one of the nicest nurses she knew, AND I GOT A RAISE. No, I didn't really, but she totally didn't believe you that I was nasty to you all day.

Oh yeah, and my favorite part of the day was when you told me, oh, so eloquently, "Do your fucking job and get that fucking doctor in here to write me a prescription for Demerol so I can get out of this piece of shit hospital." That was classy. Extra points for your mother being in the room at the time.

Inauguration Day...

... and of course, I'm stuck at work all day. Still, you could feel it in the air in the hospital. Today was a special, historic day, no matter who or where you were, republican or democrat, American or not. Today matters.


Every room on the unit had the inauguration on TV. You could hear Obama's charming, stutter-filled oath out in the hallways. I'm only 26, so I'm happy that I had the opportunity to be alive during this moment in history.




A bunch of us gathered in a patients room to watch the swear-in. That's me, on your right. The short one.

Is this some kind of a cruel joke?

So, I got a call from my mother the other day. She went for her yearly mammogram, which was abnormal, so she had to go for more tests. So, being the pessimist that I am, I automatically assumed cancer and cried myself to sleep that night.


So I go to work the next day, and who am I assigned to take care of? A sweet little old lady with end stage breast cancer. You can't make this stuff up.


I spent a lot of time with her. She told me all about her youth, and her husband of 54 years, and how she used to wear a size 34-C bra when she still had her body intact. She was so brave and I felt like such a baby because I couldn't stop crying, between her being so sweet and my mom's pending diagnosis.


Then, my sweet little old ladies' sweet little old husband showed up, and they were so freaking cute together! They were like teenagers in love, holding hands and making googly eyes at each other. Why do these bad things have to happen to such good people? I could never go in to oncology.


Close to the end of my shift, their son showed up. I went in there to talk to them (you don't just take care of patients, you take care of the whole family), and it was too much. I actually had to leave the room because I started sobbing quietly and making pathetic noises. And what do you know? Their son was a total sweetheart, too! This was the nicest family ever. I apologized for crying, explaining that I was supposed to be taking care of them, not the other way around, and he just told me that it was okay, nurses are people, too. We talked about different options for his mom, different facilities she could be accepted into, if she should go home, respite care for him, etc. What a great bunch of people. I'm happy to have met them.


My mother went for more tests, and the doc's said that the abnormality was nothing to worry about, and to come back next year. What a relief. I love my mom.

Never trust a nurse.

So it was the end of the day and I was looking forward to going home. It's hard not to watch the clock during those last few hours. So there I am, charting away, trying not to ask my preceptor too much advice (since I'll be on my own in less than two weeks), when a coworker approached me with a plastic bucket full of screws and pins.


"Hey, Kristine, you ever wonder what they put inside the spines of patients who get back surgery with instrumentation before?" Well, duh, of course I have. I'm just too shy to ask and sound like a dork. So I get all excited, like a little girl, and what's the first thing I do?



Reach my hand into that bucket and pick up one of the screws, to examine it closer. It was soooo big, and I was mesmerized by how that could fit into someone's spine and make it feel better. That just looks like it would hurt.



Word of advice: When someone brings you a bucket of something, and they have rubber gloves on, don't mistake it for show-and-tell. Because her next words were:


"You know, they just removed these from my patient's back."


OH MY F***ING GOD.


Yeah, I spent the next twenty minutes freaking out and washing my hands with every antiseptic thing I could find. And the other nurses have found something to incessantly tease me about.


God, I hope that guy didn't have any weird diseases.

shudder

How to make my day less than awesome.

I never knew how many ways that other people can make my day miserable. We've all had days where someone was a jerk to us, or someone said something that was less than awesome, or someone makes you feel bad. But try to imagine a day where every single interaction that wasn't with a fellow nurse was like that. Aannnnddddd you'll have the day I had today.


I had a patient who was an intolerable asshole. He was demanding and miserable and insufferable. He was mad because the night nurse's had Asian accents, and because his IV pump kept beeping, and because his room was next to the train tracks and he could have sworn we were having an earthquake. In Florida. You can't make this stuff up, my friends. And he was just cunning enough to make me afraid of him to the point where I wanted him to like me more than anything, just so I could go home without the fear that he would sue me because he couldn't have a bowel movement. Because, somehow, that was my fault as well. I mean, I offered the guy a suppository, but the freak of nature didn't want it unless he could insert it himself. Sorry, dude, as much as I would love if all of my patients wanted to insert things up their own anuses, instead of having to do it myself, that's a nursing skill that I simply cannot delegate to you. You could perforate your colon, or something. Weirdo.


Then the damn pharmacy did everything in their power to make my day awful. They wouldn't clarify my orders in the computer, they failed to put a patient on a potassium protocol, and they took it upon themselves to discontinue my patient (who was ONE DAY POST OP SPINAL SURGERY, mind you) off their Dilaudid PCA, because they felt that he was getting too much pain medication. I'm sorry that you felt that way, pharmacy, but maybe you should feel what it's like to get your vertebrae pulverized by a neurosurgeon before you make that decision yourselves. I don't see the letters MD on your nametag.


Oh, and speaking of MD's, they never cease to mess up my day somehow. First, they come in like ghosts, talking to my patients and writing new orders without letting me know. Then I end up not seeing a new order for hours, making me look (and feel) like a complete idiot because they were supposed to be discharged at 2:30 and I didn't see the order until 6:00. (I know I need to check my charts more often, but they can at least let me know.) And, they don't call me back when I need an order for Phenergan because my patient is puking her guts out all over the place. Plus, they don't show up when they've been consulted (I'm talking to you, urology) and get my semi-psycho patient even more riled up. It's enough to make a girl want to stab you in the eye with her hemostat.


But you know what? I didn't cry today, and I still don't hate my job. I love my fellow nurses, who share my pain and can still make me smile when things hit the fan. Also, I can always find comfort in knowing that I didn't make anyone's life worse today, that I somehow made it better. Because that's what nurses do. We all share a certain, humbling humility in the work we do. There is nothing whatsoever glamorous about this profession, but I like to think what we are all doing it for similar reasons. To help mend wounds, families, and hearts.



Bye, for now! Stay happy, and healthy!

Resolutions

The holidays are finally over. Phew! Things at the hospital are a little slower, since people don't choose to get surgery during this time of year (still, some of them have to).


One thing that I have brought to my own attention is how negative I have been about my new career lately. And I know that's not what you came to read about. So, my new years' resolution for this year is to LOVE MY JOB!!! I'm going to love the heck out of it! I'm going to love it so much that it's going to get emotionally insecure and break up with me!


So who cares if my patient was faking seizures all day today to get Ativan? I love it! Who cares that my other patient so badly wanted to be discharged so she could see her daughter get baptized tomorrow, but that wasn't going to happen? Hey, it's the name of the game. At least you're alive, and will be healthy soon, lady!


This is quite possibly the one new years resolution that has been this important to me, ever. I wish you all the best in 2009.


Bye, for now! Stay happy, and healthy!