Bad night

With the exception of one truly trying patient I had some real sweeties last night. The one not so sweet went AMA ( against medical advice), this morning. Didn't get what he wanted at our hospital and is going to try another one, LOL. Seems like he tries them all coast to coast. Watch out Pam or Julie, might be heading your way.

I have been trying really hard not to use my arm and everyone is really helping me out but the shoulder is so much worse. I have this terrible burning down my arm all of a sudden and it feels like my muscle in my shoulder blade is all bunched up. The pain is really getting difficult to deal with. Why it is getting so much worse I have no idea. Obviously I am not happy about it.

I have ice on right now while I am typing and took a pain pill I have from my facial surgery. Since that wasn't very painful I decided the pain pills might be more needed when I returned to work and they are.

My wrist though is holding up very well. I am so glad that pain is gone. Wish the shoulder pain was gone. Oh to be pain free for just one day. It would be like a picnic. Maybe those days are gone.

Of course now that I am back to work the weather is just beautiful and suppose to be in the 70's soon. Spring is coming for sure. Most of the snow has melted once again.

Well, this is it for now. Even this is bothering the shoulder from ..... well you know. I hope this is as bad as it gets. It can't get any worse right. Right?

Last night went fair. We were as expected short a nurse. I had pretty good patients though and only one was a heavy load as far as making the bed often. Boy was I tired this morning and then we had to go to a 40 minute meeting. NOOOOOO. I just want to sleep. My shoulder was sore... but no more then it has been by the end of the day. So one down and 5 more to go.

I tried my darnedest not to use my arm but you just don't realize how often you use your arms until you can't use one. My right arm was sore this morning from taking up the slack. When I got home I took a darvocet and sleeping pill and went right to bed. Only to wake up with a killer sinus headache. Oh man it is bad so Rick is off to the store to get me some clariton. I think it is allergies.

It was great seeing all the nurses I work with. We have a couple of new ones, but they aren't new nurses so they did pretty darn good. Thank goodness. Not real good about answering any lights but their own but that seems to be true of most newer nurses I have seen the past few years. You just get so obcessed with getting the darn computer charting done. I really think it has hurt patient care. It takes twice as long as the old paper charting and is not as accurate I don't think.

Take stool. Nurses deal with a lot of bedpans and charting about stools. Actually the way your stool looks is important. Color, form even odor and amount is important. In the old days I would have charted a stool, pt expelled large amount dark wine colored stool, loose. hemoccult positive. Pt had abd cramping and weakness noted. How do we chart stool now. We put a 1. Pt had 1 stool. Then if it was like it was above we go to another place and chart it in the nurses notes. Does the doctor see the nurses notes? I don't know of many....or even any that check out the nurses progress notes where all the abnormalities are shown for the shift. The main page which shows weights, I & O, lab and treatment will still just list the abnormal stool as 1.

And maybe the patient has a stool but just a small hard formed stool. Not a good stool after 3 days of nothing. So doc will look and see, Oh he is having stools. Because it says 1. There is no place on the I & O for more details. So if you don't see the doc to tell the patient needs a stool softener or enema it can get missed. I don't see many doc's on my shift if their lucky. Of course most of the time we get it passed on and hopefully the patient will mention it to the doc. And that's another thing....

The patient will spend the entire night complaining about their lack of bm, moaning and groaning and wanting you to call the doc at 3 am to ask for Milk of Mag but when the doc rounds in the morning and asks if they need anything or have any problems its..... nope, everythings fine.

I pass that on to my charge nurse and the nurse following me and hopefully she catches the doc when they come in, but it is not a good system. The old charting. You could pick up the folder and the information was right there.

Computer charting is good if our hospital ever blows up or floods or burns down, That is the only thing it is good for in my opinion. And when you get really good nurses that get fired because of a documentation omition that is just wrong. You do the care, you save your patient, you get you lights answered and problems addressed and then you get canned because you forgot to chart a rate change. Not because you didn't do the rate change that was needed..... because you forgot to chart the rate change amoung the 700 things you had to chart to make the powers that be happy.

I realize it is important to document we did what we did for insurances, you cover your butt if the case ever goes to court but. the bedside nursing in my opinion has suffered because of it.

Well enough of that, its like I was never gone, LOL. Did I just have 7 weeks off? I looked at the ortho doc's picture. Everyone is right.... he is eye candy. But at my age it is like looking at my son's friends and say, yummy. It just feel preverse, LOL. Dirty ole lady.

Well, Rick is here with hopefully something that will make my headache go away. Darn sinuses.

Work

I saw the work comp doc today. I must have just stopped really listening last time when he said tear or we just didn't talk about it enough. I asked him today all the questions I had. Man, its much worse then I thought.

The tear, even though it is a partial tear is still a bad one. It goes down into the bursa. It won't heal on it's own. The inflammation sometimes reduces enough so it doesn't hurt as bad but if it was going to do that it would have pretty much withing 6 weeks. Since this is going on 8 weeks is bad. Plus I was thinking the tear would heal, you know, like glue together or something. They don't do that. Especially not one this bad.

One thing that is happening is my muscle is stretching out from the tear and my shoulder is getting displaced. It hasn't dislocated yet it isn't in alignment. That is why the pain is getting worse. This is just so much worse then I had let myself hear the last time.

I made Rick go with me because I wanted to have 2 us hear what he says since I must admit to being a little upset last time. I am just bummed and mad at my body. Why does it keep quitting on me? AARRGGGHHHH.

Since the shoulder is getting worse they called the ortho doc to try and get me in sooner. The nurse was giving me a bad time about changing the date in the first place. I told her working nights it is just so hard to get up in the middle of your sleep pattern, go to a doc and then try to come back and sleep some more. It would be like me asking you to come in a 3 am. I am trying not to miss anymore work here. Anyway my new appointment is on the 20th. Much better and it is on my day off. That is all I asked in the first place.

My new restrictions are even going to be harder. No lifting at all with my left. But I am not going to. They will have to take me as I am and I am just going to pray for no problems.

Otherwise I am looking forward to work. It has been a long time. I miss it. We have all kinds of new nurses which is good. I hope they are a good group and I sure wish they would stay around awhile. We just get them trained and.....

I am glad to hear Donna got through her surgery and hopefully is on the road to recovery and terribly sad to hear about Gabi Lin going to the rainbow bridge. She was the beautiful cat of Linda's from Linda's World.

Well, I am going to lay down for awhile. It will be a long first night. My bed is going to look so inviting in the morning. Bye all.

Work release & Poll

I got my release from my wrist doc and see the work comp doc tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day. Work! My boss called and we visited. Doesn't sound like much changed at work except we have a lot of new nurses. Hope I don't have to come back and start training someone right off the bat. I need to get used to it again. I told my boss about the shoulder restrictions and said I would let the young nurses do my lifting while I shared my vast wealth of knowledge, LOL.

It is freezing cold here. From the ice storm yesterday it took a half hour to get the vans windows chipped out. Oh man I am tired of this cold.

I see they passed embryonic stem cell bill which now means we are paying for it. Adult stem cell research has shown so much more promise I wonder why they are hell bent on using what are potential human beings for this. I hope they don't stop funding the adult stem cell research as they have been having some wonderful advances in that. I suppose eventually this will go hand in hand with the end stage abortions. Pretty soon besides selling your plasma for money you will be able to sell your embryo's for cigarette money which I see has gone up another 75 cents.

The government wants to milk that for all its worth. Tax tobacco companies to the max and the tax the smokers to the max. It's like taking candy from a baby. Heavens forbid they actually make it illegal if it is so bad for you. They make way to much money on it. And just curious, what happened to all the tobacco money which was extorted by the government from them? Has any one seen any program directly resulting from that?

I see Nancy Pelosi wants more stimulus money. These people are just crazy. CRAZY. But what can I say. It was voted in. Some people wanted to be Socialists and the rest of us are just stuck with it. Everyone should watch the movie Manda Bala. Very disturbing. It just breaks my heart at the cruelness of people. This could be our country of the future if we are not careful.

And last I want to talk about the religious poll. They are saying people don't want to be religious anymore. It is a dying thing. I don't believe it. Who are they polling? I am going to put a poll on my side bar. Simply saying religious, not religious. Please ask people who visit your blog to visit and take the poll. Doesn't matter what religion and completely anonymous. The more people who answer it the better. I just want to know. And I will state here. I believe in God. Anyone else?

Thoughts and more thoughts.

I got the joke from my aunt, cute huh. Now I wouldn't mind riding a horse again, heated seats when you ride bareback like I used to ride all the time. When I was around 12 to 13 I rode almost everyday. I never used a saddle. For free we would go to the stables and muck them out in exchange for riding the horses. Most of the owners who boarded their horses loved it because the horses got rode often and groomed and I was in pre-boys heaven.

We are having terrible weather here today. 100% ice covered roads again. My son drives a heavy old dump truck and he went off the road going at 2 MPH. They finally called all the trucks in which makes me happy. Now both my sons are home safe and sound. I have no where to be and plan on going no where. In the morning I see my hand doc and get my release to go back to work. Thursday is the day.

I am pretty nervous about going back. Not because of my wrist, that is just going to take time. I am having problems with it. I get adhesion's pretty easy and my wrist is starting to fill up with scar tissue. I keep doing these massages to break up the scar tissue. If it gets bad I could lose some range of motion and end up with the same problems I had before with the cyst. I was hoping I could prevent it. Time will tell.

What worries me is this shoulder. Yesterday cleaning the kitchen I reached up in the cupboard and got really sharp pain. I do not want this to completely tear. So I have questions for the doc when I see him also. I want to know if they can tell on the MRI if I have had any healing going on these last 2 months. Also which things should I not do so it doesn't rip anymore.

They will send me back to work with all these restrictions. No lifting over 5 pounds, no reaching over your head, no pulling. Well you know what. Our patients come from surgery and ER on a cart. We pull them over into their beds. 1oo times a night we pull them up in their beds. For some reason, even our youngest patients seem to forget how to do anything for themselves when they hit the floor. Fluff my Pillow, Bend my straw. And we will probably be short.

I will try to follow my restrictions, but it will be near impossible. You never know when the patient your walking will decide to pass out, or the confused patient will try crawling out of bed. You have seconds to catch her before she hits the floor and cracks her head open. Your not going to have time to find someone to help you. Your going to react. So then work comp will blame you for not following your restrictions which are impossible to follow in the job I do. That clears them of any further blame and your permanently screwed up. Typical Catch 22.

Now I want to go back to work. I like my big paychecks. I have been living on 66% of my normal pay for 6 weeks. Then I pay taxes and all my insurances out of it and it goes to 40% of my pay. I had paid ahead on all my bills and saved money for this surgery but...... a full paycheck beats this all to pieces.

So anyway, enough of that, hopefully it will be fine. We went out to eat last night...I saved money for that also. Did anyone read that article yesterday where it talks about the waiters and waitress getting back at the customers? Boy.... if that stuff happens I will never eat out again. Don't tip well enough, they spit on your food. Complain about your steak not cooked right? They toss it on the floor. If this is true these people all need to be put in jail. I don't want to share their body fluid.

Sure everyone gets a jerk once in awhile, but what would happen if you came to the hospital and your nurses didn't like your poor attitude and did that crap. They would rightfully be fired. I tip depending on the service. If you give me bad service, if your sitting their flirting with the young single customer and not waiting on us, then your not getting a good tip if any. If your good at your job you will get a good tip.

The other day I got stale noodles. Ruined my entire salad. Now I know the owners here and quietly told my server. I didn't want them serving them to a new customer who didn't realize they normally are very good. I don't want to have to worry about doing them a favor and having some cook spit in my food. I will just stay at home and let Rick cook for me. What do you guys think? The people on this site should all promptly be fired. Hopefully they are all just talking about what they wish they could do. If they don't like the job..... don't do it. Makes me want to just stay home and in the long run these site hurt no one but themselves.

Well, I have 2 more growths that look like the one taken off my face. Both on the palm of my left hand. Can it come back there? I have had them about a week. Will show the Dermatologist when I see him in May. Hopefully they will go away and aren't cancer. They look the same though. Pretty bizarre.

Well, back to cleaning house. Ta all. Stay safe. Let me know what kind of horse you want.

Pet owners

I bring Zoey out to go potty, gee, that sounds silly right off the bat. Not paying attention, it raining and cold. Zoey immediately walks in the muddiest part of the yard. I find myself getting mad at her and telling her. Why...WHY do you always have to walk in the muddiest part of the yard, what are you thinking about, now I have to clean your feet and I'm tired and this is like the 100th time I have told you not to walk there.

She looks up at me with her tail wagging, big doggy smile and rummy blue tinged eyes and I feel guilty and silly. Gee, look at me talking to the dog like she has any idea what I am saying. Aren't I a dolt. OK Zoey, lets go in and clean your feet. I'll give you a biscuit.

Now the dumb dog all of a sudden shows a spark of intelligence. Running in to the mud room she stand on the towel and waits for me to clean off her feet. When I am done she runs to the kitchen and nudges the treat jar with her nose. "Just one', I tell her, "and then go into the living room and lay down" . "At 7:30 you get your other treat". She hurries into the living room and lays down by the couch. And at 7:25 starts staring at me with just the tip of her tail wagging. At 7:27 she stands up and lays her head on my lap and stares at me, her tail wagging more. At at 7:30 she starts to bark.

Like a well trained dog owner I follow her to the kitchen where she leads me to the pantry suddenly acting 5 years younger and she bounces around my feet while I get her last treat for the night.

That done she now turns to the last part of her perfect evening. Going to the love seat she squeezes between us and leans heavily on Rick. He in turns grabs a pillow and lays on the floor. She lays sprawled out on the couch behind him and snores in his ear and claws the back of his head while running through the woods in her doggy dreams.

I look at her and rethink the dumb dog thing. I think of my son's cat. Try telling her to do anything and she will carefully sit down, stare at you briefly, slowly lift her paw and start licking her paw. Then she turns, glances over her shoulder as if to say, who are you kidding and walks off.

Dumb pets or dump owners for thinking their pets are really smart pretending to be dumb. We will never know.

Giggles

Husband says: When I get mad at you,

You never fight back. How do you control your anger?

Wife says: I clean the toilet...

Husband says: How does that help?

Wife says: I use your Toothbrush.....