Never a dull moment

It may be a holiday week, but it's been busy! The Hotel is always hopping around the holidays because people want to go home. If they can't get home, we have to take care of what we can before lots of other people take off for the long weekend.

While some of our folks would like to go home, they get sick. One character mentioned that he/she had a transient loss of vision. He/she was worked up, then he had another incidence. Between the opthomologist who said the patient had a fugax and the neurologist who wanted a stat carotid exam, he/she ended up with a quick trip to Washington for an overnight to get all the diagnostics done and issues resolved.

In rehab, it's very rare to have a patient on TPN. In fact, I've yet to see one in any of our units (acute or otherwise) because if you're on TPN, you're usually sick and not a rehab candidate NOTE: this may vary in other settings.

However, if you end up with a chyle, a not uncommon sequela of the infamous triple A, you could need TPN for a while, as one of our recent patients did. Thankfully, no more TPN and patient is working up on the diet list, slowly but surely.

One of my favorite things to do is to read imaging reports. We have lots of rehab patients with CTs, Xrays and many, many MRIs. I follow along in the reports and learned this week about Thornwald cysts which popped up in a patient's report.

Finally, since it's turning to winter here in the northern hemisphere, I also learned about thunderstorm asthma, which was sending people to emergency rooms all over the southern hemisphere recently. Just makes me wonder how many of these sent me to the emergency room as a new asthmatic. My poor mother!

Thanks for following and reading along! May you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving  (or rest of the week) wherever you are!

Thank yous and sweet and silly things

First, thank you Katy Katz for featuring this blog in your list of 24 nursing blogs you need to read in 2014. 

I also want to thank our recent group of visitors from all over the globe, especially a few brave souls from Iceland. I've never been there, but Iceland's definitely on my list of places to see. I'm reading a really cool book called The Athena Doctrine: How women (and the men who think like them) will rule the future,  and it has a great story about Iceland in recent years in it.

Today was a very good day. I was busy running reports, analyzing them, and going to meetings. The nice thing was that work actually got done.

Next, I saw one of our patients today who was put on C-diff isolation. Felt like old times (and happily, it did not smell like c-diff at all). I did a little patient education for this sweet 80 something year old guy and complimented him on using his moisturizer on his hands (which is really a part of his rehab, too).

Finally, the sweet and the silly combined when I read an article about sugar free gummy bears. The best part of the article was reading the actual reviews from customers about them. Since we have some people at the Hotel who don't really believe this happens if you overindulge, I may just have to print them out and leave in our group room and our nurses' lounge.

Maybe someone will get the hint. If not, I'll just go buy a bag and leave them out.

Ah, so many sugar free candies, so little time...stay tuned!

Happy Hump Day

An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.~ James Whistler

It's hard to have vision when the labor is all you have time for some days, when people absolutely, positively refuse to do what they say they will and leave you with the rest.

And do you think it could get worse? Yes, it could. Your big boss tells you to help him/her with the big chief of medicine meeting today. The one positive: you can just send your report, because, in finest tradition, the people in the field (i.e. troops) are not allowed to attend. (Hallelujah!)

Gotta love that interdisciplinary teamwork (head smacks firmly into table)!

Stay tuned...you never know what will happen at the Hotel.