December 2, 2008

A good weekend overall, despite the snow

This weekend at work really was a pretty good weekend. Busy, but I have to say, overall, everything was pretty manageable. Saturday night, we started out S-L-O-W. It was my first night back after 11 days off (yes!) and I'll admit, I was still lazy. But, around midnight, I admitted a patient for basically stomach flu. After getting her settled, doc called, it was about 1:30 and I decided "I think I'll eat something and then go pump". And I kid you not, as I leaned over to grab my bag, ER called with another patient. I was getting out of my funk, but I was still being a bit selfish. Patient came around the corner and I recognized her from the last time she had been in. This poor woman had a horrible pregnancy history. It consisted of a early 2nd trimester loss due to an incompetent cervix, miscarriage, shirodkar cerclage placement after successful IVF. That pregnancy delivered at 30 weeks by c-section under general anesthesia because of a placental abruption, and this pregnancy was also IVF, twins and she had been on bedrest most of the time. She came in because her water broke at 35 weeks. We headed back to the c/s room, and had a nice delivery, twins did fabulous and mom was thrilled to finally have a good delivery. Doing her delivery got me out of my vacation funk and things were much better. Then Sunday, we had a man getting an IV infusion who would be done by 10pm. (Our peds unit is part of us and that also included outpatient infusion) He started having issues with his congestive heart failure (CHF) and the CVCU didn't want to take him because they were short. House supervisor and patient placement coordinator were being difficult it this. Hello, we're peds/OB nurses, not heart nurses. I can't say "Sorry, we don't have enough nurses so that labor patient you have for us will have to deliver down in ER or go to Oncology". No, it's just not an option. So, after a long battle, I got him off our unit so he could get the quality of care he deserved. CHF is out of our area of expertise. And the doc had meant for him to be on CVCU overnight, not an outpatient infusion patient. So he should have never come to us. It's dumb, but I felt like "The Man" by being stubborn and insisting he be where he would get good care. Sometimes being assertive is difficult for me. Then, there were 6 IV starts I got that slid in beautifully that no one else could get, or on patients who said they're always stuck over and over for IV's. And a patient who was close to a panic attack because she was scheduled for a c/s and was scared sh*tliss that I manage to calm.
Only really bad thing this weekend was the snow. Yep, first snow of the year and you know what that means: lots of ignoramuses who drive too fast. Coming home yesterday, I was behind a couple cars driving a reasonable speed, which for as bad as the roads were was 30mph. I take a divided highway through the country home. It is 2 lanes going in each direction, with a fairly wide ditch in between. Some moron driving an SUV, who forgot that it was blowing snow over a sheet of ice, comes barreling up on the left to pass. As he gets to the left of me in my little light Lancer, he loses control of the back wheels and spins backwards and into the ditch dividing the interstate. I almost needed my brown pants. If he would have spun the other way, he would have hit me, which would have sent me into a spin and probably into the car in front or behind me and then it could have been really, really bad. I thought he was going to flip but thankfully he didn't. I drove white knuckled, praying to God to get me home safe. Best news: its supposed to rain tomorrow and turn to freezing rain and snow Wednesday. I picked up an extra shift Wednesday. Can you tell I'm excited?!

No comments: