2 more nights

2 more nights of work. Tonight I am charge. Tonight I get to do staffing. Lets hope it is good.
Be careful out there. We don't want any accidents tonight.


Drink in moderation, we don't want any accidents tonight.


Smell the lilac's and enjoy your night.

Code Brown Weekend

It is true. One of the duties of a nurse is bedpan duty. If poo bothers you, you would not be a good nurse. And sometimes you have a code brown weekend.

We have code blues, people who stop breathing. Code Greens, people who are out of control. Code red.... Trauma and expect lots of blood. Code browns though?

They are not called overhead and people from all over the hospital don't run to help. You wish they would though. Really wish they would.

There are many reasons for code browns, C-diff is a big one. Every 5 minutes some poor soul makes a mad dash to the bathroom, (if the nurse is lucky) and it lasts about 4 days. This weekend however the code browns were procedure induced.

There are certain tests we do where it is to the doc's advantage to have the patients bowels squeaky clean. The doc's sit in their shiny clean office and decide to order this test on your sweet sleepy patient.

You bring in mass quantities of liquid laughingly called...... Go Lytely....... Ha Ha Ha. Sweet patient gets to start drinking 3000 cc's of this liquid about a hour before they are thinking of turning in for the night.

If drinking 3ooo cc's of lime flavored liquid doesn't make you sick to your stomach, "loosely 3/4's of the patients do get sick to their stomach", the next 6 to 8 hours will make you turn green. Sleep is out of the question.

If the nurse is lucky the patient will make it to the restroom and you just give lots of sympathy. If your unlucky, "like I was this weekend" the patient soils the bed.. Every 5 minutes. Sometimes as soon as you turn the patient back onto the clean linen. All night long. And if your really lucky you have 2 patients that are getting prepped and neither of them can make it to the bathroom. Meaning your changing their beds every 2 minutes average. Plus when they are not missing the bedpan they are throwing up all over.

Now add in the fact that after 12.5 hours of your shift if they are still passing stuff that isn't as clear as the stuff that comes out of faucets you get to give them enema's. Big enema's. Til clear enema's. So over the weekend out of my 4 12.5 hour nights I had 3 nights I did this for the lucky patients. I gave 9 enema's this weekend. I changed beds an estimate of 300 times. And while I was giving one patient an enema the confused lady in the bed next door pulled off her colostomy bag and her bowels which had been sleeping since surgery decided to start working again and there was code brown all over the room.

So...... If anyone out there thinks nurses don't earn the pay we get. If anyone out there wants to change jobs. If anyone out there thinks they might like to be a nurse. Make sure code browns don't bother you. Because as they say.... S--t happens. Often.

By the way, how does a partially torn rotator cuff handle a weekend like this. Not very well.

Mad at the Christian Children's Fund.

The Christian Children's fund announced today they were dropping the Christian from their name, it was to hard to get funding with Christian in the name. What a bunch of hypocrites. What would Christ do? Not that. Will they get any money from me? Not anymore.

Mother's Day flowers

My son gave me these, aren't they pretty on the love seat.

Why Mothers Cry

Why Mothers Cry...

"Why are you crying?" he asked his mom.

"Because I'm a mother," she told him.

"I don't understand," he said. His mom just hugged him and said, "You never will!" Later the little boy asked his father why Mother seemed to cry for no reason.

"All mothers cry for no reason," was all his dad could say.

The little boy grew up and became a man, still wondering why mothers cry. So he finally put in a call to God and when God got on the phone the man said, "God, why do mothers cry so easily."

God said, "You see son, when I made mothers they had to be special. I made their shoulders strong enough to carry the weight of the world, yet gentle enough to give comfort. I gave them an inner strength to endure childbirth and the rejection that many times come from their children.

"I gave them a hardiness that allows them to keep going when everyone else gives up, and to take care of their families through sickness and fatigue without complaining.

"I gave them the sensitivity to love their children under all circumstances, even when their child has hurt them very badly. This same sensitivity helps them to make a child's boo-boo feel better and helps them share a teenager's anxieties and fears.

"I gave them a tear to shed. It's theirs exclusively to use whenever it's needed. It's their only weakness. It's a tear for mankind."


Best Wishes for Mothers Day!.

Awesome shot

When the lightning flashes, this is NOT what you want to see.

THIS IS A PICTURE THAT SOMEONE TOOK WHO WORKS ON AN OIL RIG. HE WAS GOING TO TAKE A PICTURE OF THE LIGHTNING AND WAS UNAWARE OF THE TORNADO UNTIL THE LIGHTNING ILLUMINATED IT.

This is a one-in-a-million photo...............


At least this is what it said in the email I got.

The last two nights at work have been brutal. The admits have been pouring in. Not just heart admits, it seems since we went self staffing we have become the official overflow floor. I have been taking care of patients having their appendix out, bowel resections, cancer, GI bleeds, you name it. Now to me a patient is a patient. They all need my care. But, we were so full last night we wouldn't have had room for a heart patient. And they can't just go to any old floor. They come to us or they go to ICU.

I have a underlying feeling these days I had better just be glad to have my job. The health care industry is going to go through some major changes and it isn't going to ever be the same. It needed changes, don't get me wrong. But that is not the changes that it is undergoing. I actually suspect we will be seeing less patients as more and more patients are not going to be treated as aggressively for some problems. And more and more people are not going to be able to afford the cost.

Hospitals and doctors offices are starting to ask for the deductible to be paid up front. Before the treatment. I was asked when I walked in for my last surgery if I wanted to. Now it was a choice. Soon it will be a part of the admission. No money, no treatment. It is that way in some countries already. Are you all ready for a rainy day.

Anyway. We ran our behinds off last night. I had preps to do, confused patients, very very ill patients and still all that charting. This would be a great job if we didn't have to do all that darn charting. I wish some days I could just say.... trust me, I did everything I was suppose to, LOL. And if I didn't have to write it all down I could do even more then I was suppose to.

Patients and families will walk by the desk and to them we all look like we are just sitting on our butts having a good ole time. Actually we are typing madly away trying to document every thing in the 100 places it needs to be documented to prove we are capable of doing our job and did everything that the patient needed. And it takes forever. Way slower then when we wrote it out. It takes so much time away from the patients themselves. Why can't we just dictate into a recorder and have it all recorded that way.

The smelly stuff is working great. I still have all my flowers. The deer came to the edge of the woods and stopped in their tracks. I could see them smelling the air. Looking around, nervous. What was that smell, what strange creature. Then they turned around. I will miss them but my shrubs and flowers will finally be able to grow in peace. The rabbits have been leaving them alone and I saw a butterfly on a blossom so thankfully they still find it attractive.

Well, time to close. We are making quesadilla's tonight for our mother's day pot luck. Yummy. I have chicken I have cooked all day that needs to be shredded and tomatoes to cut, onions to chop. We probably won't get time to eat LOL ...but if we do it is there.

Happy mothers day to you all out there.