Last week at work was a bit rough. It was just busy and hard. I had a challenging patient two out of the three days and went home each night feeling tense and stressed out about her situation. She is only 6 weeks pregnant and basically, puking her guts out. She has been hospitalized for over two weeks now and currently is on a medical floor receiving TPN (intravenous nutrition). It was just a bad situation all around: she didn't plan on getting pregnant, and now she's totally miserable. We maxed out all of the anti-emetic (code for: stop the puking) drugs, pain drugs, and were stuck. It's awful to have to say to your patient over and over again "I'm sorry, I've done everything we can do, we just have to wait it out". Not fun:( But this week has been much better!
Monday we discharged 11 patients, and by the end of the shift we had 5. 5 patients on the whole unit. On the average day I care for 5 patients by myself! It was a really nice easy way to start the week. However...these blissful moments can only last for so long. By yesterday at the end of the shift, we had: get ready: 21 patients!!! That means (including our 4 antepartum patients and 1 postpartum infection) 15 people delivered babies in the 24 hours from Monday night til Tuesday night!!! CRAZY!!! And there is all this stuff that has to happen in the first 12-24 hours of life that had us all running around like chickens with our heads cut off!
I was super tired by the end of the day yesterday, and more than ready for our weekly dinner and LOST viewing night with my new dear friends Kim and Paven. That's right folks, I HAVE FRIENDS!!! They are lovely ladies and we had a great night (and morning this morning!)
Then, later this morning I went to get my hair cut and roots taken care of, and next thing I know, I'm walking out a blond! The highlights were slightly brighter than I anticipated...But I think I like it...What do you think? (ignore my "tired eyes")
Pretty cute - reminds me of your younger color! Not that really bleachy blond you were as a 3 year old...more the blond you were around 10!
ReplyDeleteKatie,
ReplyDeleteI love the blond girl. I'll have my shotgun loaded and aimed from your front porch to kill off the young men who show up(I had a dream last night of shot-gunning a young man who came to our old Tiskilwa house, because my sister Cathy was inside the house as a baby;weird huh??? this has got to be Freudian as Abby went out with a new boy last night).
As to the pregnancies, how does health insurance treat an in-patient mother who is at 6 weeks?? I'm curious.
daddio
Oh hey, your hair's real blond. And we have the exact same cut.
ReplyDeleteAlso. A baby only counts as .5 person? That seems mean.
Mom: If only this blond could look as natural as it did when I was 10!
ReplyDeleteJT: NO IDEA what they do with insurance for her, but she went home yesterday, so I think she's doing better! And, Abby can't go on dates- she's too young for that! :)
Em- Glad we still have matching cuts, And that was meant to be "5" (period, new sentence)"5" for emphasis. Babies don't get counted at all. If they did, than I take care of 8-12 patients per day, which is just overwhelming!