Let me take you back to a really fun night I had while I was just starting out my second semester of the PSW program. It was the worst night I had throughout that entire course, but my interaction with one RN made it almost worth while.
At about 2130 I started having a really irritating cramp in my right side. I figured I would just get some rest and be fine in time for class in the morning. By 2200 the cramp had gotten so bad I felt like I was going to throw up, pass out, or both. Nothing was making the pain any better, it just kept getting worse. It felt like someone had shoved their fist into my side and was knotting up my insides into a tight little ball. I kept trying to ignore it, but once I had a hard time catching my breath because of the pain I decided it was time to go to the ER.
The ride to the hospital and trip through triage was a blur. I have no idea how long I sat in the waiting room and I don't remember changing into a gown. I laid on the bed in an exam room split into five exam rooms with curtains and waited for the doctor. The patient next to me had a herd of family with them that were complaining loudly about some family drama.
The RN comes in and takes a quick history. I chock out a pain scale of 12/10. She tells me I don't understand. I correct her. Yes, I do understand that a pain scale is usually 10/10 maximum. I have asked other people that exact same question more times than I can count. This is not the worst pain I have ever felt, it is beyond that. I cannot breathe because of the pain and if you don't back up you're going to get puked on. She leaves in a huff.
About 10 minutes after she leaves, I throw up in the garbage can. Fun fact: macaroni and cheese looks almost the same coming up as it does going down, but the smell is so unbelievably horrific it may require an exorcism to get rid of. Boyfriend scuttles off to the nursing station to inform the RN of this and after I throw up a few more times she shows up with a k basin (about 20 minutes later). If I hadn't been in so much pain I would have laughed at the look on her face when she peaked in the garbage can. She rushes out (I assume because of the smell, since she was starting to look a little green), then comes back about 15 minutes later. She throws open the curtains and informs me, quite loudly:
"Look, I get that you're *wiggles fingers in the air* in pain or something, but you're being too loud. You need to quiet down, you're being disruptive."
I was completely stunned. The loud, obnoxious blabbering she was hearing was the family of the patient next to me. I am an extremely quiet person (think the low-talker episode of Seinfeld). The only conversations I had during my time in the ER were brief and whispered. I would suck in a deep breath every now and then to suppress the urge to scream, and that was as loud as I got. I start trying to sputter out a response but all I come up with is "Uhhhhhh". She cuts me off by handing me a jar and saying she wants a urine sample.
In order to get to the bathroom, I have to hobble across the exam room. I can no longer stand up straight anymore. I have officially become a mutilated capital T. The boyfriend is worried that I will faint on the way to the bathroom since according to him I am now white as a ghost, so he helps me into the bathroom. He hesitates as the door.
"...I know you're not going to like this, but you're not going in alone. I don't want you passing out on the john."
He accompanies me into the bathroom and turns his back as I attempt to produce a specimen.
At this point it feels like my bladder is about to burst, but nothing is coming out. I start straining harder and HOLY MOTHER OF CRAP I'M PEEING GLASS!
I finish up and hand him the specimen to run off to the nurse. My urine sample consists almost exclusively of blood and 3 good sized stones.
After helping me back to the bed, he rushes off to the nurses station. As I'm laying there, I suddenly feel quite a deal better. The pain isn't completely gone but I can almost straighten out now and no longer have the urge to power puke all over the room.
Within moments of him handing off the specimen, nurse bitchface is back at my bedside. She waves the urine sample at me.
"What's this?!"
"Umm.....the urine sample you asked for."
She rolls her eyes.
"Oh so you're on your period then."
"No, actually, I'm not." (you sure seem like you could use some midol though).
"So....you're...not......well then you just finished it."
"No I did not."
".... ...then........you...you're about to start soon then, right?"
"Nope."
"Oh..."
"I think I saw 3 stones or something floating around in there too."
"Uh....uh huh......"
I hear her muttering something in a bit of a nervous panic to a man in the hallway. Then the tallest friggin doctor I have ever seen walks in (he really didn't need to open the curtain, he could see over it. It was a little startling). He was absolutely fantastic. Very thorough, patient, and very kind. Thanks to the panic the sample seemed to set off in the nurse, the doctor took my pain complaint very seriously and set me up with an order for an ultrasound (turns out I still had more of the little buggers floating around) and a prescription for dilaudid.
Apr 29, 2011
Apr 28, 2011
Still alive
When I started this blog I intended to update it much more frequently than this. Unfortunately my health has been fairly crappy lately so I've taken a bit of a break from a lot of things until my symptoms ease up a bit. I've started drafting up some stories though, so rest assured that soon you will be able to come here to read along as I descend into school paperwork-induced insanity. You'll also find plenty of stories about blood, screaming, projectile vomiting, enemas, and creative things to blow your nose in.
...kind of a sick little bugger, aren't you?
...kind of a sick little bugger, aren't you?
Apr 18, 2011
A day at the races
So I figured I would kick things off with the story of my first time doing first response at the race track (cars, not horses). I picked an interesting time to start going there, since my first day happened to be an annual event that involves hundreds of amateurs (read: any schlub with a beat up car) trying to keep their junker on the clay track without hitting the wall or each other (though there is was usually a cop car ever year, always closely followed by one that had "get the pig" spray painted on it...). Anyway, I had heard tons of stories from the senior responders about the insanity that goes on at the track (lots of alcohol and drugs, there is a theory that each portion of the grandstands are really a family and they are not allowed to interbred with the other grandstand families). I was really excited to finally start covering something a bit more exciting than mellow little fairs and whatnot, and since I'm an adrenaline junkie I didn't really think about the danger involved...until I got to my posting and had a little chat with my partner.
My partner was this unbelievably sweet, very very french senior responder who also happened to be the team leader for that event. We were posted in center ring. I thought I was going to get stuck up in the grandstands or the pits with one of the Rn's so I was overjoyed when I found out I would be in the center of the track (nothing against the pits or grandstands, they have their fair share of excitement as I later found out, I just assumed the center got more action). I was even more excited when I found out that I would be one of the teams actually standing in the field (therefor absolute first response for crashes) instead of being backup/EMS handover in the ambulance parked in the middle.
So there we are, standing in the middle of a huge circle of cars being operated by mainly intoxicated/high amateur drivers, and I'm so excited I'm almost shaking. The cars are just finishing lining up, then my partner said something that scared the living hell out of me. He grabs me by the shoulders and tells me:
"OK, we stand facing each other at all times. You watch over my shoulder, I watch over yours. If I grab your shoulders and start walking to the side, don't panic, just move with me. It means there is a chunk of the track or a car flying at you and I'm moving you out of the way so you don't get hit. You do the same for me. You're facing corner 4, watch that one because they always hit the wall at corner four and someone might roll into the crowd*. OK?"
Uhhh buuuuh waaaaaaah?! OK! I started questioning just what the hell I was about to get myself into but it was far too late to even think of asking for a posting change since the flag was drop and the race was on. Luckily enough, there weren't any serious injuries that day. We did respond to a t-bone during one of the womens' races but I was mainly stuck in the back of the car stabilizing her head, getting the collar on, and sliding the KED kit down (she turned out to be fine, was just really shaken up but you can't be too safe). A few hit the wall, a few fires (one which involved gas being spilled all over the track before igniting, but that was the fire crews job), maybe a few rollovers (this was years ago and I ended up doing a lot of response at that track so my memory is a bit hazy), but overall it was a good day.
After each race, most of the cars would just park in the center field around us since the drivers had no intention of doing any other racing, so we had to scramble to make sure the keys were out of the ignition of all of them in between races. By the end it looked like a parking lot in there.
Luckily for us, neither of us had to move each other out of the way of flying debris...though I did end up pointing over his shoulder a few times shouting "HOLY SHIT!" to which he just responded "corner 4?"
Good times.
*A car actually did end up rolling into the crowd eventually, but that was years later and is another story for another day.
My partner was this unbelievably sweet, very very french senior responder who also happened to be the team leader for that event. We were posted in center ring. I thought I was going to get stuck up in the grandstands or the pits with one of the Rn's so I was overjoyed when I found out I would be in the center of the track (nothing against the pits or grandstands, they have their fair share of excitement as I later found out, I just assumed the center got more action). I was even more excited when I found out that I would be one of the teams actually standing in the field (therefor absolute first response for crashes) instead of being backup/EMS handover in the ambulance parked in the middle.
So there we are, standing in the middle of a huge circle of cars being operated by mainly intoxicated/high amateur drivers, and I'm so excited I'm almost shaking. The cars are just finishing lining up, then my partner said something that scared the living hell out of me. He grabs me by the shoulders and tells me:
"OK, we stand facing each other at all times. You watch over my shoulder, I watch over yours. If I grab your shoulders and start walking to the side, don't panic, just move with me. It means there is a chunk of the track or a car flying at you and I'm moving you out of the way so you don't get hit. You do the same for me. You're facing corner 4, watch that one because they always hit the wall at corner four and someone might roll into the crowd*. OK?"
Uhhh buuuuh waaaaaaah?! OK! I started questioning just what the hell I was about to get myself into but it was far too late to even think of asking for a posting change since the flag was drop and the race was on. Luckily enough, there weren't any serious injuries that day. We did respond to a t-bone during one of the womens' races but I was mainly stuck in the back of the car stabilizing her head, getting the collar on, and sliding the KED kit down (she turned out to be fine, was just really shaken up but you can't be too safe). A few hit the wall, a few fires (one which involved gas being spilled all over the track before igniting, but that was the fire crews job), maybe a few rollovers (this was years ago and I ended up doing a lot of response at that track so my memory is a bit hazy), but overall it was a good day.
After each race, most of the cars would just park in the center field around us since the drivers had no intention of doing any other racing, so we had to scramble to make sure the keys were out of the ignition of all of them in between races. By the end it looked like a parking lot in there.
Luckily for us, neither of us had to move each other out of the way of flying debris...though I did end up pointing over his shoulder a few times shouting "HOLY SHIT!" to which he just responded "corner 4?"
Good times.
*A car actually did end up rolling into the crowd eventually, but that was years later and is another story for another day.
First post
After getting hooked on a few health care related blogs *points to links*, I started thinking about all the interesting, scary, and downright crazy things I've seen so far in my years filling various rolls in the field and how many bizarre things I will inevitably end up seeing not only as a future RN (I start pre-health in September) but also as a patient (since I am now going through the diagnosis maze for M.S.-like symptoms). So why not make my own blog? We'll see how well this goes.
This blog will be a bit all over the place in terms of subject. There will be student related ranting (both from my previous time in college and my upcoming time in college and university), funny stories, sad stories, and a few ramblings from my point of view as a patient as well. I started out doing first response and emergency is where my heart is, so I'm guessing most of this will be covering that subject.
Oh, also: I curse like a sailor. You've been warned.
This blog will be a bit all over the place in terms of subject. There will be student related ranting (both from my previous time in college and my upcoming time in college and university), funny stories, sad stories, and a few ramblings from my point of view as a patient as well. I started out doing first response and emergency is where my heart is, so I'm guessing most of this will be covering that subject.
Oh, also: I curse like a sailor. You've been warned.
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