Thursday. they flexed monica. and then between me, atoya, and kara we had SEVEN admissions. I left FIRST after the shift at 8:15 or 8:30. I got my two admissions by 11pm. As if I didn't have anything else going on. One of my admissions had jacked up teeth and was just kinda strange. I think the other one is the one I liked well enough even though she got a little high maintenance by this weekend. I also still had my restraints guy (now with a PICC line), and my liver failure guy (still sans IV), and my mother daughter duo. UGH.
I am standing at the counter in that room, opening meds, the daughter is on the phone and here is essentially the conversation I am listening to:
"YES, this is in 2006 at piedmont RIGHT after they just amputated her leg, mind you. like. that visit. And physical therapy comes in, like one big burly guy and someone else. The big guy grabs mother around her neck and by her stump and swings her around to the edge of the bed, so mom hauls off and punches him in the face, yells get the fuck outta my room!, he leaves crying and she swings herself back to bed. -pause, listening- oh, mmhmm, yeah, oh, and then came the bees!" at which point I nearly lose it, but catch my face in the mirror and compose myself. "yeah we had bees in the room, and mother is severely allergic, and i told the head of maintenance, my dad was in pest control. if there are bees out here there are bees in the wall. but he didn't listen, and you know what? three days later there were bees in the whole hospital. landing on preemie babies heads." apparently i don't remember a little of the middle part of the conversation, because the bees incident was at dekalb's main campus hospital, not piedmont. but that's beside the point.
This shift was just awful. I never stopped running, I felt behind, I didn't like any of my patients for the most part. And I know Kara and Atoya felt the same way. It was just like we were so obviously drowning, and neither of them is charge nurse that often, and I didn't feel like we had any real resources to go to. And it seemed like, we had patients who didn't really need to be on the floor who were just bored and wanted juice, or ice, or ambien, or something else not on their MAR, and then i had patients who were prone to file complaints that you had to act like they were your number one priority, and patients who needed just a lot of medical care, or who were confused, and on isolation. the patients who are nice, or don't need a lot, or who are just really grateful, or even the ones who are pleasantly confused are the ones who make the other ones not so awful to take care of. And thursday, i didn't have anyone to balance out the frustration. so it sucked and i spent friday completely pathetic and worn down, and depressed knowing i had to be back for three nights in a row.
the title? that was one of kara's patients, and she didn't reply quite like that, that was just what we all wanted to say. instead, we gave him pudding, a sandwich, and juice.
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