Theres always someone

My job teaches me many things outside of common intellect and science, the most consistent thing being that, when ever you think "theres no way!" or "no one would really do/think/say that", I've learned theres always someone, someone willing to say "Yes, I will be that guy".

I have to be careful sharing stories, so rarely I do with people outside of the medical proffession. The whole thing is a unique culture in itself. ER's get lots of "stories" and notable events, but the thing about ICU's is that these people don't leave after a few hours like they do in the ER, so we get the whole enchilada, day after day. A lot of times I truly feel as though I am on the set of Jerry Springer or find myself laughing and thinking "is this really my job". The things people come up with is unreal! I know it significantly diminishes the entertainment of this blog, but stories must be left out for a number of reasons. Although let me describe my day today, and this is a fairly typical day at work.

I recieve a patient who "fired" the previous RN for unknown reasons. So my assignments are this patient, A, and then patient B. I start the day with my friend and coworker approaching me in tears because she has to help an awake and conscious patient take the next step in life (pass onto heaven). I still remember the first patient I had that passed in the same condition, it's very difficult to deal with. I then have pt B's family insist that we leave the EEG (brain wave) monitor on the patient, due to the fact that they have their own set of "tests" they need to run before it is removed. Mother B then insists that the patient has pink eye that traveled up the breathing tube and into her eye. Later this same women attempts to fire me and the new graduate I was orienting, because she blames us for her daughters grave and unfortunate condition saying that we were running experiments on her. She was very rude and irrational with me, but I have no choice but to try to be sympathetic. We get blamed frequently, it is a very unfortuante and frustrating thing. I show up everyday to an adequate paying job with a huge amount of life or death responsibity in hopes to help my patients and family move in the direction best for them, whether that be life or death, and to be accused of being the cause for someones deadly and unfortunate situation is very heartbreaking. Most do this intially- out of shock, and are easy to forgive, while others will spend there whole lives blaming others, these people require a whole new set of forgiveness and patience, which must be had in order to provide true heartfelt care. But anyway, in this case I was very frank and tried to address her concerns but then she refused to speak with me, so you move on. But one of the physcians I'm friends with was outside the door, heard this, walked in and berrated the lady for being so rude to me. So this contributed to the drama and lady's hatred of me. While this is happening pt A is pushing his call light so that he can write me notes (he is intubated, so can't talk) to tell me he is having chest pain, well i take this lightly considering last week when I had him, we called a false Code on him, believing he was having a heart attack due to heart rhythm changes and chest pain, well, the guy has a half inch round tube inserted into his lung through his Lateral chest wall, so pain doesn't seem far fetched but hes on enough pain meds to kill a horse. Despite the tranquilizer like meds, chest tube, breathing tube, feeding tube and endless amounts of wires and lines he has coming from him he insists upon shaving. I don't know if you understand how odd this is. Day after day I continue to be able to say, I've never seen this before! So here I am sitting on the edge of the bed watching this guy shave, reminding him to not clip the tubing that inflates the cuff holding his life support in his trachea. Now patient B's, mother has decided to leave due to the fact that she hates me, but not before her daughter started having long pauses, meaning her heart would stop beating breifly, so that went over well, and again was somehow my fault. By the end of the day, pt A was taxing on me because he's a noncompliant, manipulative man who decided to smoke meth while he had an active collapsed lung he knew about. Day's like this make it hard to be compassionate. But it never fails, Pt A's mom calls, and is a very sweet rational lady telling me of how her son was a great kid until his dad died a few years back. She goes onto to tell me about how sweet he was until his dad died and all the sudden I'm struck with compassion again. The amount of emotions we expereince in one day is unbeleivable! I suppose we need those somewhat "entertaining" moments when security gets called, a girlfriend has to be asked to not make sexual attempts with her comatose boyfriend, walls get punched in, someone is caught trying to eat a lightbulb, home insulation, and IV's; family members give you a palm reading, you have to remind a pt not to drink their own vomit, and you find yourself tied up in a family feud, that doesn't involve your family. We need those days to get through the heart wrenching tearful days.......today was a bit of both.