Spring’s Perspective…

It was a rough winter.  Lots of snow, gray clouds and bad roads.  There was this one day when I had had enough.  I needed air… needed to breath in something other than my furnace.  That being said, I went to the park.  In –1 degree weather.

Last week I went to the park with my friend Tiffany.  We had both had crazy busy weeks spent in hospitals and houses, and we needed some air.  To take a slow walk in 65 degree weather and chat about life, jobs, friends and plans.  Neither of us have set plans… both of us are waiting on jobs before we find out the next step.  So we went out.  We felt the sunshine and we smiled.

And where in winter the lane looked like this:

In  spring it looked like this:

When the lake was frozen and covered with snow:

 

It was now thawed, and surrounded by families:

And where the world was shades of gray and white before,

I found the ultimate proof that life moves forward and that Spring has sprung:

 

What a difference 4 months makes. 

I can’t wait to see what the next 4 months brings.  There are so many things up in the air, things I am struggling to turn over to God and not stress about.  I look at these pictures and I smile.  As little of time 4 months seem, big changes can occur.  Things that are the same can be so different all at the same time.

I am getting excited about the changes the next 4 months will bring.

Life is good.  Spring has come.

(part of You Capture)

Florida: Heaven's Waiting Room

The last few weeks I have been struggling through dealing with death. Particularly elderly patients being brought to my room in full cardiac arrest and me and my co-workers do everything we can and despite all efforts, it's not enough and my patients die. In 3 weeks I have had four patients just like that and it's rough. For two of the patients, I had to go with the physician and tell their spouses that we couldn't save their beloved family member. It caused me nightmares and it put many questions in my mind about how I am supposed to react to this situation because I know I am going to have to deal with this my entire nursing career.

I received very wise counsel from several nurses that I work with and also Nurse Corrie, and my hero daddy who is also a nurse (not sure if I have mentioned this fact before). Life and death are not in my hands nor in the hands of my co-workers or the physician's. It is solely in the Master's hands. My responsibility is to use the gifts and skills that He gave me to carry out His plan.

Even though I understand this, it's still hard to prepare a body for the morgue. This is something I don't think I will ever get used to doing and I don't like it one bit. I've done it twice and I can't even express how hard it is for me. But, it's part of my job.

Last night I had a different sort of patient. He came to us as a possible overdose and he was only in his 30's. EMS brought him to us and he was barely breathing but they hadn't intubated him. He was completely unresponsive and Narcan did nothing to bring him around. The doctor prepared to intubate him and since he was my patient, I had to grab the drugs. I was nervous and my hands were shaking because the physician working the patient has a reputation for being harsh during code situations which this wasn't but it ended up turning that direction.

Almost everything went wrong with this guy, he was tough to intubate and even after the doc and respiratory got it he still wasn't ventilating well. It turns out that the cuff on the intubation tube that keeps it in place was blown so they had to switch the tube out. After he was intubated his blood pressure dropped to almost nothing and nothing we did could get it up. Bag after bag of fluids were hung, two types of pressors were started and still his pressure was only like 70/50. I felt such despair and hopelessness because I felt like all my efforts were for naught and he wasn't going to make it.

I juggled with the pressure issue for like 45 mins and finally got it stabilized but then it was another issue and then another. This young man was sick and I was virtually taking care of him by myself because five patients from a car accident were brought in who required the attention of the doc and the rest of the nurses.

I really can't even properly express how tough this patient was to care for and how badly I wanted him to pull through and how defeated I felt. He ended up being in rhabdomyolysis and metobolic acidosis, secondary to whatever he overdosed on. He never woke up despite not being on any type of depressive medicine to keep him asleep while intubated. I never did get him stabilized enough to take him to get his head scanned in CT. Night shift came and even though I would have liked to have gotten the patient up to the ICU, they weren't ready for him yet so I had to pass report to night shift. Luckily the night nurse is a man whom I respect very much and he has taught me a lot through this first year of me being a nurse and he didn't criticize what had or hadn't done and he didn't complain about getting dumped this drain-circling patient.

I didn't leave work til 8pm which NEVER happens because I had to catch up on charting for the past 4 hours. I was mentally and physically exhausted when I got home. I called my dad to talk about everything and see if I did right by this patient. I work again Sunday so it will be interesting to see if I can figure out what happened to this patient after I left and how he's doing now. I am pretty sure I did the best I could and I hope it was enough. I learned a whole lot through all of this and I hope it makes me a better nurse.

A nurse once quoted M*A*S*H to me, actually the very same nurse who took over for me last night. He said, "The first rule of medicine is people die. The second rule is doctors (and nurses) can't change the first rule."

I must press on and keep doing my best and leave the outcome in God's hands. So much easier said than done.

Sharing some sweet

It has been a crazy week at work. I had a patient that REFUSED to leave.  Seriously, they were supposed to be out of the hospital at 5, and I didn’t convince them to leave until 9.  There were patients with extreme dementia who would try to kick you every time you got close.  Patients who had made complaints against staff and required 2 of us in the room at all times.  3 out of the past 5 nights I didn’t even start passing meds until 930, much less be done by then.  It has been like a 2 week long full moon.

Last week in the midst of the confusion one of my coworkers brought in dark chocolate cookies with toffee chips.  They were awesome… and much needed on a bad night.  So when Hy-Vee put their strawberries on sale for 4lbs for $4, I decided it was my turn to return the favor.

You start with a not-sweet biscuit.  if you are me, you start with a not sweet biscuit that has 2 different kinds of sugar in it because when you run to the store to buy more flour you don’t realize you are out of white sugar as well..

Add a pile of strawberries that were sprinkled with powder sugar and left in the fridge to create their own sweet juice…

And cover with whip cream for the final touch of sweetness.

(and if you are me, you go back halfway through for more whip cream because you ate the whip cream faster than the strawberries…)

Then you take it to work where some amazing nurses who all look a little ragged by 1am all get excited when you plop it on the counter in the galley, and tell you how fast they inhale it in between delivering pain meds and charting.  And what started out as a  fairly bad night turned into a pretty good one.

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And just for grins… I think this picture is pretty sweet because it is the first one I figured out how to run an action on.  I still don’t have it all down, but just figuring out the basics made me happy.

(vintage action from Rita’s Coffeeshop)

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Part of You Capture