Nurses Hangover

Nurses Hangover

It’s past midnight and I should be in bed because I’m exhausted. I’m more than half way through a bottle of wine and I’m finishing it before I go to bed so I’ll sleep until morning. Today at work got to me in a way I haven’t been in a while, when you’ve been a nurse as long as me you get a little hardened to life’s hardships and problems. It’s necessary that you get that way or you would never survive. So today got me bad it’s like I was a student, a new grad, crying my eyes out sad and upset.
I had a 29 year old cancer patient; he has been through rounds of chemotherapy, tests, procedures and it’s clear it’s a losing battle. He’s in ICU because his heart rate is 180 and he’s febrile and septic. We are in Interventional Radiology to check the patency of a nephrostomy tube and also in ultrasound to do some ultrasound guided biopsies of nodules in his groin. We’ve been off the unit for hours. They need him prone. It hurts to move. He’s crying and saying he’s done he’s had enough because he knows he’s not going to make it anyway.
So later he says Dora I need to talk to someone. Tell me I can take it. I know when they’re saying Hospice it means that’s it. We spend the next 3 hours talking, him crying, me crying, both of us crying. It put me so far behind I didn’t get home until all hours; I’m off tomorrow, thank God. My heart is heavy tonight, we agreed that all that matters is the here and now, doing the best we can now because that’s all we have, today was all that counted because you never know what will happen tomorrow. Except I know I’ll have a hangover :(
Dora Meulman

Family Centered Care

Family Centered Care

It’s been a tough few days in MICU, young patients dieing before their time from freak bug bites and infections. We’ve had Lifeshare underfoot a lot harvesting organs from heartbroken families, it takes it’s toll, our acuity is high right now.
Today one of our more stable patients family members were adding to the stress. Sometimes I miss the old days when we had set visiting times. Family members would come visit, stay a short while, they would be respectful, the doctor was God and the nurse was an angel lol. Now we have “Family Centered Care” with open visiting times. I have gotten used to it and for the most part I like my patients families. Most are fine people and I know what it’s like to have a loved one in ICU. (My son was in ICU in London’s Kings College Hospital last November after sustaining a head injury following an assault while on vacation, but that’s another story)  I put them to work if I can, give them something to do like mouth care, I get them to help with turning etc.
Anyway this patient is having trouble swallowing so he’s NPO. His daughter say’s ‘he’s thirsty can’t he have nothin’ to drink’. So I explained about him aspirating and we’re feeding by the nasogastric tube and giving him IV fluid and I offer to swab his mouth etc. But he says he’s thirsty so I’m giving him some water. There’ no getting this women to understand. OK try with some water and of course he starts coughing and choking.
So then his wife comes in. She’s a very large lady and smells like an ashtray. She plonks herself down in the chair and within minutes is on the call light. Can I have a blanket it’s cold in here. OK I’ll get you one. Can you get me some water I need to take my medicines, OK I’ll get you some. Where’s the phone, how come ya”ll don’t have a phone in this room. This is ICU our patients are usually too sick to talk on the phone. (we do have them available but we don’t leave them in the rooms routinely). Can you turn down all these bells and noises I can’t even take a nap in this awful chair, do you have a better recliner. No Mam the recliner you have is the best we have.
Then she calls and says can you get me a “guest tray” they got me guest trays when he was in the hospital before. I’m a diabetic and it’s been 2 days since I had anything to eat and my blood sugar gets low. So I say we have cafeteria’s on the first and third floors open 24 hours a day. I don’t have any money today and I got a guest tray last time. Now I know from experience it’s easier to just get a friggin’ guest tray for this women so that’s what we did. It annoys me I could call my supervisor but I guarantee you she’d end up with a guest tray anyway and it would have been a drama.
Give them an inch and they take a mile my mother used to say, and that’s how it is for some folk.
Dora Meulman