
Famous last words, right? I say this to every single patient I have when I leave the room after 4:00 p.m vitals. I would soon regret that.
Last night was the night from hell. Let me start from the beginning....
Friday afternoon was pretty rough as well, but not as bad because I had some help. Last night I was alone. Anyway, Friday shouldn't have been so bad because we only had 9 patients on the floor but we had 3 surgeries, 2 discharges and 3 admits, all at the same time. I literally ran my rear end off, but all was well, again, because I had help. One of the patients we got on Friday was a young woman, 11 weeks pregnant and had just had surgery for bowel obstruction and adhesions. Not a big deal except that she was a thorn in my side all freaking evening. She called out every hour on the hour for pain medication along with benadryl because the pain meds made her itch. Now people will say, "What's the harm in that?"
The harm is that you can't give pain meds and benadryl every hour. Along with the fact that she was 11 weeks pregnant, it's bad enough she actually wanted the meds that often. That much pain medication can do severe damage to the fetus. On top of all of that, she would literally whine into the phone, making it extremely difficult to hear her. It was just ridiculous. She should have been on the L&D floor to be monitored, not on our pediatrics unit. We get a lot of women's health on our floor because we do such a good job taking care of our patients. We're notorious, in a good way, and we like it :)
So in the end, I kind of feel sorry for her. Her husband came up only once, and stayed for an hour before falling asleep and going home. When my mother had her mastectomy, my dad didn't leave her side. Maybe she called out so much out of loneliness. Who knows. All I know is I got through it, and I'm off today.
I wish the sun would come out.