Hoo, do I love vacation days.

First off- HELLOOOOOOOOO LINA!

So today I finally got to clean the apartment. Well, some of it. The back room is still repulsive, but I scrubbed and organized everything that wasn't nailed down Now, if I only had a kitchen table...

(G. Monkey moved out, and I gave her kitchen table back. I'm just waiting to get my mom's old table from her house. )

I also treated myself for making it through the semester (and the de-funking of the apartment) by taking a bunch of books to the book rack to sell- and get NEW ones of course. Then lunch/supper from 5 Guys to round out the day.

Tonight, I study math for Friday's final, tomorrow we decorate my mom's tree, and I'll leave you with my train wreck story for this entry... I feel really bad for the nurse who had this patient- she's new.

So.

Guy is intubated at the beginning of the shift. Not that he was JUST intubated, but he's chillin' on the vent when I get there. We have to dash him down to someplace where they wear lead vests for somethingorother as soon as I get there. So I quick get his vitals, but get hung up on his temp. (Oral, axillary, nothin' doing.) I figure I'll get it when I come back upstairs.

Should I mention that we discover that he's had a giant C-diffy poop on the way down to lead-vestville? Yeah.

So, we get him upstairs after whatever he had done, clean him up, settle him in, and I try AGAIN to get a temp. Nothing doing. I try every piece of thermometer-fu in my arsenal, because it's personal now. I've never been unable to get a temp on someone. After about 10 tries in various orifices and folds, even trying THREE different thermometers, I ask the nurse to take over for me. And SHE can't get it. So she gets another nurse who has his black belt in thermometer fu, and even he couldn't get it. (at least I feel a little better now.)

So we hold off on the temp for a moment, because I check his blood sugar and it's 29. (Anything below 70 and the nurses get a little feisty...) And it's not like I can feed this guy the revolting sugar gel we give folks with low blood sugar. So... no temp, sugar's 29... what else can go wrong?

Funny you should ask... this is about the time he decides to play Houdini. He's got his arms in restraints- pretty low down too- no WAY this guy is getting his hands anywhere near his bellybutton, much less his face. So of course, he manages to extubate himself. We pull anesthesia out of a case to come up and reintubate the guy, but while they're on the way, we notice... "Gee, his O2 is ok. He's breathing fine. Maybe he doesn't need the tube..." I don't think anesthesia loved us for running them up for nothing, but...

So lets recap so far:
1. the man's got no temperature sensible by any modern thermometer-type device.
2. His sugar's out of whack.
3. He has managed to extubate himself.


So eventually, he ends up with a thermister foley (basically, a catheter with a thermometer in it, that's awesome for getting temps on A. really cold people, B. people who can't handle thermometers in their mouths, or C. THIS guy.) And it's STILL not reading anything from the realm of reality. Alternately it reads 66 degrees and 92 degrees (which I'm more inclined to believe). sheesh.

So we bundle him up in a bear-hugger blanket (imagine if an electric blanket had a threesome with a hoover upright and an air mattress) and heat the poor guy up. THIS is when he wakes up some more, and proceeds to illustrate how out of touch with reality he is. (Not bad, if you're quiet about it. He? Was not.)

So now we can add 4. Confused as shit to the list.

By the time i left, his temp came back up to something approaching the outskirts of normal-ish. (95). I still felt really bad for his nurse. And that? Is a pretty standard night. Though usually all that crap is spread out over 4 patients, instead of all in one.


And I just heard that Ike Turner died. Remeber Ike, boys and girls. Bitchslap someone you love, then buy them something pretty...