This last week has been long and exhausting. I worked 5 12hour noc shifts in a row and Ben played Mr. Mom. We are both glad to have this week over because we haven't had much family time.
I learned all sorts of things at work this week. The first thing I learned is how to flush a catheter. See when people have in a foley catheter sometimes you have to flush water through it to make sure the catheter doesn't get clogged. The catheter has a port to flush it and a port that is used specifically to keep the catheter in the bladder (it is the port that blows the ballon up to keep the catheter inside you). Well I learned this the hard way. A lady asked me to flush her so I went and asked a nurse to help me. The nurse threw me two 10 ml syringes and said just push them into the port. I was a little frustrated because she wouldn't come with me, so I had to figure it out myself. Whoops, I pushed 20 ml of water into the balloon port. The balloon burst and there were absolutely no supplies for me to fix it. This all of course happened right at the end of my shift so I was dreading the next nurse coming in and yelling at me for leaving her a mess. Luckily it was a nurse that loves my mom so because she loves my mom she loves me by association so she took care of it for me.
The second thing I learned is what my mom has always told me. Family either thinks you are the best nurse in the world or the worst nurse in the world. One night this week a daughter of a resident came in looking for the nurse caring for her mother (which was me) then chewed me out for not calling her the night before at 2:30 in the morning when her mom had a high blood sugar. The next night, I left a breathing treatment in a ladies room after giving her evening meds. Her dad brought it out to me and told me what a good nurse I was.
The third thing I learned is that it doesn't matter who did it or didn't do it, if you are the one delivering the message to the doctor you are the one who is going to get yelled at for it. A lady had a fall on my shift so I had to fill out all the paper work and leave a message with the DNS. The only thing I couldn't do was call the doctor because no doctor wants to get woken up in the middle of the night to hear their patient fell, but there is not a mark on them. I left that duty to day shift. 7pm rolls around and I am back on shift. Nobody called the doctor, nobody called the family. The nurse I was relieving told me not to worry about it and she would take care of it Monday. I of course didn't wait. I called the doctor as soon as she left and the doctor was upset with me because he should have been called earlier in the day.
The fourth and most important thing I learned was to never, never, never pick up 60 hours in one week ever again!!!
