Category: Uncategorized (Page 162 of 212)

whoa. Brian was very animated this evening.

So you just finished a stretch of four twelve-hour shifts. Your back hurts, your legs hurt. You woke up too early, but not well enough to get showered and go to church on Easter. You still hear monitor alarms ringing and you wiped more poop in the past week than ever from your personal butt. Sometimes you need to pull out the good old stuff on youtube.

Smile, it’s your day off.

Went to trivia last night and we did pretty awesome, if I may say so. We got nearly all the dance remix category right. We aced the naughty word search visual round. I contributed to the “capitalists, pigs, and capitalist pigs” category by naming a Michael Moore quote, knowing that Chicago was once famous for its pig industry, and knowing what part of the pig streaky bacon comes from. Then my dreams came true – the second audio round was musicals! Of course, they were far too easy, as happens when your specialty is featured. If I recall, these were the eight selections:

• You’re the One That I Want – Grease
• Do You Hear the People Sing – Les Miserables
• Title song – Phantom of the Opera
• Be a Dentist – Little Shop of Horrors
• The Goodbye Song – Sound of Music
• Surrey with the Fringe – Oklahoma
• Seasons of Love – Rent
• Officer Krupke – West Side Story

See? Easy peasy, they hardly needed me. But I’ve been hoping for a musical audio round and it finally came true. Now I’ll wish for a ballet round. And a job, while I’m at it.

I couldn’t fall asleep quickly after my last shift. So I pulled out the Flip camera and made a short film about what I do when I get home after the night shift.

Yeah the editing is sloppy, and the flip camera in low lighting is not great. Cut me some slack, this was just for fun.

The music is “You Only Got One” by Frou Frou.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=4023021&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1
Winding down to sleep from Rachel Mason on Vimeo.

• I can’t figure out the afternoon drive time. I got there 30 minutes early (again) so I went in search of a gas station so I’d be full for the anticipated snowy drive home. I was almost late because of traffic between the gas and the 4 blocks back to the hospital, then my usual parking was taken! I literally ran to the building, making it to the locker room flustered but still 5 minutes before shift technically starts (I prefer 10-15 min early)
• I nearly took independent care of one patient. He’s a very large gentleman with hypercapnic respiratory failure and possible anoxic brain episode. Yes Brian, I wiped a lot of scrotum today. But that’s not all I do! It only constitutes 10 minutes of my 12 hours on shift!
• I got to watch a thoracentesis. The docs weren’t that familiar with the kit, so they spent a lot of time fiddly with devices and sounding unsure about themselves. Their patient was very nervous and despite lots of morphine (why not ativan?) was shaking like Molly shakes when we take her to the vet. Poor guy. They pulled 500cc out of his lungs. The puncturing part made me woozy, like when I saw the PICC insertion. I guess I don’t do well with long jabbing needles that take some brute effort to get in.
• My preceptor bought me a hot cocoa, right when the snow started!
• I walked through the steps for hanging blood, from lab to vein, with my nurse.
• My feet ache and stink after 12 hours of work.
• We got a late night admit, “a train wreck” of a guy. I was able to get 15 min vitals, label tubing, get poop and pee samples, MRSA swab, and generally felt useful and able to function without being in the way or asking what to do next.
• One of the respiratory team was behind me on the way to the med room and booed loudly. He totally got me and giggled for 5 minutes over the spooked yelp I let out. 😛
• Other students from other schools are popping up on my unit. Tis the season for practicums.
• I’m surprised how well I work at night. My preceptor was dogging me for zoning out yesterday around midnight, but I’m quick to remind her that that was because I’d only had a bowl of cereal since noon, we didn’t get a break until after 1 am. Today with proper nourishment I did fine, like I usually do. In fact, I feel inclined to call my folks on the drive home to chat about my shift, and then I realize what time it is for them.
• But night shifts are isolating. The unit is this weird secluded environment where you obsess over your patient’s status constantly. You don’t think about the news or blog feeds or friends or even meals. You get home when everything is closed and your husband is fast asleep. Then you wake up midday and feel like the world has passed you by – your inbox is full, there’s a ton of news feeds you missed, everyone else is winding down for dinner while you slurp cereal trying to rev up. On your days off you’re left alone again when everyone else goes to bed. So you read or watch TV on headphones. There’s no where to go out, no errands you can run. You don’t want to wake the household with too much bustling. Nights are more difficult emotionally then physically.

See? This is why we take Jem to daycare. Ben picked her up early during the blizzard, and she slept the rest of the day.

video.

Not bad. Kind of clunky (stealing Brian’s words), kind of obvious at times. But fun. I like the pseudo-science, shiny feel of it, reminds me of Pushing Daisies. The music reminds me of Arrested Development, but that could just be because Lindsay Funke is in it.

Ben found this site called http://knowyourmeme.com

It explains some of the biggest internet memes from the past 10 years. They’re all old to me (OLD!), but it’s fun learning the background. I feel like there is this rich, bizarre internet community that many people in the world are not even aware of. I suggest to anyone who uses the internet for anything besides email and shopping, that you watch the videos on this site to educate yourself. Then if I say o rly or post a lolcat, you won’t scratch your head.

PWNED! FTW! ROFLCOPTERS! LULZ! PEW PEW PEW PEW!

Guess I’ll be home tonight on account of the snow that dumped on Denver. Regis says to stay home from clinicals, so I emailed my contacts and left a cell phone message with my preceptor. Haven’t heard back yet so I hope she’s not expecting me to come in a couple hours.

Somehow I’ll have to entertain myself all night!

We’ve started taking Jem to daycare again so I can sleep during the day. The new owners of the place we used to take her have a started a blog. You can see photos and video of her there. Ben says the owners seems like true dog lovers, and they are open early enough that he can drop her off on the way to work. Perfect!

I’m back from my second shift on nights in the MICU. My biggest fear is relieved: my preceptor is a very nice, competent nurse who was very excited (requested in fact) to have a student. She has been working with me on all levels- tasks, time management, and global care/pathophys. I’ve done new things already: put a foley in a man, heard rales, rhonchi, and wheezes, drew blood cultures, trach suctioning, and EKG interpretation. Our patients are REALLY sick and have a lot going on, both in terms of diseases and a mass of lines going into their bodies. They are constantly on the borders of their vital sign parameters, thus I have alarm bells ringing in my head right now. Our patient today was tachycardic all day, going from 115 to 125 every minute or so, setting off the alarm every time it pass 120. Ugh.

I’m doing eight hour shifts and at this rate I kind of like working nights.
1) no traffic on your commute
2) You don’t feel guilty for sleeping in
3) the gym is less crowded at 2 pm
4) fewer visitors/therapists checking on your patient
5) more attention from the single doc on call for your patient

We’ll see if I’m so enthusiastic when I go to twelve hour shifts, or after the adrenalin of a new place has worn off.

One thing that confuses me: the nurses have acting fairly horrified at some of the things I have seen in these two days. Deep fistula-like wounds between the scrotum and thigh, nasty diarrhea-like urine, booty stank, and fungal-like cellulitis head to toe with massive peeling. Isn’t this what they see all the time? Are they putting up a show for me? Or am I seeing a skewed sample of the type of skin and genital conditions that they normally receive?