i'ma punch all your damn teeth out

ok ok, so for a time I was updating this thing after every shift or clump of shifts. But I can't keep that up, no surprise. I just like to detail the whole 12-36 hours, and that takes freakin forever. So now I'm going to try to do a better job of just hitting the highlights.

The whole "Chrismas is a slow shift, totally easy" thing? yeah, load of crap (or, as I almost wrote, a load of carp). I had the worst set of shifts. Things were just nuts, playing musical patients, having to do leftover discharges from dayshift, calling in nurses to come in at 11, not having enough nurses for dayshift, etc, etc. I am getting used to the chaos that is my floor though. Before, even an admission would throw me off, now although it is certainly a pain in the ass, it doesn't ALWAYS completely destroy my shift.

Lately, I have gotten the patients who are little old ladies who are confused and want to get violent. I was walking one back to her room, as she was insisting that she needed to go to the first floor, and i got to her room first and was trying to show her that her stuff was in there, and she was out in the hallway and yelled "I'm going to kick your ass!" to which I tried not to burst out laughing. Then another day we were trying to clean a lady up before putting her back in restraints who scrunched her face up, looked me square in the eye and said "I'ma punch all your damn teeth out!" to which I promptly burst out laughing and have since taken to using that threat. We also have one patient who we will never get rid of I don't think. She was the one who spent 6 hours in the bathroom one night, and the whole shift in her chair the next night. She was also the one who gave me the quote from the last entry. She thinks my name is Carrie. She can't remember anything for longer than 30 seconds, but for some reason she consistently calls me Carrie. She calls my favorite Keisha "Val," Onenitha she calls "Lutie" (?), and Ann she just calls pretty girl. And Kara she just doesn't like. AT ALL. Hahaha.

i have had some funny like... trends in my patients. I had a bunch of cellulitis one week, dialysis another, and all guys another set of shifts.

Oh one of the most intense groups of patients I had included (6 patients total):

-4 diabetics

-4 foley catheters

-one NG tube to low wall intermittant suction

-one feeding tube

-2 heparin drips

-lots of pain and nausea PRN meds

It was insane. I know I'm seeing progress, it is just so slow sometimes.