My Valentine

This is my wonderful Valentine: my kitty. (with his new black collar with rinestones. yes, my kitty has jewelry. He's very attractive)

I had a good weekend. On Friday night a group of us went to the movie theater and saw Fool's Gold with Kate Hudson. Didn't know what it was about before we went. It was very cute. I'm sure it's on DVD in the states by now as most things are by the time they get to us here. Then, we went to the bowling alley across the street where our cars were parked to pee because the girls bathroom line was far too long to stand in. We ended up bowling two games. I was grateful to be with a group who was just as talentless as me at bowling. The next night we went over to Nate and Michelle's for an amazing salmon dinner with french lentils and green beans. we started with with a cauliflower cream soup and ended with a salad. we also watched Dane Cook comedy and had far too much wine to go to Club21, the club ontop of the rathuas (city hall) in Ktown as we had planned. Bummer. So, I stayed the night and woke up in the morning to amzaing omlets with spinach, tomato, peppers, mushrooms, and cheeese. I'm sure those of you know me are thinking, "is she really eating all of this?" and the answer is, "yes, every bit." Sunday was a wonderfully lazy day.

My week started off slower than it ended on Friday. We had one patient. Then we got some "clinic" kids (the holiday actually meant the clinic was closed and we became the clinic/er for peds). A billi baby... typical. A blood draw... no fun. Then we got a respiratory distress 12m/o. He was HUGE for a 12 m/o. Very big kid. Didn't want anymore albuterol and had HR in the 180's for hours. Then he ran a temperature Tmax 100.7F. First time I really believed the validity of Q4 vitals on stable patients... wooh.

My other patient was an 18m/o who had a MRSA+ abcess on his buttox that had been I&D'd in the ER and brought to us. When I got him, they were saying he was going to go home after the surgeon loooked at him. well, about 2 hours into the shift, dad comes out and says he needs a dressing change beacuse he'd had a dirty diaper. talk about contamination of the wound site if we didn't. So, I had my plan. My wonderfully organzied and simple plan. After all, this kid was going home, right? So we get to it and I've got my 2X2's, my saline to flush the site, my tape, and a new diaper. We're good.... no, no we're not good. This poor kid was crying "ouch, mommmy." because the wound was still pouring purulent drainage. I don't mean draining, I don't mean leaking or seeping. I mean pouring. what looked like a bug bite sized wound and redened area was actually a pocket that went the whole lenngth of the butt cheek. This poor baby was in so much pain and they wanted to send him home. I had to summon assistance and by this point my measly supplies were far from sufficient. In the end, I probably removed almost as much drainage as the surgeon removed on the initial I&D. I immediately went and wrote a long progress note on the dressing change and what was going on. Not two hours later, the surgeon comes to look at the site and think it looks GREAT! There's no drainage... it's still firm, but wonderful looking.... yeah... you know why?? He ended up packing the wound again with a wick that would help keep the site opening patent for drainage instead of sealing and pocketing the pus thus creating ANOTHER abcess and probably a worse one. We convinced him to keep the kid another day so we discharged him today and he remembered me. In the end, this kid did not like me. Whenever he saw me, he stopped smiling, stopped talking, and just looked at me with big open eyes. His free hand would reach for his mom and he would just look at me. I hate being the bad guy. I also feel sorry for Dads the past few days. Both of these kids dad's were their primary parent in the hospital with them, and the only thing they cried was "moooommmy." Poor dads...

Still no stuff... It's officially LATE!