Baylorrrrr Babyyyyyy

Yeah yeah....I'm going Baylor. That basically means instead of working 12 nights a month, I'll be working 8 nights...and get paid the same. The catch is that those 8 nights will always be Saturday & Sunday nights. Doesn't bother me...I'll have 5 days/nights off to do whatever I want. I don't do anything on the weekends that can't be done during the week AND I'll still have Friday nights & Saturday days if need be.

Needless to say...I am a happy camper. And I'll get to work right alongside one of my best nurse friends. Yaysers!!!

This week at work was nail-biting. They floated me to ICU. Ughhhhhh! I will never be an ICU nurse because the stress drives me insane. I am a PCU nurse...which means I am trained to notice when a patient's health has taken a turn for the worse. I notice it, I initiate getting something to help the patient &/OR getting the distressed patient to ICU....so they are in better hands & I no longer have to deal with the stress of a having a patient in distress. It's a win/win. However, when I am the "ICU nurse".....I feel like a newbie. I am stressed the entire shift & absolutely hate it.

I am not trained to work there, but for some reason, it's perfectly ok to float us non-ICU trained nurses to ICU when they are short. I had one patient who had been cardioverted from A-fib with RVR to a junctional rhythm with a heart rate of 30 beats per minute. Scary to me.

And my other patients...admitted with pneumonia BUT also has lung cancer that has mets to other places AND his family refuses to tell him he has any cancer whatsoever. I don't get how this is legal. The patient, while he is in his 80's, was alert & oriented. Isn't it HIS right to know what is going on with HIS body? His son is a pulmonologist & doesn't want his father giving up on life if he were to know he had cancer. What? How is this legal?

Fastforward to my shift with him & this patient was struggling to breathe. Respirations of 40 per min, 100% heated high flow as well as a non-rebreather mask. He would have mini-panic attacks (because he couldn't breathe) & his 02 sat would decrease to 78%. I'd have to calm him down, remind him to breathe through his nose & try to slow down his breathing. This went on all night. I hated it because I know he was suffering. His doctor son was in earlier in the shift & I confirmed the code status of his father = FULL CODE. Insane. He has lung cancer that has mets to other locations & he can barely breathe. It's time to start thinking about comfort care. This isn't a case of pneumonia that we can treat with antibiotics & send on his way.

By the time I left, he was barely keeping an 02 sat of 92% & he was so exhausted from labored breathing that he could hardly open his eyes. I kept asking those around me isn't there anything we can do for him? They told me no...not until he is unable to maintain 92%. I went home with him on my mind & when I came back to work that night, I saw that they had put him on a ventilator. Absolutely insane. I don't get how a pulmonologist could do this to his father. He is trained to know better. I doubt they'll be able to get him off the vent successfully. Needless to say, I hope I don't float back to ICU for a long, long time.

The rest of my week was fine. I actually got to leave a little early on my last shift. Yay....it's rare, but I love when I can leave early. One thing that made me smile at work was taking care of an 89 yr old patient. I went to wash my hands in the sink in her room & she had her curling iron, makeup & other hair accessories surrounding the sink. 89 yrs old and still doing her hair & makeup while in the hospital...lol. Adorable. I love taking care of little old ladies. I don't know why...they are just more enjoyable than anyone else. Of course it helps when they are alert & oriented!

I saw The Social Network & Devil this weekend. I found The Social Network interesting. Especially since it did not have any input from the guy that actually invented Facebook...rather it was the viewpoint of everyone that was suing him because they felt it was their idea. Lame. So even though they tried to portray him as some bad dude, the audience & I still seemed to be 100% on the side of the Facebook CEO. Hard to believe that FB is worth $25 billion. Devil was good.....if you like suspenseful type movies...which I do. Not gory, but plenty of suspense.