Monday, December 7, 2009

ahhh hhhh sweet

I don't work again until thursday. That is amazing. Super amazing. Not that I hate my job. WEll, that's a lie, not that I REALLLY hate my job, it's just nice to be off. I guess I don't mind taking care of the patients, mostly because 90% of them are intubated. It's just that working with some of my coworkers is ...interesting. I know if it will be a good night or not as soon as I see who I am surrounded by. There are only about ohh... 3-4 people I really can't stand, and I work with about 60 people, so it's a low percentage of crazies. But they are so crazy it's really unbelievable. The four people that come to mind, and I won't use their real names, are: Nit picky nancy, Freak-out fiona, I like to pretend I'm the next jesus, but I'm really just crazy.. girl, and, last but not least, bitchy bertha. I don't know who I dislike working with the least, I guess probably bitch girl, because she is at least smart. This is kind of what their individual personalities are like. ahem;

Nit picky nancy: Nit picky nancy comes to work 20 minutes early and looks over everything she could possibly look over even before she takes report from you. Nit picky nancy has been working here for 35 years. Her sense of humor is that of .. oh, maybe a paper towel. When she has finished looking over EVERYTHING, and I mean, everything, she will come out of the break room ready to get report. (On a side note, for those of you who aren't nurses, the normal person would come to work at the time they are supposed to start, look things over for about 5-10 minutes, and then get a report of what's happening to the patient from the nurse who took care of them. This 'report' time is from 7-7:30.) NAncy get to work at about 6:45 am, comes out of the charge nurse report room at about 7:15 so you can start trying to tell her what happened and why the patient is there. As soon as you even start talking nancy will start interrupting you with things you may have forgotten to do, that only she noticed. Such as, ' I see the tubing change was due on the propofol at 6 am and it hasn't been charted as changed.' Or, 'I noticed that you forgot to chart the 50ml of antibiotic onto the Intake and output sheet, so I had to do it for you.' Gosh, thank you NAncy, You're right. At that time, the patient's lung had collapsed, so we were assisting to put in a chest tube so he wouldn't you know, die, but thank you so much for noticing. I'll chart that tubing change right away. ASshole. I think the day I started there she came up to me and said, ' I don't know if I can handle working here anymore, I keep having to fix other people's mistakes and its' just exhausting.' Poor Nancy. She must be tired.

Freak out Fiona. Freak out Fiona works only night shifts, because she freaks the @&($#% out if 2 things are happening at once. Freak out Fiona pretty much just freaks out. It is a running joke in the ICU to tell Fiona that her patient is in asystole. I think all of the doctors hate her because she will call with pointless information that she is freaking out about, at 3 am. 'He says his leg is hurting ... very badly... and he has never had this pain before. I was going to give him some pain medication, but I thought I'd just call and make sure that that was a good idea. Do you think it's a DVT? Or is it just because he has a fracture? ' It doesn't help that Freak out Fiona has an IQ of about 75. She should have gone to a 'special school', but maybe her mom slept with the principal at the regular school so she could go there. Kind of reminds me of a movie...


Then, for lack of a better name, there's I like to pretend i'm the next Jesus, but I'm really just crazy.. and I am going crazy because I got divorced and now I'm single and 30..girl. She always emails all of the staff asking fo donations to certain charities she is working with, or will just email us motivational quotes. REally stupid ones. The ones that are on the organic tea bags that I have. Like, 'IF you have no fire in yourself, you cannot ignite others.' umm... I don't think that's one. Hold on, let me go to facebook because she has about 65 of them listed on her, 'favorite quotes' section.

'To know where we are going, we have to know where we have been.'

'when everything is going against you, just remember, the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.'

Things like that. Things that make you throw up in your mouth a little bit. Things that are in the chicken soup for the soul books that should all be burned.

On a side note, she has also been married before. That in itself is not a bad thing. I know a lot of divorced people. She however, is somewhat obsessive that she has not found another boyfriend yet. She also sent me a quote a while back via email: 'Single people must see themselves through the lens they have, (freedom, opportunity, time, less distraction) Instead of through the lens they don't have. (a mate.)

I'm not sure if she put those parenthesis explanations in there because she thought I wouldn't be able to figure it out, or if that's actually what the quote is. Below the quote was pictures of her lifting up rocks in mexico wearing shirts that say things like, 'I know I'm amazing, it's because I'm a GIRL' With stars and sparkles all over it. Anyways, this girl, she came up to one of the guys who is single in the ICU. He's 30. Normal. Nice. Functional. She directly just asks him if he's gay. Um... no .... actually, I'm not Gay. I'm just single... I didn't believe that that happened until she asked me about 3 months ago...

'Hey annie, I heard you were engaged... can I ask who you are engaged to?
um... my boyfriend. MArk.
'Oh, I was just checking. .. Are you a lesbian?'
Umm... no... I'm engaged.. to my boyfriend.. MArk... he's a boy...
'Oh, okay, I was just checking, because it's okay if you are.'
no.. really. I am not a lesbian. I am engaged to a boy. I like boys.
'No really, because if you are it's okay. It is okay to be a lesbian.'
right.. it is.. but I am not one . REally. not at all. like the boys..
'Okay, because your facebook status says 'it's complicated with tersea newton.'
yeah. its a joke. I don't know how to fix it. It's been like that for years.
'Well, I just wanted you to know that it's okay that you're a lesbian.'
Seriously. I am seriously not a lesbian. For serious.


I didnt' know what to do after that. So first I laughed a lot. Then another girl at work found out that she asked me that and we accidentally bumped our legs when we were sitting and she was like.... heyyy........ what are you doing tomorrow.? It's basically a big running joke now. So you think that pretend divorced Jesus would get the point. But we were sitting in the break room at work with a couple other people. She was staring at my hand. (I don't wear my ring to work because I dont want to lose it there or get poop on it.) I just asked her, 'is there something on my hand?'
'No, it's just I was just noticing that you don't have a ring on.... and you haven't changed your relationship status on facebook.'
I dont' wear my ring to work because I don't want to lose it or get it full of gross stuff. I also dont' know how to change that status thing. BUt really, not a lesbian. REally engaged. Really truly..
'Oh, okay. Yeah, you told me, but I was just checking again. I really want to let you know that it's okay to be what you want to be.'

Okay crazy. Maybe she is a lesbian and hoping that I am one too so we can go do jesus work togethor and get man haircuts and wear cut off jean shorts that are below the knee. I think I'm going to change my facebook profile picture to my engagement ring with a bunch of half naked men in the background.

Then there is bitch girl. She is just exactly what she is. Complains about everything. Now she's pregnant so it's much worse. Her poor poor baby. That's all I have to say about that.

Guess I can go do something productive now. Like.. farmville. Just kidding. But seriously.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

booooo

Why do I pick up shifts at work? Only God knows. Usually when I leave I am so glad that I just left and I can relish the amounts of time I have before I have to be back. This lady at work asked me if I would want to work 2 night shifts for her. I wrote her an email that said, ' I will look at the schedule, and if it works out, I'll let you know.' The next day I came to work and the switches were already in my box. She just had a note that said, 'Thanks for switching!' Umm..... what? Yeah. That's like me asking her if I can borrow her credit card. Then before she can tell me no I hand it back to her saying, 'Thanks!' But she's old and she knows my mom so I couldn't be like, ' what up bitch... why did you do that?' Whatever. I guess I need the money anyways if I am planning a wedding. Maybe. My wedding isn't going to be that expensive. Especially if I will have to work more night shifts to pay for it. My IPod can be a DJ...... right? Right. Infact, I think I'm going to go look on my mom's computer and see how many patients we have. If it's not many, I'm just going to request off. Is that lazy of me? PRobably. oops.....

Sunday, October 4, 2009

crap

So .... now I haven't written on this in what... 4 months? Next post will be like 5 months from now then. Ooops. Sorry Craig. You are the only one that reads this anyways, and the least I could do is give you something to do besides watch the golden girls, or kathy griffin. Just kidding, but seriously.
I actually have something to write about besides stupid crap. (I'll write about that too, but after the important real information. ) I am engaged! This is also a late positng. It happened about a month ago. Who knew that I would ever get married. WOAH! AND... I just figured out that I could lift up the keyboard from the table and type with it on my lap! NOt that I'm more excited about that than getting married. At least I am getting married to a cool person. Just ignore all those mean, awful, ... mean... horrible blogs that I wrote earlier. I was still in the bitch stage of liking someone. That usually lasts the first 3 or 4 months. I think I just date a new person so I can tear them apart. Not physically tear them up like freddy crueger, or a lion, just mental anguish, (but I only do it behind their back.) Just another bitchy quality that not most normal people have. So the fact that Mark even made it through those first few months must mean that he is Jesus in human form. I probably shouldn't swear in front of him anymore if that's the case. In summary, he is pretty much amazing, and we are getting married on may 14th. Good summary sentence.
Another funny/awkard thing.. Mark actually read those blogs I wrote about him. Yes. HE READ THEM. All of them. Then he told me he read them. I guess that's when we decided that we liked eachother enough to marry eachother. Is that correct grammer? I used the same word too many times. ANyways, he read the blogs and then said to me, 'You know what would be funny, is if we put those at our wedding reception... I mean, not to creep you out or anything.' Then I said, 'That isn't creepy, I'd marry you.' 3 weeks later, DONE. I kind of wrecked the proposal. We were walking out at St. Johns and stopped by a church that is out on a island out there. We walk out there pretty frequently being Mark likes to do photography in his spare time. I thought we were just going to walk out there like we usually do, take some pictures of the sunset, or some planty/outdoorish things, and then leave. We were sitting by the edge of the water and the sun was going down. It was an average sunset. Just kind of yellowish. So after a while I said we should should get up and get back to the car. Then Mark looked at me and said, ' I think we should wait like 10 more minutes.' And I said, 'Why? Are you going to propose?'

I pretty much wrecked his shining moment. BUt, it was still a surprise because I joked about it for 5 more minutes, so I figured he wouldn't do it then because I wrecked it. But then he did anyways. I still thought he was joking the whole time until he pulled the ring out. Then I was like. What? REally? REally? Okay yeah!' What an idiot thing to say. Oh well. I think my idea of love is really scewed from watching so many disney movies. Like... aren't we supposed to be on a boat right now while my tritan father waves good bye? Or, dancing around in a huge ballroom and my waist is so small that you can fit your thumb and pointer finger around it? ( But he can't squeeze too hard, because he would compress my spine and then I would lose the ability to control my bowel and bladder and shit all over the dance floor.) Disney pretty much gives you unrealistic expectations about love, so anything that happens in real life, you are slightly dissapointed. Not that it wasn't a cool proposal. I thought it was. He could have just eaten like 10 pot pies, but hidden the ring inside the pot pies, and then have thrown them up on my lap, and picked the ring out of the vomit and asked me to marry him, and I still would have said yes. (he's that cool.)
Since Mark read that horrible blog, I should say, those horrible blogs, I will write some nice things that he did. He always tells me that I never write anything nice that he does, so here goes.

One time I was havig a bad day and he brought me flowers and put some ice cream in the fridge but he took a permanent marker and erased all the calories off. It was a good effort, but the carb and fat count were still there and I could figure it out being carbs are 4 calories a piece and fat is 9. But I didn't figure it out. I pretended it was calorie-less. So good job.

I lost my key in deer river this weekend and I texted him and told him I was frustrated and sad and angry that I couldn't find my key. I got back to the cabin in DR and tried to call the hyundai dealership in st cloud so they could make me a key. The guy on the phone just said, 'Let me guess your last name... is it wyman?' Um... what the hell. Do you guys have caller ID? Did I accidentally call Miss cleo? No. It was the hyundai people. Mark had already called them and was bringing the car title over to get a new key made for me and brought it up to DR with him the next day.
When I work day or nigt shifts he watched the dog with me. And when I say watch the dog, I mean take her on 5 walks, buy her new frisbees, special bones, and let her sleep on your lap. SOfie loves him more than me.
WHen I'm angry that I can't fix something that is broken he will drive over and fix it. Like the lawnmower, or my car, etc...
IS that good mark? I'll add more later.
Hmm... what else. I will probably increase my point status at work to .75 from .6. Cool story. Put that one in the good story bag. Well, I think I'm gonna go to bed. I had to do something to try and stay up later because I have to work nights this week again. For the 6th week in a row. Jerks. It's time for night nighting.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

oops

So... Last blog.. MArch 26th. That's pretty good. It's only what, 3 months old? That's only 1/3 of a pregnancy, and I'm sure when you're pregnant the time will just fly by. Especially when you get really fat and bloated and can't see your feet. Don't know why I just randomly said that. I'm not pregnant, nor do I really have any clue what it's like to be pregnant. But I have to write about something on here. I usually just write about what is currently making me angry, so here goes.

Most people in our family know that Dan and Lindsay are getting married on July 4th. I think I asked a billion people at work to switch, and they all declined. Then last week, a girl, we'll call her poop chunk, said she would switch weekends with me for the 4th. She wanted me to work the weekend before the 4th for her, but only if she could get enough hours. You see, I'm part time, so I am a shift short each week of a full time person. So I called everyone that was working that week to see if they would be interested in taking a vacation day and letting me take their hours, which in turn I would give to poop chunk. The staffing whore wouldn't just give poop chunk more hours, even though one guy quit and had hours that schedule. She told me, 'good luck working that out.' Jerk. Go bleach your hair more and eat like 45 more donuts. Anywho, A nice girl that I called said, 'Sure, you can have my day shift on thursday and give it to poop chunk.' I was very excited, so I texted poop chunk and told her that I found her a day shift on thursday to work so she would have enough hours. She said it was okay then, so I went to work on my day off and put the trade slip in. Some time passes. Poop chunk calls me back... 4 DAYS later. That's right. 4 DAYS. She leaves me a message on my phone that sounded disorganized about how this party she was supposed to go to.. somebody's parent's couldn't make it, so the date was changed. RIghhhtt. Date was changed my butt. You just changed your mind. Probably made a date for the 4th of july, because you date 3 different people every week. WAngy. Oh yes, and in this mean time of thinking I would be able to go to the wedding, I told mark and he took off work, and I bought a dress on e bay. PBbbbbbbbbb bbbbbb. I should just go up to her and be like, wow, you look hungry. Do you want this sandwich? It's delicious. Then I'd let her take like 2 bites and be like, mm, I changed my mind. I want that sandwich back. Oh, you're still hungry? Sorry, my parent's were going to bring you some food, but they aren't coming until next week. Can you make it that long?
SPeaking of poop face, she is my facebook friend... and my blog is posted on my facebook profile. I should probably take that off before she finds this and reads it. WHat else. Oh yeah, I signed up for a free personal traning session at Gold's Gym. Amazing. And hilarious. For the first half hour we talked about 'nutrition.' Basically, all this guy did was tell me about the nutritional pyramid, which isn't even a good way to diet. 11 servings of carb a day? I don't think so idiot. Then he proceeded to tell me that if I took a vitamin every day, I would burn an extra 100 calories? What? What if I took 5 vitamins a day? Would I then burn 500 calories a day? Interesting. I didn't ask him that. Then he asked me what I did for exercise. So, I told him. Biking, running, swimming, rollerblading, walking, kayaking.. etc. Then he asked me more specific questions, like how far do I bike? Then I said, about 25 miles. Then, the hilarious part. He estimated my calories burned as 200 calories. lol. lol. Funny. That's funny. Okay Crazy. The calorie counter on my bike tells me it's 625. But I'll say 400 just incase it's wrong. Then he got a stern face and said, ' no, your body gets used to doing this exercise because you've done it before, so you burn less calories doing it.'
WHAT? I'm sure my body gets used to doing the exercise.. its' called being in shape. But that doesn't mean that I only burn 200 calories for every exercise. I thought of a really good comeback for him. But I always think of these things days after I talk to the person. Here's my good comeback.
Okay, so, I've been walking since the age of at least 2, so does that mean my body just got really used to walking so now I burn like 3 calories per mile of walking? Sounds about right. I mean, I walk a lot. Especially at work. So my body must be a flippin walking machine. My body is also used to just regular functioning. I mean, I don't know how many times I've used my sodium ATP pumps... Gosh. Billions of trillions of times. So.. Since I'm so used to this, I must have a really efficient metabolism. I probably only burn 25 calories a day. I guess I'm only allowed 4 grapes and a cracker for my daily allowance of food to cover that.
Then he tried to sell me these supplements that help me burn calories by making me hot. Um, do you understand that I am already hot all the time? I don't want to just be sitting in a chair with beads of sweat running down my face. Well, maybe I do. Then people will be like, woah, what did you do to work out? And I'd be like, oh, I ran like 11 miles and did 7,000 jumping jacks. Because I'm amazing. Except if I'm just sitting and sweating I'll feel like a 400 pound person who just tried to adjust themselves in bed and got really out of breath. Sweet. Alright. I'm gonna try to stay up for another hour now so I can get used to working nights this weekend. Bye

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Ooops... so i havent' written on this in like amonth. Kind of a lot has happened too. Maybe I should just write on this more often. But then it turns out being like a chore... and nobody likes to do chores. Unless they are fun chores, like making cupcakes. Of course, that can be boring too. I went up to Duluth this past weekend and there was a lady at the grocery store decorating cakes all fancy and I stood and watched her with julia to keep her entertained. After julia asked me a hundred and one questions about what and why the lady was doing things, I said to the lady. You must really love your job. I can't imagine a more stress free fun job. Playing with frosting all day long. I think that is my true calling. After I said that the lady looked at me like I had just snorted a few envelopes worth of crack and said. 'No.' Whatever. I don't believe her. I want to own my own coffee shop with lots of cookies and snacks and play the lion king soundtrack and other fun things in the background and decorate cakes and make coffee alllll day long. Fanflippin tastic. Sarah. Read this blog and when you become a doctor save a bunch of money for us and we can do this. I'll just win the lotto maybe. Or marry a guy with end stage renal failure who is a millionaire. Word.
Hm. what else. I decided for a name for my car. La Fonda. Sometimes I call her Jane La Fonda. It's perfect. Exercise/ghetto. I was going to name her shaniqua, but it figured i would wait until I buy a big suv and put rim's on it. Maybe some blue lights, and a chandelier. Yeah. In summary, shaniqua will be my next car's name.
I also went to the cities in the last few weeks. I went to meet up with my old roomates from college and some other college friends. Later on in the night, we decided to go out to a bar. UGggghhhh. I don't know why I hate going to bars. Oh... wait. I do know. It's filled with gross guys between the ages of 21 and .. well, 21 and up. Who have had enough beers and usually aren't afraid to be over-the-top creepy and gross. Wonderful. My friends and I were at this bar in the cities.. I can't remember what it's called. We were all sitting at a table talking/laughing/having fun. Then this random guy came up and started hitting on michelle. But he left after a couple minutes. Then some other guy came... teresa's boyfriends friend from a while back.. or aquaintance. I wasn't really sure. All I know is that I was sitting next to little Katy. Then she got up.. and creeper sat down in her spot. He was so awkward. At first I didnt' even know if he knew corey becuase he wasn't really talking to him. The table we were sitting at was right next to the wall, which had a mirror on it and he would just keep looking into the mirror at himself. Then Little Katy came back and was just standing there with michelle waiting to sit down.. and he wouldn't get up. Then he started talking to me instead of Corey. Wang Wang wang. I don't even remember what we talked about. All I remember is that he smelled like old laundry, hemp, diapers, and a shit ton of cologne. After a while I just started to get angry. He was asking dumb questions like, 'how tall are you.' Then I said. I am a giant. Im almost 5'8. And he replied, Do you wear heels? 'Um, No. I don't.' and he said, 'good.'
what? Good. F U. I can wear heels if I want to. Then his friends kept coming up and they're like, 'hey, you should bring you date with us.'
Excuse me? Date? I've known you for like.. 8 minutes. Oh, I'm sorry. I must have forgotten. When a girl walks into a bar she has to leave her brain at the door. Too bad I left mine in. bitch. Then he kept asking me to go places with him. Like, Do you know where this random place is?

dude. I don't even know how to get back onto 94 from here, so if you could tell me that, it would be great. thanks. You can even come with me. I'll drop you off right b efore the exit. Just kidding. I wouldn't let you in my car.

Then he kept rubbing my back. He would be like, 'um, what were you saying?' and would lean in and rub my back. I wasn't talking. I was just breathing.
Then he said,' I'm not trying to be creepy, I'm just being friendly.'

Um. Stop touching me. I didn't want to take a shower for at least another 2 days, and now I will have to when I get home. Thanks a lot. Way to waste water. Jerk.

Then he tried to have me get up and dance with him. He was literally standing up and pulling my arms up asking me to dance. I was pretty irritated. I just kept saying No. His friends were sitting at the table behind us and I don't know if it was some plan to get me to go with them... I am still pretty confused about the whole thing. Maybe the dancing thing would have worked if we were in a DANCING bar. This was a people sit on chairs and TALK bar. He came up in front of me and tried to pick me up under my arms to get me to go dance with him. His fragranty fragrance of diaper laundry cologne was especially strong at this point in time. It smelled like you were walking past abercrombie and fitch on your left, and a huge pile of moth balls laundry dust poop on your right. Perfect balance. Meanwhile while he is trying to pull me off the table all my friends are just sitting there watching and looking at me like... what the hell is he doing? Becca just grabbed his arm and yelled. 'she has a boyfriend.' He just kept pulling. I was actually laughing because this was so ridicuous, and I kept pulling back. I was stronger than he was.. haha. what up. and I said. You can't move me. I'm bigger thn you. ' That must have done it because he left after that. Then he got his friends from the table next to us. And on the way out he looked at me and said,' nobody likes me.'

Nope. I sure as hell don't. What? Are you trying to make my pity you? You just tried to pull me up and make me dance with you in a non dancing bar. You also touched my back. Asshole.

Now I am irritated. I will have to go release my anger somehow. Except I'm sick. Guess it will be eating an orange. or maybe tea. or I'll throw the dog's squeaky... really fast..ly.. Okay. I have more to write about. Like an alcohol withdrawal guy that I took care of and gave over 200mg of ativan to in a 12 hour shift, who kicked me in the stomach. I will do that later.

Friday, February 20, 2009

new car!!!!

So. I got a new car!!!! She.. or he.... I have not yet decided is a white hyundai sonata. With a V6 engine. Aka, i can go really fast.. really quickly. I drove around quite a few cars before I finally decided. I was kind of thinking of getting a CRV... but I kept looking behind me and seeing all the space that I don't need. So I went with just a regular car. I really enjoy it. It took a lot of work to find that car. My dad and I decided to take a trip to the cities to look at these 2009 sonatas with 8-12,000 miles on them. I talked to this lady-shaun was her name, and she sent me this long email about how they do a 50 point inspection on all the vehicles and they wash and buff them and give them all oil changes etc etc. First I drove this silvery blue one. Before I get in she goes- 'oh yeah, and the radio is broken in this one. ' Right. Why would you even let people test drive a car if something was obviously wrong with it? Then I drove another one from her and the car's allignment was way off. After we got back from the second test drive my dad said that the car was leaning to the left. Her response was, 'Well, maybe it hasn't gone through it's 50 point inspection yet. I just wanted to say, Yes, but the one with the broken radio had been... ? I bet she just got the inpection papers back and they said, ' Well, 50 people have indeed inspected the radio, and yes, it is broken.' Needless to say, I did not get a car from that dealership.
After I got the car home I was trying to think of a name for it...polly? maybe i'll still keep up with the ghetto names and go with.... shaniqua? better yet..la fonda.. Speaking of weird names, MArks' roomate went on a date with a girl the other day. His roomate is pretty hilarious. But a big talker. If you ask him a question, be prepared for a 20 minute answer. Anyways, the girl he went on a date with- her name was johnalynn. Before I immediately make fun of her before even meeting her, well, I guess it's not that bad. Lets all be liberal for a few minutes and have an open mind that is blinded by happiness and marshmallows. Maybe her parents couldn't decide if it was a girl or boy when she was born, or maybe they couldn't think of a boy or a girl name that they really liked so they picked a bisexual name. They could have picked a name like Jamie or Taylor, and they would have been covered either way. But instead they went with John-a-lynn. It reminds me of that episode of the simpsons when Bart is at a theme park looking at all the name keychains, and finds the name Bort. Then the overhead speaker says, 'attention, attention-we no longer have any 'bort' keychains in stock. We apologize for the inconvenience.'

What else happened... oh yeah. I had a work meeting. Work meetings are much much worse than actually working. How do people have office jobs? Because all that is, is going to meetings. I wonder what office people think when they go to work.

'What should I do today? Maybe I'll check my email. Ooooo, wait, I could stack these papers. Then maybe i'll get some coffee. Woah!! PAper jam in copier 5.. This shit's outta control.'

My work meeting was on tuesday morning, at the ungodly hour of 730 am. Bo0. The first hour and a half was about showing us statistics about the unit. We give all the patient's and families these surveys that ask questions like;

My nurse kept me informed at all times of any changes and I felt well informed throughout my loved ones hospital stay. (please circle) 1 2 3 4 5

or

'My nurse was very patient, respectful and courteous. 1 2 3 4 5

There are about 70 of these questions on 4 different surveys. There is also a survey that other nurses from different units of the hospital can fill out to judge our performance. Our nurse manager painfully went through each and every one. Such as, ' Last month, we scored 90.4% on being polite and coureous, and this month, we scored 89.6%, So, If you guys could just make sure you're being really kind to everyone, that would be great. Thanks.' Then we looked at trends over the past 6-12 months to see that we usually vary by 3-4 percents throughout the month depending on the time of year. Then we read all of the comments out loud. She also read 9 letters written to employees, by other employees. Like a 2 page thank you note to someone she would just read out loud. Apparently, at the St. Cloud hospital, we can't just hand a thank you note to someone the day help us. We have to hand it to the manager, who gives it to this other lady, who gives it to another office lady, (it usually takes 2-3 weeks) then the thank you note appears on the 'thank you note' board in the break room. That way, 3 weeks later, that person will know that they helped you with something... they probably don't remember what, but they totally have a note on the board. Why can't we just post our own notes onto the thank you board? I have no idea. Another person in an office probably wrote a policy on how to write and post thank you notes and you have to follow it or you'll get a verbal warning. I wonder if you disobey the rule several times if they have to fire you for not following company policy.
'what did you get fired for?' ' I wrote too many thank you notes.' Maybe I'll put a thank you note on there without approval just to 'stick it to the man'.
We had these thank you type of notes in brainerd as well. But you could just put your note right on the board. I got a thank you note one time there... it said, 'Annie, thanks for re-stocking the saline syringes and the vomit bags. -Doug, RN.'
I should have taken that with me. I kind of miss brainerd for that reason. Working there was so much more fun/ny. Some days I miss it there... but most of the time not.
Alright. I had better clean something because my mom is home today. And that is important.

Monday, February 2, 2009

well crap

Well, I have more than 7 days since my last post. Crap. Maybe days I work shouldn't count as real days, because they aren't real life days. They are straight up work days that i don't do anything except work or sleep on. bop.





Work was pretty good this past weekend though. By good I mean at some points funny. There is this one guy who works night shifts.. I don't know if he's burnt out or what, but he's hilarious. Kind of in a dangerous way, but I guess nobody got hurt in the end. This is the report he gave to one of my co-workers one day.

' mmm... I don't really know much about this guy... you could probably just read over the doctor's notesand get a good idea.. Oh yeah, and I didn't get around to giving my 6AM meds, so if you could just get those for me that'd be great. Thanks. I'm out.'



I thought that my co-worker was kidding when she told me that. Apparently she wasn't. Because I came to work on sunday morning and the pleasent little lady I had had the day before who was doing fine and I weaned off her dopamine drip now had resps in the 40's (most people are less than 20 per minute...) and her Co2 was 9. This is what the nurse said:



'Yeah, not much has changed. I mean, she started this rapid breathing around 2AM. When I drew her labs her co2 was 9. I didn't call the doctor or anything yet. I figured you could just call them when you got here. Her sats were going down so I put a mask on her and upped her o2 to 10 liters. I wish I could tell you what's going on, but I don't really know. Maybe we just need some more labs. Well, that's about it.'



um... lol.. what? Seriously? It's like he's the most laid back person in the entire universe. He should probably be on the show scrubs. It's like he's on the show in secrecy. Hey- whatever guys... lets get some pizza. I don't know why I said that. Maybe they say that on scrubs a lot.... riiighhht... Put that one in the good story bag.



On another weird note, I had transferred this lady out on friday, and one saturday evening she was back. Bleeding more large amounts of blood in the form of poo. For those of you that don't know, there are very few things that smell quite as bad as bloody poo. For that matter, there are also very few things that Look quite as gross as bloody poo. Sometimes when I have my period and I poop and I look in the toilet I get grossed out. I see pee poop and blood and then I just think, all I need to do now is throw up in there and we'll have all the bodily functions in a pot. Yes, I am weird. Anyways, GI bleeds smell kind of like a poo that has been stirring up inside someone for a long time. Like the poop wanted to come out really bad but it couldn't so it kept gettign older and older and older and thicker and more concentrated. You know how blood has kind of a salty smell? It's kind of like concentrated smell of poo.. with saltiness. and an old basement mold smell. Very intense.

So this lady with the GI bleed was back. She was very entertaining. Her eyes were always slit open. Like she was continually squinting. She forgot everything very easily and her way of getting the nurse was to just say a sentence over and over again with the same monotone voice. EAch time louder than the time before. Just incase nobody heard her. For example:



Nurse.

Nurse.

Nurse.

Nurse.

NURSE.

nURSE i WOULD LIKE a warm blanket please
nurse.. I would like a warm blanket please.
NURSE, HELLO
(always very demanding.. but very polite. weird.)
So after 5 minutes of this somebody would make it into her room and give her a warm blanket. Then she would say the same thing every time . 'Ooh that's heaven.' 'Ohh that's heaven.'
Then 3 minutes later... NUrse..... Nurse...... Nurse... Could you bring me a warm blanket please.... Could you bring me a warm blanket please.
Then she would alternate that with Nurse.. Am I still bleeding?
or.. Nurse.. What's my hemoglobin?
It was even funnier because she had about 75 blankets on her after a few hours. Every now and then , (and when I say now and then.. I mean every 30 minutes...) she would say she had to poo. So you had to pull back the 80 pounds of blankets to get to her. Then roll her on to the bedpan. Very few times she would actually go to the bathroom. BUt one time.. she did. IT was the same old rotted mold blood salt poo smell. But it looked a little different. It was like putty. MArrony brown chunky putty. There are these things on the toilet that flip down and spray when you put the flusher down. Usually once takes care of the poo on the bedpan. But no. I sprayed the sprayer at least 6 times... and the poo would not come off. So I had to go to the heavy duty pan sprayer. It's in the dirty utility room. Nick told me about the dirty pan sprayer. It's for the exceptionally large impossible to clean poo. You put the bedpan in this metal thing. (and by damn sure you make doubly sure it's sealed tight before you flush..... ) Anyhow, i put her pan in the heavy duty pan cleaner and took it out.. and it was still stuck on there like i hadn't even touched it. Then I thought, what the hell, did this lady just shit cement onto this bedpan? Pretty sure she did. Becaues I double gloved my hands and had to manually peel the poo off the pan in chunks. Never had to do that before. BUt it is true, Every day you learn something new in nursing. It is indeed possible to poop out glue, and or caulking solution. She should have sold that stuff to some contractors. You could use it to hold bricks togethor.
It was equally just as hard to peel off her butt. The funny thing is, squinty eyes broke her streak of repetitivity (is that a word?) While I was scrubbing the bloody poop off her butt she just says, 'Hey... do you guys want to hear a dumb joke? It's really dumb, but it's still funny.' Then the 89 year old proceeds to tell me a joke about a guys penis while I'm cleaning up her butt. It's like we were all sitting at a dinner table telling jokes... except... not. Oh nursing. Hilarious.

Oh cute, I just looked up and all the dogs are licking eachother ears out. It's like a circular ear licking train. Gretta is licking the inside of molly's ears, who is licking sofies ears. Who is now trying to lick my face. Oh sofenheimer.