half-great-adventures

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Guys 2014 is in two months

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Me successfully giving the patient's mother antibiotic instructions using my entry level, Duolingo Spanish:

Me when the mom asks a question and disrupts my pre-planned script using words I haven't learned yet:

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Being questioned by JACHO…and my personal phone rings.

And because I’m an idiot, it’s not on silent. And because I’m and idiot nerd my ring tone is the theme to “Bill Nye the Science Guy” 🤦‍♀️

Lord help me

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Reluctantly called into work because I still hadn’t fallen asleep by 3am.

Joint Commission shows up. (They’ve been ‘coming’ since December)

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You're fucking ugly like the Cocomelon baby!

As screamed at me like an 8 year old. NGL, I laughed as I started putting him in restraints

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Random Hospital Happenings

Called a code on the floor for a kiddo, this particular kids' second time in a week. Managed to turn off the lights TWICE trying to unplug O2 from the regulator. Just wanted to turn the place into a disco I guess

Said coding kiddo was going brady and hypertensive, classing Cushing's Triad. After an extensive medical work up, found out he was likely vasovagaling. Kid literally trying to die while pooping. My nightmare.

Had a very frequent flyer, that was pretty healthy, get a sudden and totally unrelated life threatening illness. Mom was spiraling in my arms and I gave her my favorite hospital cocktail of sprite and OJ. Closest to a mimosa I can get in a children's hospital.

We had to transfer this kiddo to PICU, wound up bringing her to the same room where my all time favorite primary teen spent several weeks. I used to go down there every night shift I worked and talk to parents while the kiddo was sedated and intubated. She ended up passing away after that admission.

Realized it's been almost 5 years since she passed away and maybe why that's why I keep seeing her mom's face out of the corner of my eye, even though parents moved out of state years ago.

Got overtired after working 3 in a row (which I hate) and became obsessed with thinking through how I would put an NG down my cat. Then looked up cats with NGs at 1am on Google. Rather than just going to bed like a sane person.

Taught 5 hours of CPR this week (usually I'll do 2-3 hours in a month). 3 of those hours were to families, 1 in Turkish, 1 in Spanish and 1 in English. Then teaching BLS for PALS today my lungs popped on one of my adult mannequins, and then my replacement mannequin's batteries died. So I performed a lung transplant and replacement pacemaker. Pretty good for an RN scope of practice.

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Shameless reblog because it do be like that right now. A kid I was really fond of passed away and I couldn’t go to the service because I was on vacation.

Which is the second time that this scenarios has happened. Which by itself self isn’t weird, but compared to the general public it’s weird that it’s happened twice.

Most days I want to tell people, “Beings a peds nurse can be stressful, but so are other jobs. Some days I get to color, and help make Halloween costumes!”

But it’s been a rough month, and I have to stop myself from interjecting into conversations, “Ask me about the dead children I know!”

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Honesty how it be in pediatrics

Me as a pediatrician talking to parents: have you thought about therapy?

Parent: she’s only four days old

Me: ha no no, I mean for you

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If this note left by a patient isn’t BIG MOOD, then I don’t know what is.

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Things that just make sense in peds…baby scale holiday coffee cart

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Did I just buy these for “work” this holiday season?

Yes, yes I did.

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“I’m an adult!!!!!” - I a 33 year old lady screamed while struggling to open my fruit snacks.

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I'm not dead just yet

Life Updates:

Got a new job in outpatient hematology since inpatient was making me have horrid anxiety.

Now I have horrid anxiety about how much I don't know and all the parts of the CBC I've ignored up until now.

But now at least I have a cubicle.

So win some, lose some.

....

.......

Guess that's the big stuff.

My cat is still my only love.

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Preachhhhhhhhh

But monitors are part of every peds admission order set. And as a nurse I apparently lack the critical thinking part of my brain to determine if a kid with an asthma exacerbation vs a kid with simple cellulitis getting IV abx needs monitors.

What I’m getting at is, providers please think about whether you order monitors. Someday it may be you wanting to strangle the monitor with its own cables

A different kind of alarm fatigue

What is the point of keeping a child on a cardiopulmonary monitor when they have been maintaining normal O2 sats during the entire hospitalization and when the monitor consistently over- or under-counts the respirations by like 30?

This freaking beeping is going to be the end of me.

Last night the beeper gods must have smiled on us or we were too deeply asleep to notice but we slept like 14 hours. Tonight, on the other hand, I am getting up every 38 seconds to tell the monitor that my child is indeed breathing.

The kid can’t have apnea AND an O2 sat of 98% for minutes on end, machine.

It is 3am. Jesus be a silencer.

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Have I ever told you guys about the first time I did post-mortem care? I was thinking about it recently.

It was one of my adult med-surg clinicals on a neurology and my patient had died just before 7am (on comfort care). There wasn't any family at the bedside so me and one of the CNAs did the post mortem bath and all that.

But I still had to have a live patient (care plans gotta care yo), so I got an overflow patient who had just had a penile implant placed by urology. He had been in a devastating car wreck several years before and was more than happy to show off the results of his last reconstructive surgery.

So there I was bouncing between placing toe tags and watching a patient squeeze his balls.

So yeah, nursing in a nutshell.