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...
View ArticleWeek 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...
View ArticleArticle 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...
View ArticleAdjusting 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...
View ArticleA 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...
View ArticleMrs 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...
View ArticleA 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...
View ArticleLucy, 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...
View ArticleHugging, 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....
View ArticleWishbone, 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...
View ArticleArticle 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...
View ArticleWhitney 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...
View ArticleArticle 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)...
View ArticleCrowbarrens, 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;...
View ArticleKetamine
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...
View ArticleDix, 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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