Well, hello everyone! I know I am about 2 months late, but the latest blog is dropping tonight if I have to stay up til the beautiful rare blood wolf moon (or whatever) goes down and the sun comes up! To be honest, I've had this blog in my mind for weeks... I started writing it over my Christmas holiday, but I never finished it. For some reason, the months of November and December were sort of heavy and depressing when it came to my work, and the resulting blog was heavy and depressing. Since I couldn't seem to find any humor to post along with it, I just canned it... This blog will probably still be a little heavy, but now I have some great humor to mix in with it, so here goes!
I am officially a nursing student once again. I started the ADN Mobility program on January 7. My life went from busy to literally hectic, but I am determined to keep this blog somewhat current. However, if I have to go back to nursing school, you guys have to go with me! As a result, you will be getting a mixture of nursing school experience along with the ER stories. I have classes and clinicals Monday through Thursday at this point, and I work at the ER on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I only do a 6-hour day on Sunday, so I can take my heathen self to church at least once a week! I always feel like I drag into church late and sit there looking groggy for most of the service, but, I can't say how much good it does me! If nothing else, the simple act of sitting there and just being part of the group, after all week of just being me by myself... it feels amazing and I am thankful to be part of the Church of the Living God.
I got into nursing because I loved the "mission field" aspect of it, (as well as all the blood and gore, of course.) I've long loved the idea of returning to Africa as a nurse someday... However, as time goes on, I am coming to realize what a mission field I already live in and the sheer responsibility I have to leave that witness for Christ. I feel like I've probably said basically that same thing a hundred times before, but it's true! I don't think we,... all of us in our comfortable little Mennonite bubbles,... can fully comprehend the hopelessness and sadness that we pass by every day! This Christmas season, several situations made this very clear to me...
- My ER sees a LOT of the area's homeless population, sometimes on a daily basis. Sometimes more than once a day... it's not unusual for one of our regulars to be discharged from the behavorial med unit in the ER for psych issues and check right back in for some fabricated physical ailment. To be honest, most of these people really aren't healthy. They are addicts, alcoholics, underweight, riddled with various ailments from severe athletes foot to HIV and hepatitis and more. We all know they are in the ER for the proverbial "3 hots and a cot." If they are unable or unwilling to change their lifestyle, there isn't a lot we can do to fix them... I feel like we as nurses get so jaded and used to seeing these people that we tend to ignore them sometimes... "Oh, it's just Mr. So-and-So here for chest pain... he's crying wolf again!" In the week before Christmas, one poor man such as I've just been describing to you came to our ER... He was treated and eventually discharged. He had nowhere to go and no one to help him, so he tried to check back into the ER... (Before you ask, yes, we have shelters and halfway houses, but for whatever reason, they wouldn't take this guy!) I guess things got a bit heated at triage so security and law enforcement got involved and trespassed the guy off of the hospital property. With nowhere to go, he walked up the street to a local wound care clinic and laid down next to some bushes... 3 days later, after some heavy rains, he was still laying there... He was dead... I don't know why this got to me as much as it has... I wasn't involved in his care in the slightest,...but for some reason, it has really stuck with me. I imagine him lying there in the rain, his body losing every shred of life and warmth, becoming stiff with rigor... and nobody cared enough to stop and check on him... for 3 days! For 3 days, people walked in and out of the clinic and he was laying there! They said they thought he was sleeping! I can't imagine the depth of his hopelessness as he lay there and felt the life draining out of him... Maybe he didn't care, maybe he was ready for life to end, but I can't help imagining that the innocent little boy he once was still lived somewhere in that time-worn spirit and wished to live... What little boy at age 10 or 11 says to himself, "I want to live a terribly sad and hopeless life and die by myself by some bushes in the rain?" This poor man once had dreams and hope and spirit. I still think of it and tear up... and I picture my own little nephews and the life they have ahead... Oh, if only I can see that little boy in all my patients. To look past that awful exterior and into that little boy heart and shed just a little ray of Hope in the dark! I truly feel like this is part of my calling in life! This is just as "mission fieldy" as Africa!
- Also in the weeks before Christmas, I "helped" with my first DCF case... (Department of Children and Families, for those of you who were wondering) We had a lady come to the ER with an approximately 2 month old infant. She initially checked herself in, but it quickly became pretty clear what was going on... She needed help with baby. "Baby momma" was in jail and grandma (our patient) had custody. The siblings of the infant were already in foster care but for whatever reason, our warped justice system saw fit to put this infant in her care. She had psych issues that she was dealing with as well as the added stress of the little baby. This particular evening, the baby daddy had come looking for the baby and sought to end his little life. Grandma came to us for help and law enforcement was called... Eventually, with Grandma's mental state becoming clear, DCF was called for the little baby. Law enforcement told Grandma that the baby was going into foster care, but after some weeping and wailing, she left of her own volition. We were left for hours with the cutest little thing you ever saw... by the time DCF arrived we had all taken our turns feeding, changing, and entertaining the little guy. The last thing I saw of him was his little warm brown eyes and chubby cheeks as they wrapped him in a warm hospital blanket and carried him out into the cold winter night... I pray that his little life changed for the better that night! At any rate, it was entertaining to watch some the most stoic, "battle-hardened" nurses become cooing, blubbering idiots over that little guy! I loved it!
- Once again, in the weeks before Christmas, I was at work and in charge of the lower acuity part of the ER... I was sitting at the nurse's station doing some charting when one of the people in our little sub-waiting room said, "Hey, I know that girl!" It was one of my friends from my first CNA job. I hadn't seen her in probably 3 or 4 years but we had kept in contact for awhile by text message. As a new CNA, I had looked up to her and admired her. She was a lady that had her act together. She knew her job and she did it well. She came in every day with her clothes ironed with creases and not a hair out of place. She walked fast and worked faster.... But, this day, in my ER, I saw her sitting there, barely recognizable... she looked homeless. She was wearing an old coverall suit, hair and face dirty, one leg slung over the arm rest. Her daughter had driven her there and now sat with her in the waiting room, looking embarrassed and barely making eye contact. I got her into a room and pulled the daughter out to ask her what in the WORLD was going on? From what I understood, after a bad break-up and a bout of unemployment, my friend had started making some bad choices and ended up pretty much destitute... she lived with her daughter but I could tell things weren't going well. My friend sat there and spun a delusional yarn about a spider bite that she imagined was a snake bite because snakes are prettier than spiders and weren't as evil as spiders. She had a big open staph sore on her leg and a nasty boil on her hand... those things don't get there overnight. I know something was going on involving drugs and/or alcohol but how can you help someone that doesn't want help? I tried talking to her as delicately as possible but she was paranoid that she was going to get committed to the psych unit and just kept trying to convince me of her sanity. Eventually, we discharged her with antibiotics for her skin infection and I gave her my phone number again and told her to call me if she ever needed anything... She's never called and I honestly don't ever expect her to. I think she knew deep down that she was in deep trouble but, if I know her at all, she won't want to be a "bother" to anyone. She'll just try to deal with things on her own. I catch myself watching for her now, because I know she lives only a few miles from the ER. I don't know what more I can do??? Pray, I guess... I have a feeling that someday she'll show up in the ER again on a stretcher after a heroin overdose. I think about her often. It eats at me a little... What can I do so she doesn't end up dying all alone in the rain by some bushes?
On the lighter side, a few Sunday mornings ago while most of you sat in church, I treated a dapper 83 year old gentleman for an STD.... He came in with his beret, golf sweater, and shiny leather shoes, talking about "some girl done gave him an STD." He said he knew where she lived and that he was calling the health department on her a** and she was going to jail! When I went to give him his IM Rocephin in the hip, he was wearing a pullup😒... I wanted to ask him if he thought it was time to retire, but I didn't... I put on my nurse face, gave him the shot, and listened to his tale of woe. Maybe his discharge paperwork should have been specific... "No more hookers off Cervantes, sir!"
A couple days ago we had a interesting GSW to the foot.... poor guy accidentally pulled the trigger of a loaded 12-gauge when it was pointed at his foot. It literally blew his big toe slap off his foot. He came to the ER on a stretcher but his toe came in in a maroon colored Tupperware container neatly nestled in a bed of ice... His foot was too mangled to reattach the toe, but no worries! The toe was very useful as entertainment for all the ER staff! I even have a picture of it if your interested!
I have a fascination with conscious sedation! We do quite a bit of conscious sedation in the ER for dislocated bones, cardioversions, ect... Conscious sedation is when the patient is given a drug that sedates him enough to make him not remember the procedure or barely remember the procedure but not knock him out completely like general anesthesia. A commonly used drug is Versed, also known as midazolem... if this name looks familiar, it may because you've read about it being used as part of the lethal injection cocktail, but anyways, it is some pretty amazing stuff. I love watching people get Versed... sometimes, it works so fast that their eyes don't even go closed... you just get this empty stare while the doctor yards around on their bones. 👀 I got to watch a chest tube get inserted in a guy after he was sedated with Versed a few weeks ago. The Dr was having a hard time getting the chest tube in and kept stretching the incision open wider and sticking his fingers in... the patient couldn't move but he kept making the worst groaning and moaning noises that you can imagine. Later after the chest tube was in and the patient was conscious, I made it a point to go in and ask him if he felt anything or remembered anything. He told me that he didn't remember a thing... Even after all that noise he kept making! I thought surely he wasn't "out" enough!
Well, it's almost 2 am. I could ramble on for a while yet but I think this is enough for this time around! I still have a few stories from my list to post, but this blog is already a bit loooonnnggg.... I know it wasn't all light and fluffy this time around, but, if anything, I hope it reminds you, me,... all of us, that we are God's eyes and ears... Let's take a moment to stop and really see those people around us with that look of despair in their eyes because we can offer hope, even if it's nothing more than a smile!
1st Peter 3:15