More Vacation...

Some more pictures. I've discovered that vodka and iced tea mix very nicely, thank you...

Vacation...

Some pictures of our backyard and some fried cheese balls. Who could ask for anything more?

Things to Do

On vacation:

1) Sit on my ass

2) Sit on my ass on the beach

3) Sit on my ass with a drink in my hand

4) Sit on my ass with a book (I'm SO excited to READ!!!)

5) Sit on my ass on the beach with a drink and a book

6) Eat fried and raw seafood

7) Knit (Nurse K, got any good patterns? Whatcha workin' on? I need ideas!)

I need a vacation

I keep having work dreams, especially ones where I'm out in triage.

Last night I dreamed that I was triaging in someone's living room behind a screen, using a crotchety old dinosaur of a computer (like a Commodore 64)! It was frustrating and I couldn't get a lot done, and people were waiting for a long time to get triaged.

My last complaint before I woke up? A mom brought her daughter in because the child was going to a costume party dressed as the Mona Lisa, and the mother couldn't get the kid's makeup right and wanted me to do it. The last thing I remember was trying to look on the Internet for pictures of the Mona Lisa and mixing foundation with moisturizer to lighten it up a little. Then I woke up.

Thank goodness this is my last week of work before we go on vacation for two weeks...

Just Desserts

That karma sure is a bitch.

Tonight one of our freshly minted new attendings humilated me and made me look like a complete and utter incompetent in front of a patient's spouse with the sole purpose of pacifying said spouse and making Dr. New Attending look like a hero.

I won't go into details because I'm pissed off and tired and I want to go to bed, but basically I was made to look like a weenie over things 1) about which he had not gathered the full and correct information, 2) that were totally out of my control, and 3) and were not in my scope of practice.

Gah! And I guarantee no apology will be forthcoming either.

Oy VEH!

Why is it that the posts I think are the most anecdotal, harmless posts in the world end up causing a shitstorm?

I'm finding this whole thing quite amusing. I've even been called "Ms. Thang" by an anonymous poster.

What is MOST amusing to me about this situation is that I was actually looking at it as a learning experience FOR ME, not for him.

I looked up the dose in my drug guide because I had never heard of that dosage amount in that route for that particular ailment before and wanted to check it out for myself. My years as an editor and fact-checker taught me never to take any bit of knowledge for granted, and so I look everything up, even if I'm pretty sure I'm right. I'd rather know I'm right than be "pretty sure." (I was once embarrassed by my boss in front of a large editorial meeting because I didn't know that the word pimento can also be spelled pimiento, and I hadn't looked it up. That's when I learned to say, "Hmmmm... I'm not sure. Let me check!")

The problem was that I put my mouth in gear before engaging my brain, and my correction of the intern just slipped out. It was not so much, "You dimwit newbie, I'm a smarty every day, and you are a dumbass," as "Huh, check it out--the dose really is 30, not 60."

However, showing him up on inserting the IV? Yeah, I rocked that shit. But then again, I've gotten shown up eight zillion times with other patients. Eh, whatever. The patient needed a line, and got one. Who cares who does it?

Can't we all just get along?

Sorry, Intern Dude...

Sorry for correcting you in front of a patient.

I wasn't thinking; it wasn't a very nice thing to do. And it was kind of kicking you when you were down: you had been trying to start that IV for at least twenty minutes, and I waltzed in and got it in one shot. When the patient said, "See? I KNEW she would get it!" I tried to downplay it by telling the story about how when I used to work on the floor I sucked at IVs and I didn't get good at it until I came down to the ED, and that sometimes when I'm having a "bad stick day" I can't get a tiny needle in a vein the size of the Panama Canal.

But then you said, "Great, give this patient sixty milligrams of Toradol IV, please!" and it just popped out of my mouth.

"You mean thirty, right? Sixty is the IM dose." Dude, you should have taken the hint.

"No, sixty IV please."

I should have left it at that. I should have waited until we were out of earshot of the patient and then tactfully suggested you recheck the proper dosage. Instead, I whipped out my Treo with my Davis's Drug Guide on it and looked up the dosage myself. "Nope, says right here the maximum IV dose is 30 mg at a time."

And then the patient yelled, "What, are you trying to KILL ME?!?"

Again, sorry. And when I see you this week, I'll apologize in person.