Puppies and rainbows

Well, what can I say? I feel like I'm living in the twilight zone right now. After weeks and weeks of a-raping, we have now been clearing out our waiting room and lately even I, the queen of crazy douchebags, have been caring for nice patients. For real! Plus, my husband and I went to the shelter and adopted us an adorable dog that looks like a tiny lamb, so overall I am in a freakishly good mood.

I took care of a super sweet lady last night with a broken hip who actually thanked me for putting in a foley! Yeah. It was actually kind of sad since the fools on dayshift apparently hadn't been asking about the 3 P's or 5P's or whatever they are for the 4 hours they were taking care of her, so by the time I asked her what she wanted to do about the whole peeing with a broken hip issue, she was about to go on herself, but she was too polite to say anything. Poor lady. So I put in a catheter and actually talked to her about what the hell was going on and all of a sudden I was Florence Nightingale to these people. Before I took her upstairs, her son actually said to me, "You're a wonderful nurse. Thank you so much for taking such good care of my mom." Seriously. Just for doing my job. If all my patients were that way, I would do this job for free.

That's just how it's been lately. Both of my ICU patients last night gave me hugs as I dropped them off at their beds. One was actually my first experience with TPA, and it is pretty awesome. We got her within 2 hours of onset 0f symptoms and you could see the changes! She came in with slurred speech and right side weakness- by the time she went up to the ICU, her speech was clear and her right arm was at full strength. I was so excited I was actually jumping around her room at one point. I'm sure her family was all, "get this one some Ativan please", but I was crazy excited. I've never seen anything so cool. Just overall, very cool people for a couple of days. Even the floor and ICU nurses have been nice! I don't even think I'd be shocked if a little pack of cartoon birds and chipmunks and shit started following me into my rooms and helping me insert NG tubes and clean poop like I was Cinderella or something.

Yeah, I know that because of all this, when I go back to work triage tonight probably all of our frequent fliers will come in via vanpool and fake syncopal episodes or seizures in the waiting room. I'll probably get cussed out by 10 different girls for not taking them back to a room immediately for their pregnancy tests and coochie rashes, and their two-fer babies with 98.9 degree fevers and runny noses will probably vomit on me. I'll probably triage 8 to 9 combative drunk men with complaints that have been going on a year or longer, and I probably won't get to go pee until 3 AM and I'll go home to find my new dog has pissed all over my belongings without remorse, but you know what? It's worth it. If I get one day of awesome patients and 364 days or the other stupid bullshit, it's still worth it to me. I'm happy, damn it.