Updates... I am alive!

So, a lot has happened.  I transferred out of the ICU and now work in Labor and Delivery... a whole new kind of inappropriate.  ;)  I've been mostly loving it.  It's one of those areas of nursing where it sounds like all rainbows and fluffy bunnies and clouds, but often it's really people screaming at you, drug addiction, people bleeding to death, and untimely death in general.  Other times it's really truly beautiful and I feel like I am walking on air after a good delivery.  You never know what you will get when you walk in the door, and I say that even more so than the ICU, which is surprising.

I have a medical procedure coming up where I get to be someone's patient in a hospital.  This is terrifying for me.  I really don't do well with role reversal, and not being in control.  I live alone now so I am having friends come and see me after the procedure while I am in the hospital and I just KNOW I will fall asleep while on pain meds and fart really loudly, or wake up and start admitting really, really embarrassing things to people.  I have been told I will be pretty snowed.  If you're in town and free, send me an email and I can do embarrassing things to you, too!  Mostly, I am looking forward to having a couple of weeks off from work.  Things have gotten kind of crazy in my personal life lately, and I could use some time to reboot a few things.

When I have a short snippet, I usually post on facebook instead of here, at https://www.facebook.com/InappropriateAtBaseline - so feel free to like that page.

What else?

Oh, I am slowly making my way through midwifery school.  Yay!  It's sometimes awesome, sometimes horrible, and I am in a phase where right now it's often mundane because I am taking all the preliminary courses and not much that's related to midwifery yet.

How did that get in the icu?!

Read in a patient's chart: "patient had fowl urine".

Rinse, lather, repeat

Patients who repeat things indiscriminately can be really funny. A friend's patient had a heavy accent and kept digging in his rectum. People invariably would tell him "stop picking at your bottom" or "stop picking your butt" when they were in his room caring for him. He would repeat it and nod.

So when the attending doctor came in to check how "with it" the guy was and asked him what his name was, the guy looked him straight in the eye and said "stop picking your butt, man!".

Quotes of the day!

(People are running around all crazy because five patients were being admitted into the icu at once)

Doctor: we are getting POUNDED right now.

Nurse (without batting an eye): not as hard as your mom did last night.

___________

Nurse 1: those things are hanging around all over the place, and you really have to keep track of them, they kind of get around...

Nurse 2: kind of like your mom?

___________

Doctor, to patient: so tell me what brought you here tonight.

Patient: I have no idea. I asked these motherfuckers (gesturing at the ems personnel) to take me to a bar but they took me here instead.

___________

Nurse 1:  We just had to go put a flexiseal and a condom catheter in room 19. 

Nurse 2:  Wow, that sounds like some kind of party.  But probably not the kind I would want an invite to.

A for effort, A+ for execution

So a group of med students and residents walks into my patient's room. The lead guy asks how she is doing. She says she's doing horrible. Resident asks why.

Know what she says? No, SCREAMS?

"My ASS hurts! And it's all HER fault!"

She had the decency to point at me for that last part so they wouldn't think it was some poor hapless soul's fault, at the very least.

(And no, I didn't touch the woman's ass, before someone asks me).

Bucket list for my night, 12.17.12 edition

- had to fill out a police report after my colleague got punched by a fully "intact" patient
- cleaned up urine
- cleaned up blood
- cleaned up semen
- had one patient pull out their own catheter

And I still have four hours to go...

Quote of the day...

"I mean, I would be agitated, too, if my penis was that swollen!" - said by someone who doesn't have a penis