Before I start this story submission, I want to congratulate all of the 2004 Medical Weblog winners! Great job!

I also want to point out that I have added several more buttons to the sidebar. I discover more and more medblogs every day! As Beth from The Senior Practicum Experience (link off to the side there!) said, “The links on the right of your site definitely reflect an abundance of medical blogs and a scarcity of nursing blogs.” I’ve changed that… when I started making buttons there was only one other nursing blog (Alwin’s Code; The Web Socket), but I’m quite happy that there are enough now for Nurse Blogs to have its’ own category.

Now on to the story submission. Sadie of Foxglove Formulary writes:

I have now been an RN for ten months. I work on a medical/surgical unit on the 3-11 shift. When people see me in my oh-so-fabulously-hip scrubs, they ask me, “Are you a Nurse?” And for a brief moment I feel all giddy, like, yes, Nurse. Sadie the Nurse. (Imagine James Bond music). When they ask me if I like being a nurse, then it gets hard. Because I do- I love my patients for the most part (my husband will vouch for me coming home proclaiming I’m leaving him for some stunningly blue-eyed WWII veteran with a great sense of humor and some kick-ass faded tattoos) and I love being able to do small things to make them feel better. Like give pain meds. It’s my favorite part of the job, other than sitting there and gabbing about nothing, like we are two people stuck in line at the supermarket, not a patient and a nurse in a hospital. That happens rarely, as all of you know, as our workload does not promote socialization with the patients.

If I have enough time to introduce myself and explain that I’ll be providing care for them for the evening before the unit secretary is shrieking her head off that Dr. So and So in on the phone about the patient in 416 bed 2 (never mind that I came on shift 4 minutes ago and don’t know the first thing about this patient cause I haven’t gotten report yet because the day nurse is still expaining it slowly to my darling charge nurse, a very sweet girl who is smart and funny and a great nurse and who will, one day if the day shift doesn’t straighten up, bring a gun and pistol whip the living ..feces.. out of the day charge nurse due to her condescending attitude and the way she talks to her as though she is a deaf dog or something) then the day is off to a good start. But then we get admissions. Because the best time for the ED to send up admissions is 3:00. Sometimes I think they sit there and giggle “it’s change of shift, let’s really mess with them!” It’s also a great time to announce that the patient in 414 is going to a nursing home and the ambulance is here and what
do you mean I didn’t fill out the transfer form? She’s leaving at 3:15 and since I’ve been here for 15 minutes, clearly I should have used my psychic powers to suss out that the paperwork needed to be done. [Ed: And spent the last 15 minutes working on it, of course!]

Though I never eat dinner and run around like a mad woman, I’ve lost no weight. (Not counting the severe abdominal pain I had over the summer which resulted in going to the ED at midnight and getting a CT and ultrasound which proved that I was “anxious and did I want some Xanax?”)

My psychic powers remain weak, as I constantly must remind the unit secretary and the family members of patients, though that must be done in tasteful and diplomatic way.

I no longer am amazed at any pain medication prescription. We have a frequent patient with 30someodd abdominal adhesions, who has had over 20 surgeries and has a permanent mucoid fistula and has a port-a-cath for her seven-times-a-year admissions so she can get PPN and Demerol PCA. In 24 hours she gets an average of 1250 mg of Demerol. [Ed: !!!!!!!] And Ativan 1 mg. And Klonopin 1 mg. And Ambien 10mg. And if you just spoke to her, you’d never in a million years guess that she had that many drugs in her system. She’s actually one of my favorite patients- she’s a very sweet, very sad lady. Some people get upset and go on drinking binges or spend tons of money on Manolo Blahniks. She gets admitted to the floor for 10 days. Then one day she’ll call her doctor from her phone, get dressed, and go home . She kind of breaks my heart.

Out of work right now with a (non-work related) injury. Torn tendon in foot. Accomplished this by walking in the driveway to the car to go to work, wearing “Professional” Clogs by Dansko. Perfectly reasonable shoes, but I still rolled my ankle and messed up my foot. Got a text message from my Charge nurse buddy, who for future reference I’ll call Selena- she told me that one of our favorite patients died last night. A sweet 90 year old man who had the unfortunate luck to break the acetabulum and spend the last 6 weeks of his life with 50lbs of skeletal traction to his leg. He’d sing in his room, humming and harmonizing all night long. A lovely man. “You’re a good girl!” He’d say to us as we cleaned him up and straightened up his bedclothes, giving him pain meds when he finally admitted he had some pain. And then he’d thank me. “From the very bottom of my tomato, you sweet girl you!”

I’ll miss you. RIP.