This week is Nurse’s Week, and May 6th was Nurse’s Day. In honor of this largely ignored (well, okay – there are a few Hallmark cards and a free sundae day at work) week of appreciation, I thought I’d tap out just how many hats a typical nurse wears in a shift. Buckle up, kids – this is not for the faint of heart.

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The concept of traveling nurses is a rather new one to me. (Yes, you can spell “traveling” with one L or two.) At the last hospital I worked at in the Midwest, we didn’t have traveling nurses.

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I had a patient on CVVH this weekend. CVVH is continuous dialysis – a conventional dialysis treatment takes around 4 hours and can remove about 4 kilograms of fluid (and waste products, etc) from someone. Sometimes patients are too unstable to tolerate this jarring treatment and require CVVH. It runs 24 hours a day, and depending on the patient’s condition, we can take off around 2 kilos per day.

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Yesterday’s author answered my questions through email and has given me permission to post his thoughts again.

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I received another story submission. This one came in the form of a letter to a hospital. Although the author included the hospital’s name, I have blanked it out here. The author is a patient.

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QFever’s back!

Well, folks, thanks much for the encouragement that I may actually live through an IVP. I did live, but mostly probably because I didn’t actually have it. The stone passed on its’ own about 1/2 hour before I was to leave for the IVP! I didn’t even feel a thing.

Well, at that particular moment. I of course felt every millimeter of its’ journey prior to. So my doc cancelled the IVP, but I still have to see a urologist this week.

It’s been pretty swell not having to live like I might double over in pain at any given moment. Thanks again everyone for all of your comments :-)

Someone please email or comment or something and reassure me that
I am not going to die from having an IVP. :-)

My mother once had to take these weird dye tablets to have an xray of her gall bladder, and after the first one she turned beet red for a few hours. She was supposed to take more of those pills, but they told her not to lest her throat close off from the reaction.

I know that dye is required for an IVP (Intravenous Pyelography) and that that dye is similar to the dye that mum had a scary reaction to.

Is reaction to IV dye familial? Will they give me a test dose first? I suppose I could just call them up :-)

The kidney stone is still present and accounted for, although it has been quiet today. Tuesday was an awful day – had a follow up MD appt and kidney stone wanted to be there, so it started in on me around 8am. I took Vicodin all day long, which was probably a mistake, because then after I awoke from the Vicodin-induced coma, I was extremely nauseated. Even though I did not exceed the prescribed amount.

(Btw, GruntDoc – it was not difficult to take Vicodin while having pain. In fact, it was the only thing keeping me away from the ER. I did also have Toradol with both visits, which sadly did nothing. I had very high hopes for it.)

So, if someone had told me that one day I’d be blogging about a kidney stone to all of the like 10 people that read this, I would have thought it quite amazing that 10 whole people could be so easily amused. :-)

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I had an interesting early morning in the ER today. As a patient, though – not as an RN.

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