Tonight was an unbelievably busy night. Insane, I tell you. My patient was so busy that he bought his own personal nurse, not to be shared with anyone else. If only I would have been able to clone myself…

When giving report to the next shift, I realized that there was one thing I did not do. I did not draw some labs that were ordered. They weren’t incredibly late, or even incredibly necessary (hence my priorities being otherwise) and I was moving and tasking every minute of my shift. The 7 minute break I took away from the patient’s room was spent charting.

So when I mentioned to this new, fresh, on-coming nurse that I was not able to get to drawing those labs, I got the “Oh.” The “Oh.” means “Yeah, I know you were busy, but still… they WERE ordered….”

Funny thing is, the nurse *I* got report from at 3pm had left a few things for me to do… and I do not recall giving the “Oh.” Probably because I hit the ground running. I felt so very behind from the first minute, and am surprised that I got as much done as I did. Who could guess that one patient could be so busy? He actually got himself 1 1/2 nurses… the charge RN helped me out quite a bit.

On the other hand, I found God tonight. Everything that could have gone wrong with my patient (short of coding) did, and I was chasing my tail the whole time. When, at 11pm, I realized that I had to give IV Pepcid, but had absolutely NO available IV to give it in, I dejectedly walked to the big Drug Compatibility Poster that we have on the unit. When I saw that Pepcid and Neosynephrine were indeed compatible, I can honestly say that I felt the light of God upon me.

It’s really the little things, ya know?