It has been awhile since I've written. I suppose a lot has happened. I finished my rotation in the ICU. I saw too many young men blown to pieces. My 2nd patient was a 45% all over burn, very similar car to the 1st patient. I went to the or on this patient and watched the doctors explore his burns. He had been so swollen, with such severe compartment syndrome that the doctors gave him fasciotomies on all 4 limbs. His fingers were also bright red and black and rock hard. He was not going to keep them. My 3rd patient a blast injury patient. He was ok from the waist up, from the waist down he was close to losing everything. His legs have bones but almost no muscle was left. His sciatic nerve is a rope thick stump at the back of where the bottom of his butt should be. The doctors were taking out pounds of necrotic muscle. He was station here in Germay. His buddies came by to visit constantly. One of his buddies was so emotional with the knowledge that his friend was going to loose his legs that he burst into tears when he saw that his legs were still attached coming out of the OR. ICU is an adrenaline rush all the time. It never stops. You can never relax because you don't know when something is going to happen. CPT Clarke predicts that I will become an ICU nurse because I thrive on adrenaline and continuous motion. I'm not sure if she's right or wrong but ICU is better than the LRMC ER. The LRCM ER is merely a conveniency clinic. I worked Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of Easter weekend. I am great at IV's, a made someone throw up by pushing Toradol a little too fast, I am great at vaginal exams, I had to be the person who couldn't find the fetal heart tones on a woman who lost her baby in a car accident, I did a lot of lab running, catheters... In general, the techs in the ER are so competent nurses are merely needed for assessments and meds. Might as well be a doctor...
We had 5 days in a row of SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW Easter weekend. It was NUTS. Beautiful, but nuts. Yesterday we had 65 degrees and sunny. It was GORGEOUS. Gabe and I took a looooong walk up my backyard trail to see where it went. It did not go where we thought it would but it led us to a small, shed sized, Catholic chapel. It's very very cute. We didn't go in because we were exploring on our walk and had to get back so I could go to bed. I started on 10C/D on the night shift last night. Night shift is awesome beacuse it's slow paced but boy oh boy does no one have a clue what I'm supposed to do. I had Commanders asking if I was a student, if I had a license, if I was just observing, if this was my only night, and I'm thinking "who DIDN'T tell you there was a new NURSE...RN=NURSE! coming on to the team tonight..." Quite frustrating. Anyway, it's going to be ok for a year. Sadly the inpatient numbers are increasing because of the increase in violence in Iraq. At least I'll stay busy all night. It's a lot like working at Harborview except the extent of the injuries cannot compare to a MVA. Hopefully I'll be ready to take an NSTP student by the summer.
New subject: This weekend a group of friends and I went to Idar-Oberstein. It's about an hour towards Trier and has a story behind the church that's built there. So, Once upon a time there were two brothers. One was the king and the other belonged to the church. They were both in love with the same woman. One day the brother took the king to the top of a cliff and pushed him off and killed him. He was so wracked with guilt that he built a church into the rock face of the cliff. It's only accessible through a tunnel in the rock. The church was finished and after a year a spring started to run through the middle of the church. The brother took that as a sign from God that he was forgiven. No one ended up with the girl...
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