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Week 6, Vacation

I called the unit in the morning, during the drive to our camping site. "He went down to the OR at 0800," said the charge nurse. "Victor* is his nurse today. Want me to have him call you when Tiberius...

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A brief note

Starting Friday, I will be posting new material-- Monday, Wednesday and Friday of each week. Having a little bit of backlog is really nice, but I'm excited to get back to the fresh stuff.

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Week 7, Shift 1

Well, I definitely got the crazy little lady this morning, and no, my attempt at jinxing her didn’t work. But more on that in a bit.My adorable pt with the screaming hearing aids had really bad...

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Week 7 Shift ACTUAL 1

I posted my reports out of order. Friday's was actually supposed to be today's, and vice versa. Mea maxima culpa, and also whatever dude.-------Started out this morning with a couple of sweet pts—my...

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Week 7 Shift 3

This shift did not start well. I gave report the night before to a nurse who has, best I can tell, the most brutal ball-shriveling resting bitchface I have ever seen in my life. Alex* is...

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Week 8 Shift 1

By the time I got back, my DKA/wannabe escapee guy had not escaped, but had made everyone on the unit so angry they wished he would. His nonstop bitching and creepy remarks, combined with his gross...

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Week 8 Shift 2

The new crop of ICU nurses is coming on this month. We’ve recruited our usual blend of experienced RNs from other facilities across the country, pre-trained travel RNs who’ve been seduced onto...

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Week 8 Shift 3

Day two with Maycee. Somehow she survived her first shift and is back for more, and even looked a little energetic during shift change, which was downright irritating for me because I hadn’t had any...

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Week 8 Shift 4 (I picked up an extra shift)

I didn’t sleep well after that last shift, and coming back in the next morning was an act of sheer will. This summer has been broiling hot, and I moved out of Texas for a reason, namely that for humans...

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A night off

It's been one hell of a week-- I've actually worked five shifts in a row this week and am too tired to think straight, and as a result I've almost run out of my backlog of shifts. So I won't be posting...

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Week 9 Shift 1

I showed up late for work by about five minutes, having lost track of time while I was standing in the shower performing my usual morning devotional of cursing, groaning, and ordering myself grimly to...

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Article 2

I meant to post Friday, but I was so tired after that last shift that I fell asleep on the sofa and didn't wake up until 1030. Today is my one day off, and I got about half a shift written, so I will...

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Adjusting my plans!

Okay, so, that week off was desperately needed. I hadn't realized, but I was writing a ridiculous amount of verbiage, and it turns out that writing that much was a recipe for burnout.Plus, I feel like...

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A new post!

Late post! God, I hate working a huge raft of shifts in a row. Out of the last ten days I’ve worked eight, and tomorrow I go back for two more. You know what’s great? Having more than one day off in a...

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Mrs Leakey, Jelena, and Wen Li

So, uh, I’ve been on hiatus.I’ve been working on a few chapters for a book proposal, and trying to get things pretty enough to be useful for publication, but I really REALLY prefer blogging to book...

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A young stroke pt, a bit of fetal physiology, and some pettiness on my part

I genuinely wasn’t prepared for the popularity of this blog, or for some of the sequelae that followed it. I thought a few people might read it, get a chuckle, and glide on by. So I wrote like the blog...

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Lucy, Ed, and Carl Hamilton Park

First impressions, outside the hospital, are predictable. Height, weight, color of skin, expression; handshake, attention span, first and last name. Maybe you find out what their laugh sounds like, or...

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Hugging, Mrs. Beaumont, and the Fat Cunt Guy

Let’s just get this out of the way: I’m weird about hugging. I’m not the type to have anxiety attacks when someone invades my space, although I know plenty of people who are. I just grew up in Texas....

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Wishbone, Leah, and the Return of Crowbarrens

Every shift, we introduce ourselves to our pts, explain how long we’ll be there today, and talk about our goals for the day. Some people have very simple goals: don’t die is popular, as are things like...

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Article 1

Post incoming tomorrow! Eventually I hope to be able to update every Saturday night, but right now my husband's schedule and mine are both in flux. Sunday nights might work better for me this spring.I...

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Whitney the Muslim

I apologize for the brevity of this post. For those of you that follow my scrawlings on Something Awful, I’ve been doing an AMA for the last twenty-four hours on the BYOB forum, which has diverted just...

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Article 0

Hey guys, update is delayed until tomorrow-- we are emergently moving to a new apartment (ours is suffering the wrath of every backed-up storm drain in the neighborhood thanks to a failed drain valve)...

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Crowbarrens, chest tubes, and death on the ICU

People die on the ICU.This is just a fact of life: we can’t save everybody. Bodies fall apart if enough bad things happen to them. Sometimes we can keep part of the body alive, but not the rest;...

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Ketamine

Somebody tried to tell me today that we aren't allowed to ride around dangling from the elbows on the cardiac walkers, making TIE fighter noises. Fortunately I was on a cardiac walker at the time so I...

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Dix, Hamm, and Pulmonary Fibrosis

I mentioned pulmonary fibrosis in my last post. We had three big cases on our ICU in April, all three of them pretty difficult.Pulmonary fibrosis is essentially scar tissue-- the formation of thick,...

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