Updates!

1. I'm sick. Sinuses like cement, goo coming out of my chest. Feh.

2. I don't love statistics. Especially when I can't find half of the labor-intensive chart I spent hours on six seconds before it's due.

3. Check out Macho Nurse--a former engineer and fifth-grade teacher now in nursing school. I've been reliving my nursing school days through him. Go give him a peek!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm off today for the first time in three years! It's a miracle!

We're off to the deep dark woods to have Thanksgiving dinner with friends. I baked two pies yesterday--a pecan and an apple. They're very homemade looking, but I'm sure they'll taste fine...I hope!

I don't think I have to say it, but I will: I think that people who work in the ED are acutely aware of how tenuous our lives are in this world. I often think that we're all just a bunch of monkeys clinging to a rock hurtling through space, and we're all just trying to make our own way the best we can. Be thankful for all the little monkeys around you! I am.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Entitlement

Listen, I don't care who you are--MD or no MD.

If you come into the ED at 4 pm on a very busy day complaining of "strange feelings" in your chest, your EKG is normal, and your first set of labs are normal, and insist that you must leave by 5 pm:

we are not going to be thrilled that you want to leave before your second set of troponins, but OK.

we will call the cardiac fellow, but will not "make" him come down to place a holter monitor on you before 5 pm because you are "too busy" to follow up with a cardiologist.

we will discharge you with instructions to follow up with a cardiologist.

We're all busy people. Find time to take care of your health, doc.

Sometimes I want a silly job

I'm sitting here watching a DVD of Entourage and enjoying a mindless afternoon of TV and knitting. Sometimes I wish I could be an agent's assistant like they see on those shows. Sure, it's a high pressure job. Sure you get all sorts of abuse. Sure you work around the clock dealing with mostly idiots. And my guess is that the pay is not great.

But I'd never have to deal with seeing a baby be delivered at seven months' gestation by emergency c-section because the mother had a sudden cardiac arrest while having a leisurely brunch with her husband and his family.

Neither the mother nor the baby made it.

As an assistant to some high-powered entertainment executive I'd have to do a lot of nonsense, like answering the phone and stuff and would have a Blackberry and would have to listen to a lot of crap.

But I wouldn't ever have to listen to the husband sob uncontrollably and beg the cops to "tell me she's still breathing! Tell me SHE'S OK!" and then call her name over and over.

I have never been more happy to have a couple days off. So far I've eaten some delicious fried dumplings and a coconut bun, and I got to snuggle in bed with my husband and dogs. And I am so, so lucky and grateful to have them for every second I do.

Should not happen.

Big, healthy appearing cutie pie babies with fat breastfed baby legs who hug me around my neck and grab at my stethoscope and grin their toothless grins at me should not have huge masses in their abdomens.

Hopefully it's only a Wilm's tumor. Not like that's fantastic, but it would be better than liver carcinoma.

Aaaaaaahhhhh...

After working close to 13 hours straight in the ED, there is nothing better than fresh air.

It's a simple pleasure to swipe out after midnight and walk out the ambulance bay doors into a lovely cool fall night. There's a refreshing slight drizzle, and the colors of the leaves are accented by the streetlamps. Best of all,the air is sweet and fresh and smells like leaves and wet pavement and a hint of winter to come. SO much better smelling than the stuffy ED, full of the scents of sweat and BO and melena and c diff and vomit and NPO breath and lord knows what else.

So I think I'll just stand here for a moment and savor it--trying to forget that in a measly eleven hours I'll be right back in there again.

President Obama!

I usually try to stay away from politics on my blog, but we just watched President-elect Obama's speech on one of the TVs in the ED--about 15 of us gathered around a bedside TV set.

It feels great to have participated in history. Obama has quite a row to hoe--his work is cut out for him, and I certainly don't envy him.

But I can't wait to see what happens next!

Why? Why would ANYONE watch this?

In an attempt to procrastinate instead of cleaning out the vacuum cleaner or starting my new online class, I was just flicking through the channels and happened upon VH1's "Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew."

I can't even stand it for one minute. I have NO CLUE why anyone would want to watch this. Good lord, imagine working there? Dealing with addicts is hard enough--imagine dealing with washed-up celebrity addicts who are all extra-dramatic, getting off on dancing for the camera like idiots? How can having cameras in a rehab be therapeutic in any way?

Oh my god, that Dr. Drew is sitting there, talking to a patient, with a stethoscope around his neck. I know he's an actual MD, but I don't know ANY doctor who does psychotherapy with a stethoscope dangling off of him.

Porn stars and washed-up actors and actresses and rock stars all begging for attention and "something to calm me down" and getting off on draping themselves on the floor and shoving their fingers down their throats to induce retching so they can get some kind of medication, ANY KIND OF MEDS!!!!!!

I can't even STAND IT. It's too much like being at work.

Happy November!

Whoo. Sorry about the dearth of posts lately. I've been enjoying a small hiatus from school: classes ended two weeks ago and don't begin again til...oh, wait--today. Bleh.

My preceptee finally finished orientation and is now on her own. Yikes. She's nice, and can handle herself, but she's really a "sitter-downer," meaning that if you need to find her, she's sitting right next to her computer at the desk. Not the best way to handle things, since we have a lot of patients and some of our areas don't allow the RN to see all the patients all the time. Believe me, if you're not actively DOING SOMETHING at the computer or writing notes in the chart, there's plenty of other things you could be doing at the bedside. Not too sure how long this gal will be with us--especially on the midshift, which is the busiest shift.

In other news, we had a gig the night before Halloween. I thought it went well; DR didn't love his playing, but it was fine. Here's a link to our halloweeny cover song: David Bowie's "Scary Monsters":




And in yet other (non-nursing, look at me having a life) news, I bought a ball of self-striping yarn to start making some socks. Usually at the yarn store they will knit a swatch of the yarn so you can see the colors and patterns, but they didn't for this one. Buyer beware! This is what the yarn looks like:



And this is what the sock (almost done) looks like. Ugh. Thank goodness it will be in my shoe.
Orange, lime green, red, and pink with black...dots or something. The pink and black part looks like bing cherry ice cream with chocolate chips. What a revolting color combo. Gack.