This week was just stupid as in crazy, hectic, and frustrating beyond words only to be topped off by the above scenario. I worked eight days straight this week because two of my coworkers were on vacation meaning that I was left alone with a trainee with the wits about him of a donut. Our nursing staff is also suffering a shortage due to babies and surgeries so those of us left did the best we could. We have seven beds which remained filled at all times with patients ranging from post op CABGS ( coronary artery bypass grafts) to mentally psychotic (only sent to us because he wasn't able to swallow food and thus had to have a feeding through which we gave medication and food but kept on four point restraint after chasing and kicking staff). We also had an 80 year old someone given to us with a severe pneumonia who was a DNR but who decided intubation was okay as well as a patient with a certain kind of painful cancer who came to us after over doing it on his strong pain medication which took him three days to clear as we had him restrained. And last but not least a very adorable gentleman in his 80s with sepsis and urinary blockage who was dare I say smart enough to not let them stick a tube down his throat as much as he needed it with our smallest bed being a revolving door for stents and cardioversions that couldn't be done or recovered anywhere else. This doesn't even beging to describe the amount of family, family meetings, and end of life discussions were going on in at least three of these scenarios. Oh and let us not forget the court hearing done via phone and electric shock therapy that was done bedside. We are lucky lucky people.
The trainees are those who don't follow the requirements to even be called that anymore since they have been their six weeks and shouldn't need me to run around clucking like their mama to make sure they are doing what needs to be done. But I digress. Multiple nurses have repeated that they can't allow the newbies in their rooms because they don't treat the lines, chest tubes, and foleys as the lifelines that they are as their roll and boost our precious souls or leave said equipment underneath because most are pretty out of it. What do they care?! Well this creates a snag because the little fetuses also aren't able to sit alone at telemetry because one doesn't care about silly old heart rates anyway and the other couldn't measure a QT correctly the first time if it was his own squiggly lines he was looking at on the monitor. So I basically had to be in two places all week while still having to make sure they didn't kill themselves or more important someone else. The one came in with some roadrash on his leg from wiping out on a skateboard ramp (DUDE like totally) and was given the direction to put some bacitracin ointment on it which he did. But in an effort to keep his pants from sticking he rolled up the one pantleg and was walking around the unit in front of patients and their family members. When I asked him very nicely of course what the **** he was doing he said he thought it would be a good idea to "air it out". I was very happy to remind him of what the air in every hospital contains which would include MRSA and that if he wanted to keep his leg he could get a bandage to put over it and then wear his pants like any other normal human being. This was just on the work front of course.
Whenever you work too much your body (which is always wiser) gives you a nice little sickness to reign you in a little so I was sneezing (inside my face mask) and worst of all had to go days without seeing my ray of sunshine Gwen as she came back from being at her dads only to be shipped off to my parents until Friday when alas I had a whole weekend to spend with her and her big brown eyes.
6:40 Saturday morning she climbs in my bed to tell me there are worms all over the floor. I get up to see indeed maggots making their blind escapes across my hardwood floor in mass quantities. I wanted to slam the door and hide or light a match to it all but after putting on Curious George to distract Gwen from the horror I set out to clean up and find the source of such a plague! Anyone wanna guess where they were coming from?
And let me point out that as a single mom working and going to school I am not the picture of domestic ability but I am not a hoarder or someone that lets my house become a science experiment. I have taken Microbiology and know what little beasts hide in dirty places so any judgement will be lost on me.
Apparently some juice had spilled under the fridge and ahhhh what a feast. It took me a good hour to find and flush all invaders not to mention moving out the fridge and cleaning under from top to bottom. The flashbacks have yet to subside. After going to war and winning my prize was taking Gwen to the Farmers Market and camping in a friends backyard.
Something else that has been extremely irritating is the lack of good reading material. Where have all the good books gone? I couldn't possibly have read them all could I? It really puts a girl on edge to not be able to escape into a different world!
Peace out Week! You did me wrong and I'm moving on!
