We made pickles!

Our lovely dill pickles with mustard seed. So easy, so fun, can't wait to bust into the first jar! I like food I have to wait for. We are so used to instant gratification but food is so much more satisfying when it has a history. Like a slow cooked meal that takes all day to cook and you get to smell it everytime you walk in the house. It just tastes ten times better....

Gettin' ready for the big initiation!

Last Wednesday I woke up to get ready for work and I had a feeling. I grabbed my stethoscope and my EKG quick reference guide and stuck them in my back pack. Sure enough, when I got to the hospital I was told the ER charge nurse wanted to see me. They were short staffed and asked if I could fill in. I usually work in the urgent care area and have never really been "trained" to work in the main ER. I was nervous of course. They deal with critical patients, I usually deal with sprained ankles and lacerations. But, I'm a realistic gal and I know that it's time for me to step things up. I accepted!

They gave me four rooms to take care of. Luckily not the trauma bay or the chest pain/stroke rooms. It started out kinda slow so I was able to ease in gradually and find my way around. I think sometimes we take our regular job for granted: how easy we find things, how we just automatically know where to grab for things without actually thinking about it. Another FABULOUS part was that I had a secretary to put in all the orders for me, make phone calls, copy shit. What a load off! I also had at my fingertips a tech who did all the EKG's, hooked patients up to the monitors, and did vital signs. And volunteers who brought patients' blankets, water, food, the phone, answered questions... Wow! And to top it all off a charge nurse who had no patient's of her own, she was just there to lend a hand, a float nurse who also could lend a hand, and 5 other RN's as backup. There were Physician assistant's (PA) seeing patients and easing the doc's workload. AMAZING! All I had to do was focus on my nursing skills and assessment. (What a concept!)

I jumped in to help other nurses, I especially wanted to get my feet wet in Room 2 (the trauma room), and help with the really critical patients. How can you go wrong when you've got so much help and support around you? I helped stabilize a septic patient who ended having 7 or 8 attempts at intubation that lasted over an hour. He never coded but in my selfishness I kinda wish he had so that I could've assisted. It was sooo cool to see the teamwork of the whole ER team: nurses, techs, RT's, PA's, MD's, secretaries.... You can't save a person's life if one of these elements are missing.

So, I'm doing an actual preceptorship shift on Monday where I will follow an experienced nurse and have her teach me the ropes. (Thank you Tina!) I asked them to give me the hardest "pod" so that I may see and experience as much as I can. (Check future blogs for my complaints on how I went down in flames and how much working in the ER sucks...)

So kudos to all you ER nurses/docs/PA's/techs/secretaries/volunteers that do this everyday. I'm impressed, awed, and bow down at your feet.

Hubby's got a bliggety-blog!

Check out Noah at:

http://figsandconfit.blogspot.com

By the way...

Oh, by the way, if you are going to bitch slap your 67 year old wife, wait until you get home and don't do it in front of a bunch of ER nurses...

Aaahhh... wine country!!

Spent a fabulous day/night in the Santa Ynez valley north of Santa Barbara doing wine tasting by myself. I had so much fun!! I drove up the Pacific Coast Highway on Sunday morning to the 101 past Santa Barbara and then up the 154 to Santa Ynez/Solvang. Cranking the tunes, singing at the top of my lungs, the ocean a constant companion to my left. I did some wine tasting at a couple of wineries before I checked into my hotel. At Sunstone winery I ran into a girl I went to high school with and we sat in the sun, sipped wine, and chatted for almost two hours. She is also a nurse and was visiting the area with her boyfriend. So good to see you Heather! I really enjoyed our time together!

75 degrees perfect, lavender was in full bloom...

Met some friendly locals at The Hitching Post while eating steamed artichokes and grilled quail...

Checked out the vintage motorcycle museum (dreamy sigh)...

Loved my hotel room with the fireplace, a glass of local wine, and fresh out of the hot tub...

And spent the next day dining and wining in Los Olivos...


I LOVE to travel by myself! Of course it would have been so much more fun with Noah but I enjoyed the interaction with people and the feeling of independence of exploring a new place all by myself. I brought home a lot of bottles of wine to share with stories behind each one.

The Swine flu..

I've been a nurse for over 5 years and I got my first patient complaint.  Over the swine flu.  This patient said, and I quote, that I was "the worst nurse of all time".  WOW!  Of all time...  That is saying something since there has been nurses in this world since who knows when.  And I'm sure that the nurses that have gone to jail for murdering people are pretty bad, sooo...

Here is how it went down:  This woman came in complaining of fever, headache, general malaise, etc.  She looked miserable.  I was sure she was sick.  I asked her if she had taken Tylenol for her fever.  I rechecked her temp.  I brought her water.  The problem was that she was convinced she had swine flu.  I took a nasal swab that tests for Influenza A.  If the swab is positive for flu A then we send a second swab to the Public Health department so they can test if for swine flu.  Her nasal swab was negative.  Which means she does not have the flu, let alone the dreaded swine flu.  (BTW we haven't had any positive flu swabs at our hospital yet.)  For some reason this woman was still convinced she had swine flu.  She demanded Tamiflu.  I told the MD that the patient had a lot of questions that I couldn't answer, that she was demanding Tamiflu and I felt the doc should go talk to the patient.  Instead the doctor just handed me a prescription for Tamiflu to give to the patient.  So I went into the room (for the twentieth time) and gave her the prescription.  "Are you going to fill this for me?" I told her we could not but that she could get it filled at any pharmacy.  She said, "No pharmacies carry this.  This prescription is useless!"  She threw the prescription on the floor.  At this point, I had had it!  I told her "You are right!  The prescription IS useless!  Because you don't have the flu!!!"  I went on a tirade about how the media is causing hysteria and that if she educated herself then she wouldn't be so anxious.  I told her that if the media covered the 36,000 deaths a year from regular influenza we would be in a panic every winter.  I further went on to tell her that she should get over herself, I was sorry she felt bad but she would get better and she wasn't going to die.  (Pant, pant)

Oopsie!

The NEXT DAY I got called in to my supervisors office.  The woman had written a scathing complaint letter.   She claimed that I had called her a bitch to the other nurses.  My supervisor asked, "Did you say something to the other nurses?"  I couldn't remember.  I might have.  I've called a lot of patients bitches under my breath.  Did I this time?  I really couldn't remember.  

The best part was that I was given the opportunity to read the letter that was sent back to her.  It was written by the MD that runs the ER.  He didn't even mention me in the letter.  He told her that she was given "the standard of care" by the ER.  He did not play into her hysteria, thank god.  I feel bad that I lost my cool but this guy had my back!  

Is there a patron saint of nursing?  Because I need someone to have faith in when I am tested by these people....

ER shorts...

It's a true symbol of burn-out when I stopped finding my day-to-day interactions in the ER amusing just down right annoying.  And I stopped writing about them because they have become so commonplace that I seem to no longer find them bizarre.  But all the medical "professionals" out there know that we see people at their worst/best/confused/angry/etc. and how could that ever become boring??  A random sample:

A 30 something woman came in saying she had "lost" her tampon and could we get it out for her. I think I've said this before but the vaginal canal is a cul-de-sac and things don't get lost.  I think people are not comfortable enough with their bodies to explore them when something is wrong. Stick  your finger up your vag and feel if anything is there!!  Save yourself $500 bucks...  By the way, we looked and found no lost tampon or remote or anything else...

A woman came in BY AMBULANCE for a toothache she had for 2 weeks.  A toothache.  Let's picture how this happened:  Wow, my tooth has been hurting for 2 weeks now!  I've had it! (Beep-boop-boop: calling 911)  Hi, 911?  My EMERGENCY is that my tooth hurts.  Can you send out some highly trained professionals in an expensive am-boo-lance to pick me up?  No I'm not bleeding to death.  No I don't have chest pain.  Yes I'm breathing fine.  Can someone come get me?  My tooth hurts too much to drive myself.  I'm with a friend.  Can she come?

I'm not kidding.  We gave her pain meds and then she asked us if we could pay for a cab home for her and her friend.  And she wanted us to order her dinner (doesn't your tooth hurt?) and give her socks.  Oh, this was her third visit for the same reason in the last 2 weeks.  

A frequent flier/drug seeker smoked a cigarette in the bathroom.  Thank god he didn't smoke it in the exam room.  All that oxygen flowing from the walls?  BOOM!

I am so over the stupidity....