As 19 hour shifts go, this was a good one.  I got to work at 5:30 to start setting up for the day.  The first patient I was supposed to do as a portable in her room.  Her dark, warm, room that was not in the ICU, she was just on isolation for flu.  I was not happy about spending the morning in there wearing a hot gown and mask in this yucky room with what turned out to be a very crabby, whiny lady.

But hurrah!  Someone in the ICU showed up who was more emergent so I started on her instead.  The second lady was in kind of scary shape.  Her K was 6.9 and her heart was in a wide QRS tachy complex.  While I was setting up machines her telemetry was dancing all over the place with missed beats and other scariness.  They had an AED next to her just in case.  But lo, within 20 mintues of me starting treatment she smoothed out into a sinus rhythm.  Science is real, yo.  I was happy about that, plus she had a really nice nurse for me to work with.

I was ready to head back to the main HD room of craziness, but another ICU emergency appeared.  This one a patient I know very well who had a K of 8.0.  Geez, people!  Again, within an hour she was doing much better.  These two portable treatments were very low stress compared the frantic pace of working a Monday in our room.  I even finished a book.

So when they told me I had to stay because I was on call to do two patients in our unit who wouldn’t be done until midnight, I was ok with that.  I was long over due for some call back.  I have pretty good luck with not having to go in very often.  I took a real dinner break before going up there around 8:30.  My first patient came off about 30 minutes after that and I was down to one really nice guy who just couldn’t breathe well.  It was cool to be able to get him from 10 L at 88% to 5 L oxygen at 100% as the treatment went on.  There was a fair amount of chores to do that the day team didn’t have time to get done, so that kept me occupied.  When the timer rang I quickly got the patient out of the room (yay for fast clotters!)  and got in my bed by 1:30 am. 

The saddest part of the night was when Brian texted me to say trivia round 7 was about musicals!  Boo!  Wish I could have been there.  Oh well.  Not bad.  Not bad at all.

(PS: Potassium (K) should be between 3.5 and 5.0.  You can get admitted for dialysis when it’s at least 5.2.  Higher than 6.0 things get a little scary for your heart).