Thursday

It's 3 p.m. and you haven't taken a break yet because "it's been busy." Lunch seems like a really good idea but the moment you report off to your buddy two of your patients come back from procedures and they both require frequent vital signs monitoring every 15 minutes then tapering off.

A quickie assessment tells you that they're both fine, but rules is rules, so instead of skipping off to eat for the first time since you arrived at 7 a.m. you stick around and do vitals on each and assess their groins for hematoma/bruising/whatever.

On hourly rounds you discover that a patient has been incontinent so you freshen them up and replace soiled DuoDerm dressings on their decubitus ulcers. Same for the next patient.

You see a call light on from one of the patients whose nurse has actually escaped to the lunch room and for whom you are covering. Their bed is full of shit and they've pulled out their IV so you get the CNA to help clean them and restart their IV which you cover with yards of gauze wrap hoping that they will not pull it out again soon.

While you chart these events a patient family member approaches the nurse's desk to say that their "mother has to go to the bathroom" and knowing that she's non-ambulatory your heart sinks lower than the gonads of a snake.

She's covered in loose stool from neck to toes. Yes. She is.

The CNA is busy so by yourself you cleanse the patient and put up fresh linens. But... her arm is puffy because her IV has infiltrated so you get a new one in after a bad try.

The other nurse comes back from lunch and just as you are reporting off to her the monitor technicians call to say that your patient in room 14 "isn't satting well," and you go there to find that he's wheezing and has his oxygen off. You call Respiratory Therapy to give him an albuterol treatment and his oxygen saturations climb to 92% and you're happy with that.

Your bladder is filled to bursting.

Then the monitor techs call to say that your patient in room 11 has gone into rapid atrial fibrillation, so you get a set of vitals, which are fine but a little tachy, call the doctor, and start a Cardizem drip.

All is well. Time to eat lunch.

Or dinner. Whatever.