Code Brown

Ugghhh. Last night was so busy!! However, of course the poo hits the floor at around 5 when we're trying to wrap things up for the night.

First, I'm passing meds on one of my patients. As I'm leaving the room I hear from across the hall, "Help! Help!" Usually this is just a person who can't find their call light and needs something. So I pop my head in to see a man sitting on the bed. I quickly realize that this is the man that all the nurses have been talking about weekend as the meanest, surliest person in the world once he opens his mouth and says, "Get in here! I shit myself!"

Sigh.

I get in there and start to get him cleaned up when the aid comes in. Clearly, I pass this task off to her.

The morning progresses, and one of the nurses who is totally slammed asks me to give that same patient some zofran. I get into his room and he goes, "I need to shit again. Get me a potty chair!" Getting him a bedside commode at this time of morning would take about thirty minutes. I tell him this, and he proceeds to jump out of bed and start to walk to the toilet. However, the second his butt leaves the bed, stool starts dropping on the floor. He leaves a trail of c. diff all the way from the far side of the bed all the way to the toilet with me jumping behind him all the way preventing falls and ripped out IV lines. The room was covered in poo. Luckily we have amazing environmental services people who were there to clean it up within 5 minutes.

So glad that night is over.

Moments that make it all worthwhile

I just wanted to share a few moments from my shift last night that make me remember why I wanted to become a nurse in the first place. These are the moments that, even on the most terrible of nights, make everything worthwhile. 

• My post-op patient who was in severe pain told me that I was an excellent nurse and and thanked me for being the first person who made her feel like she was actually cared about. 
• My sweet little old lady who, when I answered her call light, said, "I just need a little TLC". I sat and her room, held her hand, and listened to stories about her life. This calmed her down and allowed her to get back to sleep. 

I'm sure my words don't do these moments justice (especially since I just got home and my brain doesn't work anymore) but they were special moments nonetheless.

Float orientation

Friday night I oriented to two  different units so that I would be allowed to float there in the future if needed. For some background, I work on a a busy med-surg telemetry unit. We get some pretty high acuity patients and usually have 5-6 (almost always 6) patients per nurse. The two units I oriented to were the med-surg ortho unit and our hospital's intermediate care (IMC) unit, which is where patients go if they are too sick for a normal med-surg floor, but not sick enough to go to ICU.  The ortho unit was a complete joke for me. Apparently I'm not qualified to care for ortho patients (fine by me!) so they gave me their general med-surg patients. All of my patients were alert and oriented and able to get to the bathroom by themselves.  Seriously? On my unit I'm lucky if ONE of my patients meets all of those criteria. It was such a joke. I don't know why they don't send those types of med-surg patients to our floor. . .I'm sure ortho is difficult and all, but spread the love with the walkie talkies! Having 2 total cares per night is just not my jam. It'd also be nice if the walkie talkies that ED sends us weren't all heroin addicts who require q2 dilaudid. Uggghhhhh. 

Anyway, IMC wasn't terrible. It was actually quite similar to my unit, which is kind of scary to me. The worst part was following around a nurse who treated me like an incompetent student and wouldn't even let me do the most mundane things like boost a patient up in bed with the aid or take vital signs. I've been an independent nurse for a a few months now, and the patients she had weren't any sicker than patient's I've had so it was kind of insulting. 

All in all, not a bad night. It certainly could've been worse. 

Big 10 Tourney

Well, I had a fun weekend, surprisingly enough! I got called off on Saturday (woo!) so now I have 2 days off instead of one. The hubs and I had a relaxing evening in that may have entailed margaritas and movies. Then he said, "What if we went to the Big Ten tournament tomorrow?" I have no idea if he does this intentionally or not, but he asks things kind of rhetorically in an "eh, that'll never happen" tone of voice and then I respond and go, "yeah! let's do that!" It happened when we made our impromptu trip to the Final Four in Atlanta last year, and it happened Saturday night when we decided to make the 2 hr drive to Indy for one game this afternoon. My brother and the hub's sister met us there and it was nice to see them both as well.

I think that's about all that's been going on 'round these parts. I made my next 6 week schedule today and am going to try something new - no 3-in-a-rows. *gasp* I know, I always say I love my 3's, but lately kind of just want to die by the 3rd one. Therefore, I'm mixing it up a bit and doing 2's! I still have a bunch of 3's scheduled through mid-April, so I won't see how my new system works for another 2 months, but that's ok. Every day is one day closer to the end of my contract. :) I'm finally coming to terms with my job and not hating it, but I still hate the "trapped" feeling that the contract provides. Note to my future self: no contracts unless it is actually worth your while (re: hefty sign on bonus) and you aren't desperate for a job.

On the workout front, not much has happened since I've been working. I'm trying to figure out a way to workout on days when I work, but I just don't see how it's gonna happen. I don't want to wake up even earlier than I already do, and I don't want to work out immediately before going to bed. I think I'm just going to be SOL when it comes to that. I'm still shooting for three days this week though. Fingers crossed! Speaking of wanting to workout 5+ days a week. . .I want to do a half marathon eventually (ideally within the next year or two. Hubs said I could do the Disney one if I complete a different one before Disney) but I think it might be difficult to tailor the training schedules around my work schedules. I can't exactly go running at 2 am. . .We'll see what I get figured out. Right now I'll just be happy once I get to a 5k readiness level!!

Combating Obesity

So, my little brother is a freak. He's about 6'2" and 170-190 lbs of muscle, depending on the season. Recently he has "gotten fat" and needs to "combat obesity" (his words). His version of fat is not being able to see a chiseled 6 pack, but instead a soft outline of abs. He absolutely baffles me, and sometimes I don't know if he's joking or if he has legitimate body image issues.

However, this post isn't meant to be about him. It's about me. Today I begin documenting my own combat against obesity. I have hit the gym twice this week (yay me!) and plan to go 2-3 days a week every week. Why not more, you ask? After 12 hour shifts, 2 hour round trip commutes, and "8" hours of sleep, I don't have much time in my work days. Plus, after wearing my pedometer to work for a few weeks, I found that I walk an average of 3 miles per shift. Whew! Too bad they don't give out 5k medals for nursing, eh? :P Either way, some nights I consider work a workout in and of itself. No need to double up and miss out on sleep when I'm already exhausted.

I also plan to *try* to improve my diet and not look at the scale. The diet issue is difficult for me since I work night shift. Luckily I don't fall into the trap of overeating, but I'm just too lazy to pack super healthy lunches and end up with processed food. I'm going to try to not look at the scale until a whole month has passed. That will put me at April 12th, which is right when we leave for Las Vegas. I'm hoping I can see some changes in my body by then. I don't expect much from the scale, especially since I plan to continue weight lifting, but my clothes should fit better. When I did Insanity before my wedding I actually gained 5 lbs, even though I lost quite a few inches. Numbers are just numbers and I think I'm past the point of letting them weigh on me too heavily (no pun intended).

Anyway, that is that. I'm working 6 of the next 7 days, so I won't be posting for a while. I will be back with fun times and stories next week though I'm sure!

Revamping thought patterns

Dear readers, I know that you know nothing about me as of yet so here is one tidbit of information. I am a new grad, night shift nurse. I work at a hospital on a busy med-surg unit. I have been in my current position for about 3 months.

The orientation phase wasn't too bad at all; I came out feeling a bit hesitant, but mostly confident that I could do my job adequately. I wasn't expecting to be as excellent as a well-seasoned nurse, but I thought I could do a good job. As time went on I started feeling worse and worse not only physically (between night shift, lack of sleep, and germs everywhere my immune system was done for) but also emotionally. I was stressed beyond belief. I dreaded seeing my manager since she usually gave me constructive criticism (really, it was delivered professionally and as a "learning experience" but my mindset just couldn't handle it.) I also had serious trouble sleeping during the day - not due to light, sounds, or screwed up circadian rhythms, but due to my own anxieties. I would literally wake up hourly thinking about things I may have missed. Did I put all the orders in? Did that patient actually have crackles AND wheezes? What if I forgot to tell day shift about the medication in the Wall-a-roo?

This went on and on for 1-2 months of hell. Finally, I exploded. When I get stressed, I tend to take that stress out on my husband. We ended up having a big fight about something totally unrelated, but when we got to the bottom  of it it was all related to my job stress. He had recently gone to a leadership training thing at his job and gave me some good advice about how to have a more positive mindset. I also talked with one of my coworkers recently about it and she had some good advice as well. Here's what I've been doing to try to be happier at work: (Btw, I HAVE to be happy at work. I have a 2 year contract that I don't want to pay 20k to get out of. 2 years of misery doesn't sound fun, so I may as well make the best of it!)

• Be grateful for what you have
• I see people at their worst. They are sick, miserable wretches. Sometimes dying, sometimes struggling with addiction, sometimes just holding onto life because they have nothing else. If nothing else I am thankful for my health. I am also thankful to have a job, even if it is not a "dream job." It pays the bills and allows me and the hubs to live quite comfortably.
• Hit the "reset" button
• I had a patient fall a few weeks ago. She was trying to climb out of bed all night and I should've seen it coming, but it still happened. Old me would've let this fall hang over my head for months. But that night I spoke with almost all of my coworkers, and even the best among them had had at least 1 fall on their records. They all still were working at our facility, so I didn't have to fear losing my job. Instead I just hit my mental reset button and told myself that I would be the best nurse that I could be that night. I try to mentally reset before every shift. 
• Know that some things are out of your control
• You can't make that patient take hydralazine, even if their blood pressure is 210/120. All you can do is watch them and make sure they don't stroke out on you. And you absolutely can't strangle that 22 y.o.  heroin addict who cleans out the pantry and fridge and is on his call light again every time you leave his room - which is at the end. of. the. hallway.
• Negativity gets you no where
• Going into a patient's room with a poor attitude isn't going to do good for anyone. It won't help the patient, and it won't help yourself. Plus, being positive is so much easier once you get the hang of it!

Anyway, that's the gist of it. Hopefully I can stay on this happy train for a while. Not sure how long that will last though. Starting Thursday I'm working 6 of the next 7 days. Ouch! Definitely going to try to get called off at least once. Wish me luck!

Restarting the blog

Well, this is now my third attempt at blogging, I believe. Time to hit the restart button on the blog. I think that in order to truly be happy with my blog I need to write things that are important to me and interest me instead of looking at blogging like some sort of potential money-maker. Yes, people do make money off of blogs, but they also put much more effort into their blogs than I plan to.

So from now on I will be writing about what I want to write about. Not potentially crowd pleasing posts. Nor will I even have a focus for my blog. It will just be a spilling of thoughts. (Maybe I'll rename my blog to that - it has a nice ring to it!)