angry. i am angry.

I guesss I usually am angry whenever I write on this. I did not enjoy work the other day. I guess I can't really say to my patients, 'What the @#*&! is wrong with you?!?!' Well, I could, but that would be a poor choice. Nursing is a sucky business to be in. It's not like in a store that someone walks in, and then 5 minutes later is gone. Or in a restaurant, a person is only there for an hour or two. Hospital hell lasts for days. Sometimes weeks. Usually you only get one patient at a time that is .. what is the word I'm looking for.... Insane. Attention seeking... crazy... impatient, ungrateful.. I think you get the point.
I worked evening on the 4th. It was double pay that day.. but it didnt' matter. One of the worst shifts I have ever worked. It started off with an admit, which is not a surprise. Usually evening shift gets the shaft. Crappy staffing plus 6-7 admits. For some reason, they think the day shift should have 9 nurses, but evenings... evenings only needs 5. Maybe 6. The night shift most times gets more staff than we do.
Anywho, I had this lady. She was 80-something. ANd annoying as all hell. My patience usually lasts for quite a while, but with this lady, it was approximately 7 minutes. Mayben not even that. I walked into her room, 'Hello! My name is annie and I'll be your nurse! How are you FEeling?'
Silence. Then she just started crying. There was obviously nothing apparently wrong with her. And her crying noise was unbelievably annoying. It sounded like someone trying to fake cry for an extended period of time. Like, ' mmrrrraaaaaaaaooouuuuuuwwwwwwwww.' REally whiny sounding, and it almost sounded like a cat that was unhappy or a ghost in a movie. Then after that there would be a whining noise, .ugghhh... even recreating it makes me want to slit my wrists. At first, I just thought, okay, she obviously wants attention so I stood by her bedside and held her hand for 30 seconds to see if she would just shut up. BUt then when I picked her hand up she screamed. Good god. Shut the hell up. Straight up now. Or I will kill you instead of whatever the hell you are here for.
'JAnice, what is wrong?'
Annoying fake crying noise.
'Janice?'
..........
'Janice, what hurts?'
...whining.....
'Janice, I can't help you unless you tell me what's wrong. What can I do to help you?'
Then she just cried louder.

To make it worse, her husband is sitting in the room and he is just sitting there doing nothing. Saying nothing. So I said, Are you uncomfortable? Would you like to be boosted up in bed? (she had slid considerably down in the bed and looked like she was bent at a weird angle. Maybe this was the problem.)
So I got another nurse and we gently took her draw sheet and said, 'janice can you lift up your neck a little bit? We are going to boost you up on the count of 3. Are you ready? (she nodded.) So we boosted her up. She isnt' a very big lady, about 100 pounds so it didnt' take very much effort and she just slid up a little bit.
Then she screamed. Then she screamed again. And again. Then she cried.

Holy god. SHUT UP.
Then her husband stands up and says, 'you guys sure are handling her roughly.'

Gosh, I'm sorry, she looked uncomfortable so we just tried to help her. Apparently, that was a poor choice.
Once again, i wanted to say..
Okay, Then you take care of her. annoying sag face.

So I looked at janice and said, 'JAnice I know you are in pain. WHat would you like me to do for you? Would you like some pain meds? .'
She obviously wouldn't answer me. Only cry. so I brought her some morphine.
Every time I was in her room, I would just stand there silently for 5-10 minutes until she stopped whimpering enough to tell me what she wanted.
aka, :
whimper whimper, 'I need another pillow.' 'no not that way.' (crying) (whimper) I only like vanilla boost. (crying) I want a warm blanket. (crying) 'I need more morphine.. etc.. etc.. etc.. Then her husband would make comments, like if she was crying, he would mention how horrible this hospital was because we couldn't get her pain under control, and we didnt' give her enough attention.

to make it worse, I had another lady that I was admitting. Another 350 pounder. With an infected leg. She had had 7 different surgeries on this leg. Probably because she was a billion pounds and had diabetes and didnt' take care of herself. When your blood is full of sugar, it makes things a whole lot easier for bacteria. Also if you're ginormous. So she had an infection between each surgery on this leg. She came in and I got her settled. I looked at her leg. It was red and swollen and hot. (real big surprise.) Then I did the rest of the assessment and was logging into the computer. Then her husband is over in the corner, and he is ridiculously angry and anxious. ' you need to look at that leg! It's getting worse by the MINute! '
'Um, yes, I just looked at it. It is very red and swollen. the doctor will be here in a minute and we'll get started on the orders.'
'NO. You need to look at it again. It's getting WORSE. Something needs to be done NOw!'
So I went over and looked at her leg. Again. It looked the same.. . ..
Keep in mind, her husband is just sitting on the couch reading a magazine. Then they randomly yell at eachother.
300 pounds woman: 'AAAAHHHHH OOOWWWW. GOD DAMMIT!!!!!! AAAAAA'
husband: 'WHAT!?!? WHAT IS IT!?!? WHAT HURTS!?!?
300 pound woman: 'AHHH ( moving around in bed violently... (at least as much as she could move.. ) )
Husband: (even more aggravated that she didnt' answer him immediately.)
WHAT!?!?! WHAT HURTS?! IS IT YOUR LEG!?!? WHERE DOES IT HURT?

At this point in time I just wanted to say, ' could you guys please be quiet? I'm sure it's her NON-infected leg that hurts, and All of this yelling is going to make her infected leg even worse.. by the second!!!!'

Then he would continue to make me check her leg. Then he would yell at me and ask me why the surgeon wasn't here to see her yet.

Maybe because she's only been here for 11 minutes. I'm sure it took longer than 11 minutes for her leg to get like this, so maybe you should just chill the f out.
The doctor saw her about 20 minutes later, and ordered antibiotics, a ortho consult, etc. So I went in and tried to tell him the plan ( that he was so anxious to know.'
This was exactly what I said,' Well the doctor has ordered two different antibiotics, one being vancomycin, which is one of the strongest antibiotics. These should hopefully help her fight the infection. I asked him for some pain meds for her and we have both morphine and dilaudid to control her pain, and if those don't work, I can call and get something else. We are also going to be checking her blood sugar more often and covering her with insuling to help the healing process.. in addition to this we will be...
(INTERRUPTED)

'husband, ' Yes YES, I KNOW. (still angry and an asshole.) THey DO THE SAME THING EVERY TIME SHE COMES IN FOR THIS. SHE HAD THIS ALL BEFORE. I KNOW WHATS GOING ON. DON'T TALK TO ME LIKE I'm AN IDIOT'

me: 'Okay, I'm sorry. I didn't know that you already knew all of this. I just thought I would inform you of the plan for now. I have called the on-call orthopedic surgeon and he will be contacting me as to when he can come.

husband. WELL, I NEED TO GO EAT DINNER AT OUR DAUGHTERS CABIN. WHEN IS THE SURGEON COMING TO FIX THIS?

me. ' I will let you know when he calls me back.'

Then his wife is sleeping in bed. She is very hard to awaken. He is yelling at me to get her pain meds... and I can't even wake her up from sleeping. I had to sternal rub her to wake her up. Then when she woke up she would say her pain is a 10/10. At first she said it was a one. Then I said, well, 10 is the worst and 1 is the least. So you're pain is a one right now? ' no no, It's the worst. It's a 10.'
except she was really hard to understand. She was only half there. She kept closing her eyes as I was talking to her. Then her husband would get irate. ' WAKE UP> WWWAAKKEE UP!! TELL THE NURSE WHAT YOUR PAIN IS.
So anyways, he made me give her some dilaudid. HE threatened that if I did not cover her pain that he would move her to st cloud. Good. GREAT! Move her there. This leg is getting worse by the second you know...

In another room down the hall, I had a 380 pound man. Very large. WIth yes, you guessed it, AN infected leg!!!! WOOHOO! It might have even been the right leg again. This guy wasn't really needy... or that needy. Just very ungrateful. I would basically come into his room, and I would have to do 3-5 things for him. Right then. 'I want my table here, move my phone here, this cord is in my way, I need some orange juice. ' etc. etc. etc. So this guy is fairly large, and cannot do much for himself. Anyways, he says he needs to go to the bathroom. He is too tired to make it to the bathroom, so I have to go to second floor to get a bariatric commode for him to sit on. I help him onto the commode. Then he starts urinating. All over the floor. I just kind of said, 'um, I don't think you're urinating into the bucket.'
He just looked at me and said,' Yes I am.' When You can clearly hear the urine falling onto the floor. Beign almost 400 pounds, he had a whole lot of urine. It went under the bed, all around the commode, under the sofa. about a 5x7 foot puddle. THen he pooped. Which also, did not make the bucket. He was too tired to reposition himself on the giant commode. I offered to help several times, and get more help, but he said he was fine. Even after I told him he was urinating on the floor, he refused. So I am wiping up the floor with a hundred towels, and moving all of his terds to the toilet. (which at least I'm good at that from having a puppy..) And he won't even lift up his feet so I can wipe under them. I had to hold them up with one hand and try to clean them off and the floor at the same time. Also while I'm trying to get under the commode to soak up the urine he farts. Wouldn't you think... out of common courtesy... you would not fart when someone's face is 6 inches away? I was already cleaning up all of his droppings. I didn't need to feel the wind of his stinky ass fart into my face. I almost took the wipes that kill everything- mrsa, influenza.. etc... and used them on my face. Then I read the insert that said do not handle without gloves.. and I changed my mind.
The doctor had written that he needed a compression stocking. All of our compression stockings would not fit him, so I had to ask the wound care nurse, which happened to be on our floor looking at the other infected lady. I asked her if I could take some tubi -grip from her cart for another patient. She wouldn't let me. I had to call the doctor and get an order for the amount of compression for the leg. Hmm... let me see... um... moderate compression? Who the hell cares!? So I called the doctor. He laughed and said,' seriously? I have to tell you the amount of compression?' I knew this doctor and I said,' yes, the obsessive compulsive wound care nurse will not give me a stocking without an exact order for 10-15mmHg pressure... unless you want 15-25... That's a whole 10 mm Hg difference in pressure. He just said,' I don't care, .. moderate pressure? Do whatever you want annie.'
oOOoo... Whatever I want!?!? Gosh, I totally pick 10-15mmHg of pressure. So I wrote the order. She would not give it to me . I had to go measure his calf to make sure that the sock she gaveme would fit so it is exactly 10-15mmHg. Holy mother of god. His calf is the size of my waist. We will need the biggest size. So I waited until she went to go chart on a computer and I stole the damn tubi grips off her cart. Jerk.

It was a bad day. A very bad day. A whole bunch of other crap happened... but I am too angry to write about it now. Especially because on this computer sometimes.. I don't know why, I will hit a button while I'm typing and the last 3 paragraphs will erase. Then I will have to re-write them and I get even angrier.
I need a management class. Or maybe just some cereal. mmmm.. Okay. bye!