Where We Draw the Line

Listen up, mofos. We will probably give you IV Dilaudid if you act a fool, fake chest pains, or act a fool, fake abdominal pains, or act a fool, pretend to have sickle cell, or act a fool, pretend to have fallen off of a two story building despite the fact you have not an abrasion on your person, see Hood Hospital doctor on duty for complete list. BUT.

We will not, I repeat, WILL NOT, give you IV Dilaudid when you sign AMA from your long term care hospital across the effin' street because they just stopped your IV Dilaudid and you want some more, and then proceed to immediately call the ambulance from your room because you want to go the ER and see if we'll give you some Dilaudid. Yup. The ER doctor will receive a call from your doctor prior to your arrival, despite the 2 minute trip, and meet you at the ambulance bay to be like, "Nope, bye".

Any questions? Oh, and also, it's poor form to sleep during your entire 40 minute visit (the time it took for the private ambulance to come get you to return to sender) while complaining of 10/10 pain.

Visual Vitals

Now, I hope no one here loses too much respect for me when I admit that I, on occasion, take visual vitals as opposed to the generally accepted actual vital signs. Calm down. I'm not talking all the time, very rarely, in fact. But, if I'm in fast track, I have 5 more discharges to do, I've been stuck on team lazy and you're a young person here for an STD with no medical problems who just got your vital signs taken in triage an hour and a half ago... yeah. I might just have to take your visual vitals so I can go pee. Sorry. I'm not saying it's right, but dude, sometimes that's the way things go.

However, there are several situations in which this is NOT gonna work our for you. Say, you work at a nursing home and you find your patient in bed cold and pulseless. Note the lividity. Yeah. I'm not saying don't send this corpse over here, because, obviously, you're never gonna stop doing that, but at least don't send this corpse over here with a report sheet with the vitals as follows- BP 110.72 HR68 RR 14 SPo2 98% because this person is wicked dead and dead people don't have vital signs. K thanks.

The Antidote for ER Angst

So, last couple days up here have been randomly terrible. Like bag of chips for dinner, ER full of holds (in June, WTF), setting up the ER bunk beds, management coming around at 3 am to do what they do (nothing), cray-cray. Last night was the worst.

But tell me if you could possibly be pissed about anything if this happened to you. So, I go back in to check on my hold patients after helping out in the double CPR that had just come in. Everyone's mostly pretty much sleeping, including my last patient I come to see, a sweet little lady with early dementia being admitted for weakness. Just as I step into the room to check on her, she opens her eyes, and as soon as she sees me, she looks up at me with this giant adorable toothless grin and exclaims, "Sweetie! You're here!" As I talked to her I realized she thought that she had been moved upstairs and didn't realize she was still holding in ER, so when she thought I was her nurse on the floor she was super excited.

Seriously. How can you be in a bad mood when someone is that happy to see you?

Return of Compassion

So, I've been going through sort of a rough patch as of late in that I've just dealt with a lot of foolishness without a lot of payoff in the emotional sense. Not that I'm one of those people who needs to be gratified all the time and told that I'm a modern day Florence Nightingale by every patient I discharge for a UTI or whatever. I've just been dealing with high amounts of drama and abusiveness, and since I'm really pretty introverted and sensitive (despite how I act), it really does take a lot out of me. Like, in ways I don't realize until later when everyone and everything is pissing me off and I don't understand why.

It really bothers me when I get this way. I feel like I was made to be a nurse and comfort the sick, like that it is really my God given purpose in life. I feel like if I'm not doing it well- if I don't feel like working hard and I don't feel sincere when I'm being nice to people, that when I'm just pissy that I'm a total failure at the one thing in life that I genuinely care about and think I'm good at. I've felt pretty lost over the last couple of days. Last night was my last of 4 and I pretty much begged to be in fast track to I could just hide and get a break.

So I'm trucking along back there when I go in to start an IV on this lady. First thing she tells me is that she is HIV positive. With full blown AIDs, in fact. I respect this a lot, since lots of people I see don't tell anyone and I find out later when looking through old medical records on the computer. She's hurting, but still bubbly and talkative. She' sweet anyway, but I get on her good side even more by starting her IV on the first stick despite her bad veins and needle anxiety.

Her labs are not pretty. Her body is aching, and she says she's had fevers coming and going. It's obvious her illness is progressing pretty rapidly, but you wouldn't know it by how cheerfully she interacts with her son, who's sitting next to her reading quietly. She's admitted to the hospital for severe anemia, and I find out a little more about her as I take care of her. The events of her life so far have been horrendous to say the least.

After her son goes home, she reveals to me that doctors have given her less than a year to live. Even as she tells me this, she's smiling. "I have so much to be thankful for", she says. "My son is such a good boy. I have a really good man now. I used to be scared but God has granted me peace. It's like I'm his little baby and he's holding me. I know it's gonna be okay." She tells me how kind I've been and how thankful she is for my care. How much she admires everyone that has helped her today. As I talked to her, I started to cry. Not for any reason in particular- it's just that talking to her has instilled somewhat of a calm in me. I felt as if someone had reached into my chest and pulled the weight of all that angst out of me.

It was hard for me to adequately express it to her, but she really saved me. I feel a renewed sense of purpose in what I do.

Just in time for me, too, since after that it was all drunk people in with fireworks accidents. Thanks to my sweet patient, they all had warm blankets and someone to listen attentively to their tales of woe.

They're onto me, and they're PISSED

Oh shit y'all, everybody on the internet figured out that I'm a fake nurse a while back, check it out!

Please refer to my HIPAA disclaimer if you have any questions, and let me just say this-

Listen lady, I don't care if you don't respect the fact that I have my CNA and I took one year of medical assisting school at the University of Phoenix, which is totally legit and accredited, by the way, I know, because they put adds on my Facebook page. I'd probably even have my RN but I ran out of student loan money cause I had to use it to pay for my nails and cell phone after my baby daddy # 3 got locked up for stealing car stereos, so money was tight. Especially since I was smoking a lot more then, since pregnancy is really stressful. I mean, seriously, it's not that hard, I've been treated in the ER like 7 times for that PID so I KNOW how hospitals work, okay? I could pass my boards, like, easy if the stupid board of nursing didn't have a restraining order out against me for trying to keeping it real in the testing center when they wouldn't let my take my Zune into the test room. I need to listen to Ke$ha if I'm gonna concentrate, okay, I don't know what's so hard to understand about that. Whatever, I'm over it. So, let me just say that any and all statements on this blog are 100% medically accurate, just like the movie the Human Centipede. Yeah, it is. I read it on the internet, so it's true. Don't judge me. You don't know my life!

Yes. I am completely serious. Shit damn.

That's a Valid Concern

Hood Nurse (to elderly gentleman in triage with angioedema): Well, alright sir, let's take you back to a room now so we can get this fixed.

Elderly Gentleman: Yeah, I hope so. I can't be walking around like this. How am I gonna meet ladies?

A Little Advice

Hey, so I know that a lot of planning while taking PCP and other mind altering substances kind of takes the fun out of it, but if you plan on doing that this holiday weekend or any weekend, please make sure you have at least one good friend with you.

They don't even have to be completely sober, but they should be at least sober enough to talk you down when you decide to run to the nearest police station and bang furiously on the door screaming "the system is corrupt!" repeatedly at the top of your lungs until the officers come out, at which time you go to the flower bed and start digging holes in the ground.

Unless of course, your goal all along is to befuddle even the most seasoned police officers in the ghetto with your behavior, in which case, this is a pretty good approach. After all, I'm just here to help, not to judge you on how you wanna spend your 4th of July weekend.