Cha-cha-cha Changes...

Monday I turned 25. And the life analysis that takes place at a quarter century is not very encouraging. True, I am (basically) where I want to be professionally, and that is GREAT! But personally, not so much. So goals for the next few years (as I inch closer to--gulp--30)basically include finding a way to improve my personal life (aka get married and have a baby). Ha. My friend Paven had a party last night and it was pretty great. Fun to hang out with people my age!

Big News! I might have to be changing my blog's website soon! That's right folks, despite my HATRED for moving, sometimes when you are offered an amazing option, you just have to take it! Emily and I have decided, after careful consideration (on her part anyway, I was more impulsive with my decision) to live together!!! My lease here is up on July 31st, so come August, the Ward sisters will be reunited under the same roof again! I think it will be an adventure, and SO MUCH FUN!!! I have to admit though, since making the decision to look for a new place together, I feel some sadness about the idea of leaving my little house on Oregon St. I feel like this is really the place where I became an adult, and I decorated it, and made it my own, and the thought of doing it all over again is a little daunting, but Em and I are gonna have such a blast! Something to look forward to- I'm sure will both get some good blog posts from the whole thing.The rest of my life is, the same. Work is...work.
It's been pretty bipolar around the OB unit lately. Either we are totally full, every room in use and people waiting in the halls, OR we have so few patients that we have to send nurses home because there isn't enough happening to keep all of us busy. As someone put it, "It's either feast or famine around here". That kind of up and down is starting to get a little exhausting. I think the honeymoon stage just is over. I still totally love my job, don't get me wrong, but I am starting to let the little things get to me. I don't go into work anymore in the morning with any high expectations about how the day is going to go. If anything, based on the last month or so, I go into work in the morning assuming that the day is going to be challenging and hard, and then get pleasantly surprised when it goes otherwise. A positive change has occurred despite all the chaos: When things go wrong (which they are bound to with at least one patient a day if you have 6-7), I am finding myself more and more capable of fixing the problem. I no longer have internal panic attacks when a postpartum patient hemorrhages or an antepartum patient goes into labor. And I feel like the doctors and other staff really treat me with respect and expect the same out of me as they do from the nurses with 15+ years of experience.
Friday, two out of my 4 patients spoke exclusive Spanish. Yeah. I don't speak any Spanish. No bueno. And while I fumbled with the 10-15 words I do know, I found that when my mouth got all "accent-y" I just start spitting out random French words. So then I get all kinds of "this lady is LOCO" looks from the patients and their families. Saturday, I was in the nursery, and, because I'm slightly cursed, we had 4 new babies before 10 am, and two new babies between 6:30 and 7 pm. Oh, those babies. Good thing they're so darn cute! (Belle Kristin, 3 months)

"Yeah, I wondered about that..."

So yesterday at work, something amazing and hilarious happened! In my boss' words "never, in all my years, have I ever seen or heard of this!!!" So, here's what happened:
I discharged a patient yesterday morning, and stood at the nurses station as she was headed out. Her mom walked ahead of her, holding the car seat base and a couple clear plastic bags with personal items, the patient was pushed in a wheelchair with the baby in the car seat on her lap, and another transporter pushed a cart with the rest of her stuff behind her. We all smiled and waved when they left. About 20 minutes later, our housekeeper Anita came out of the patient's room pushing the lower part of one of our hospital cribs. They sort of look like this:
Except the one Anita was pushing was missing the top part- no plastic bucket, no mattress, no blankets covering the mattress--all of it--GONE! We went back in the room and searched high and low- in the cabinets, in the shower-it was not there! The patient took it, that much was clear, but I don't know HOW! We were all watching them leave, that bassinet is HUGE, where could they have put it?! We didn't see any giant duffel bags! I called the patient, and her cell phone was disconnected. So I called her house phone. Someone answered, then hung up. Hmm. Meanwhile, crazy news travels fast, so my coworkers from other units were coming up to see the mysterious "topless crib"! My boss even walked over to see it, and said, "well Katie, don't be wondering where your next paycheck is" (with a giant smile on her face). So next I called the transport team and asked if perhaps they remembered helping a patient load Carle property into her car? His response? "Yeah we did, can they not take those?" WHAT??? Of course they can't-- would you help them load a couch into their truck too? So then I wrote an incident report, and tried calling the patient again. This time she answers. Her: "yeah?" Me:"Hi ___, this is Katie, your nurse from Carle, about that crib and matress and any blankets you may have taken, you can't have those, those are Carle property and keeping them is theft." Her: "Oh, yeah, I wondered about that...ok, well my mom's coming back to Champaign now, I'll just have her bring it back." Me: "Ok, great. Thanks". And sure enough, about an hour later, it got dropped off at the front desk.
I mean WHO DOES THAT?!?!?!?!?!?
In other news, it's FINALLY spring on Oregon Street, and man am I happy! These little babies popped up out front today- Yay!

Oh wow

Yikes- it has really been a while! My bad! I went to visit Emily last weekend in Kirksville, which was lovely. Then I came back and had a dentist appointment (YUCK). Then it was back to work. Last week was, well...terrible. I don't know why this happened, but we just had so so so many babies being born! On Friday we did 9 c-sections and 5 other deliveries. I discharged 5 patients that morning, and had to take 4 brand new ones. And I don't know if it's because my 6-month work-iversary is coming up or what, but it seemed like I was putting out fires right and left and dealing with emergencies that have not happened to me ever. During the end of my shift Friday, I have 4 crises going at all at once. One patient was hemorrhaging, an antepartum patient was contracting, a new c-section had uncontrolled vomiting, a morphine pump was beeping for no reason, and one of my patient's boyfriends was being an abusive you-know-what. On top of all this, Thursday morning I came down with a cold and have felt pretty crappy since then.
By Friday night when I left work at 8:30 (an hour after my shift is supposed to end) I'll admit, I felt broken. It was just too many days in a row (Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday) of too much. I was exhausted (mentally, physically, and emotionally). So as I rode down in the elevator, fighting back tears, I called my charge nurse and asked for help. I told her that I know we aren't supposed to do this (there is a schedule and order and everything), but I really really needed a day in the nursery. She told me it was good of me to acknowledge that I needed a "mental health day" and she would see what she could do.
She obligied! I got to spend Saturday in the nursery, which while busy (we had three "border babies" , who's mothers had been discharged, so I was responsible for feedings, changings, and soothing) was a relief. And I had yesterday off. Thank God.
Today was much MUCH better. Even with a crisis that started at report! I was taking over care for an antepartum patient (32 weeks pregnant) who was hunched over in bed,, crying, having contractions every 2-3 minutes and rating them a 6/10 in pain...uh oh! My co-workers tell me that I handled it all well, so that was re-assuring. None of my interventions worked, so she ended up going down to labor and delivery to get more intense and drastic interventions. I discharged 2 more patients throughout the day, and ended with just two!!! And though I'm back tomorrow, I don't dread it! Yay!

Updates!

Oops...I've been a bad blogger...no updates since Valentines Day :( But- here's a good one, so hopefully it'll make up for my negligence!

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")

Bad A_ _ Nursery Nurse

Happy Valentines Day!!! So this weekend (both days) I was the nursery nurse. As it would turn out, after that first crazy time, I'm pretty great at being the nursery nurse. And I love it! Yesterday I had a health care tech AND 3 nursing students in the morning to help with task-y stuff, like transporting babies to and from their rooms and giving baths, which was really helpful. It gave me time to admit the new babies and assist the MD with circumcisions. Plus, it's fun to teach the students what I know! Today was a little slower, but I didn't have any help, so I kept pretty busy. I got stuff done without feeling out of control and got extra things done for my co-workers too! And I get some nice compliments from them for it! One of my co-nurses said "Katie, man, you are a bad A_ _ nursery nurse!" One of the pediatricians asked me if I loved what I do, I said yes, and he said "I can tell. Don't ever lose that." And tonight when I was reporting off to the night nurse, she said "You are really good at giving report...and actually, I'm just impressed by you, you seem like you've been doing this for 30 years!". Can't hear that enough! It's really great to be respected as a peer now, and not just one of the "new girls". I'll sleep well tonight. There's something to be said for having a job where you get to cuddle babies. My soul feels happy!

Back in the Game

Ok, so I'm mostly recovered, although it still hurts on occasion when I forget that I just had surgery. The last 6 days were SUPER BORING. I am under a 10-15 pound lifting restriction for two weeks so I'm not allowed to be a nurse. Apparently, if a Mom fainted or something, I'm supposed to catch her...which would be bad for my newly repaired hernia. So instead, I get to sit at the desk outside of our unit, screening people for H1N1. Basically, I take temperatures and argue with people about the visitor policy. It's a good time. And by "good time" I mean, BORING time. I worked at 8-12 hours at the desk on Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. And Saturday I worked from 7 am to 11 pm. That's 16 hours people. It SUCKED. It has also been really hard because our unit has been crazy busy (I know, I always say that, but on Tuesday they did 6 c-sections before I left at 3...the average is 2-3) and I just had to sit there and watch my coworkers struggle without being able to help them. But, I should be glad that they let me work anyway, considering I haven't been working long enough to take extended time off. And, after serving (more than) my time at the desk, on Saturday I finally get to be a nurse again. YAY!!! Turns out I am really bad at sitting still when I'm not TRYING to be lazy.

OUCH

Ok, so I'm not sure how long this will be, I don't have tons of energy just yet, but can I just say- OUCH?! A hernia repair (despite how quick and delightful and laproscopic they describe it) is not fun, not easy, and not comfortable! You don't realize how you use those core, inguinal (meaning close to the crotch) muscles to do, oh yeah, EVERYTHING! There is not one move- not sitting in any position, as possibly still as you can without even breathing-where you aren't using those muscles in a hard core (ha-ha, get it? CORE?) way. It's terrible when you need assistance just to sit down on the toilet, and then to get back up again! Yuck! Everything went well, but they said it was a relatively small hole and a relatively LARGE hernia, so there was lot's of pushing to get it back in. Also, I look like I got punched in the mouth (apparently I am hard to intubate), so it was hard for me to swallow anything. And that was just the first day. By yesterday, the pain was more under control, I was starting to wean myself off of the narcotics, and starting to feel more human. Today, I even took a shower all by myself! The worst part now is that I am antsy to get back out and do stuff, but still too exhausted to really do anything of interest. I have yet to sleep through the night (hopefully that will happen tonight because I have only taken one nap today).
I'm not sure what this means for work in the next few weeks. I am technically under a lifting restriction for the next two weeks, which I guess means that I can't go back to my normal duties... My boss is trying to figure out what kind of light duty schedule they can get me on for now....
I can tell you that when I do go back, man, do I have some new perspectives to take with me! I hate to admit it, but I have not always thought nice things about moms after c-sections who aren't just jumping to get out of bed. I always thought, I know it's rough, but just do it- it'll be better when you do (which IS the truth). Now, I have WAY more sympathy for them! I mean, I only have three, minor incisions, not one HUGE one that goes through ALL of the layers! YOUCHERS! I am not sure my actions will change much (I'm always sweet and nuturing on the outside), but I will be thinking much kinder, gentler thoughts!