Heave, ho!

There was a lot of heaving today. I had Mr. Colo again, and for a while, they had him on a prep. The gallon of GoLytely I delivered at 1600 yesterday was still in his room. He only made it through half of it. Since Mr. Colo was still stooling a bit, that was the beginning of the day. One of the nurse assistants told me the boss should assign him to two people. Yes, he should when we have really heavy patients (literally and figuratively), but he doesn't, so you have to go roaming the halls looking for help, as I normally do. Some people will help you (and I always try to reciprocate) and others will run when they see you going down the hall, so they're "busy".

Thankfully, J. was in charge, and I recruited her and K. and one of the LPNs, so I didn't have to ask the same person too many times. J. does a lot when she's in charge. She goes out looking for things to help people with and it's nice. I helped with a couple of orders, but not many, because my two patients and the meds kept me running literally the whole day. I sat for 20 minutes while I charged my cell phone today and ate lunch and that was it.

Tuesdays can get crazy because the docs have meetings early, then they round with one of the specialists, and sometimes they don't get done rounding until just as lunch is arriving. It makes for some interesting predicaments such as one today with Mr. Colo. I'm in the middle of passing my pills to the whole hall to which I'm assigned. Mr. Colo was very distended with gas. The docs tell me..."oh, we dig stimmed him and relieved some of the gas, so you'll need to clean him up." What.In.Hades.Is.Going.On?! I'm in the middle of passing pills and I have to stop, drop and roll to do a clean up. Yes, this was not a drill. Since no one told me exactly what kind of results I'd find, I had to stop and get J. to go in with me so I could clean up Mr. Colo, then go back to my pills. One of these days, the docs will figure this out!

I also had DQ on my team again and I managed to get him up into the shower and he was all fine and happy until we told him he had to move next door since his double room was needed for two isolation patients. (I so love bed bingo!) Of course, he skipped out on afternoon therapy, since he had to make sure we didn't mess up any of his stuff. He just hung out in the halls and got in the way as we moved Mr. Colo to DQ's room and then DQ to Mr. Colo's room as the housekeepers finished cleaning the rooms. DQ wasn't happy with the way we arranged the room, so he rearranged it several times until he found a configuration he liked. He's not happy with it, but we had no choice. The inn is full of isolation patients!

When I wasn't busy with my own patients, I helped K. get a couple of hers up to go places. One guy went and bought a pair of reading glasses. He was the happiest I've ever seen him. He was sleeping all morning, and when he came back he was so alert and social. K. left him up on his stretcher for the evening crew to return to bed.

At 1400, K. got an order to send another patient to x-ray for a hip film. We got him loaded up for the transporter, then put him back to bed when he returned.

I left the med cart for the 12 hour nurse (and her orienting student) and got everything cleaned up. At 1600, I told J. and K., "Let's run before we have to move anyone else." and so the day ended.

Evenings creeps up again Thursday. I'll rest my heaving shoulders until then...more to come.

Still going...

I had the colonoscopy patient again today. I had to try to sell the GoLytely gallon again, and I fell short of my quota (only 3/4 of a gallon went down). I did have plenty of help from the other nurses on the unit to get Mr. Colo turned and cleaned up each time.

Did I mention that Mr. Colo is big? Not just big, really big. His bariatric bed takes up most of the room. Imagine your favorite football linebacker in bed and you'll have a pretty good idea of his size. Mr. C. has very large legs and he cannot help us turn. As a result, he has the usual pressure sores: on the sacrum and legs. Surprisingly, since we're doing the prep, he's turned a lot. We have to get him clean, and we have to turn him to do it.

Mr. Colo finally got his liquid lunch after I scoured the unit looking for broth and juice. I only found broth, so we got out one of his clear sodas until it arrived. Thankfully, our dietary staff did not include red gelatin on this tray. I'm just hoping he got enough GoLytely that he's cleaned out for the procedure. If not, he gets to do it again next week.

Besides Mr. Colo, I got one of my other patients up in the wheelchair and I got the med wagon on my favorite end. Most of the people on that end are pretty mellow, but they were getting antsy today. It must have had something to do with their special monthly luncheon or something. The volunteers served it early, so they were wigging out when I wasn't down to there rooms by the stroke of 12. Eventually, they calmed down.

Happily, I got the last round of meds passed and I didn't hear a peep out of any of them. There weren't too many pills to deliver and everyone was in a good mood.

One more day...hopefully, Mr. Colo's prep is done by the time I get there tomorrow. More later. The weekend's just a day away!

Sobering

That was how my week ended. My patients were doing well, fluffed and buffed, but elsewhere on the unit, there was a cloud.

No, not the "happy cloud" the instructors told people to go to in the class some of our cohorts took, but a pall of the doom you know is coming.

One patient came in and within a couple of hours got his first order of vitamin K and some more elaborate diagnostic tests. Someone was drinking a little more than they let on...

Another got the bad news that he's got a terminal illness. No timeline yet, so he just hid under the covers most of the day.

Finally, I managed to bugger up the med cart. Technology is great, but the instructions on resetting it were not. Trial and error can be your friend, but when you're busy, you just don't want to go there.

Thankfully, I resolved the problem and got things to work. Hooray! More to come next week. Enjoy the rest of your weekend...wherever you are!

One to go...

Ahh, I really like Mondays when I know that I'll be finished with my five-in-a-row schedule. Sure, I only get one day off and then I'm back until the end of the week, but one day off after five on is better than nothing!

I still feel like I'm hanging on to that random Christmas virus I got. A little nose running, a little hacking cough, a lot of perturbed nurse, who's been trying to rest and beat it. Well, we shall see how it goes!

The last few days I've had pretty much the same assignment--two patients and the med wagon again. Even with LPNs on most of this weekend, I haven't lost that. I don't mind really, since I have an easy area to deal with, and I know pretty much what they want after dealing with them all this time.

Bubba has his birthday this week, so I'll be busy getting ready for the party this weekend. We had a little craziness here with the weather, so that messed me up a bit, but now I'm getting all my stuff going. I'll be really busy tomorrow! I'm glad it's my day off!

More later...

OT for the weekend...nope!

Hooray, it's Friday and I got out on time. The boss wanted me to stay over another four hours, but Dahey already had plans, since this is my off weekend. I'm sitting here with a nice glass of wine and all of my administrative tasks at home are pretty much done. That holiday paycheck was nice!

My patients were good. Both got up and went to therapy and got evaluations for various stuff, like Aspen seating. One patient got a new loaner chair, so we had to work with him on driving it (the other had a neck-controlled drive system which was great, except when you had to lift in and out of it!).

The medication administration IT team was on the floor again, because those new med carts we got are actually the first ones for our hospital system period, not just for Madison. We gave the sales rep a lot of ideas for stuff we wanted, particularly for locking up controlled substances.

The big problem: rehab units tend to have a lot of people walking and/or rolling around in them, so having a cart that only uses a simple code to get into it is not a good thing. The company's answer was, "Don't leave the cart unattended." and while it may not be unattended, a nurse may need to turn his/her back. Lots of things can happen when you turn your back. Happily, the bigwigs are working on getting us a controls drawer that requires us each to have a special user ID to unlock it. Personally, I won't be storing my controls on the cart until they do. I may just do like one of my coworkers said today and put them in my pocket in a Ziploc, so they're in my possession!

Happy weekend all! Stay tuned...more next week!