Staying up Late

Well, it's 2:20 in the morning. We have two patients going out on the air evac tomorrow. Currently, everything is set and ready to go except the meds and Fitz is already on top of that down in pharmacy chatting with his buddy. It's nights like tonight where were are at 50%, 2 staff members have already gone home, and call bells are silent that I think, "gosh... I'm done until 6am, what am I going to do?" Right now, I'm sitting here typing. It didn't used to be like this. But, every night that it stays like this is one more night that our soldiers aren't getting hurt downrange.

Currently, we are the German Hospice ward. We have the sweetest old lady (80's) who's here with renal failure and she wants to die so she can see her husband again. She's very excited. She talks to him at night in her sleep (in German, of course) We thought it would be about a week, but since she's been here, she's livened up a lot. She is French/German and her husband was an Army NCO. She grew up not knowing when her next meal was. So, when he took her to a snack bar on their first date and let her get what she wanted to eat, she fell in love.

Now, when i decided to wear a uniform, I didn't think I'd be dealing with geriatrics (especially in Germany)... wrong. I thoroughly enjoy the stories of Mrs. M, but the bodily functions that go along with getting really old are not my thing. Now, it's only a matter of time until her body's toxins take away her mental clarity. Some of the staff on this unit just doesn't even care. My day shift came on from the opposite day/night shift (the team I'm moving to against my will is the night team from this group) and she was laying in her bed, wet, crumbs everywhere, a cookie stuck to her butt (literally), she has stage 2 pressure sores, and hadn't been bathed since we last worked (two days) because she was "sleeping". Her oncoming nurse was so upset he was nearly in tears about what he'd discovered as he was telling us this in report that night. I may not want to work geriatrics, but that's just outright neglect. People left her totally alone. If you actually go in there, she'll talk your ear off.

Now, I have another patient, well, not mine-I'm charge. Special forces-very weird. 1. he keeps asking for female nurses to give him a backrub (umm... no) 2. he hits the call button every two hours for 2mg of dilauded, 2 percocet, and benadryl. He also already has a dilauded PCA. He's up walking, talking, relaxed in bed... pain's a tough subject. It's what the patient says it is. But 2mg of dilauded every 2 hours for someone who's relaxed in bed or walking halls and joking with staff in a "7/10" pain... that's a tough call. I'm about to go start an experiment....

4 DAYS!! I get picked up here at LRMC at 0630 on Tuesday morning for the shuttle to the airport. I can't wait! 11 days of bliss!

If you can't see the text above:

"Why is a young vet like you on the street?"

"I have a place to stay. I nearly got into a car accident on the way back from my shrink. I got out to walk off my frustration. This driver was on the phone, watching a DVD, weaving in and out of traffic in a HUGE vehicle! I didn't survive 3 tours in Iraq to get killed by a Hummer here at home!!"

"word."

Labor Day... UA

SO, I seem to write a lot about UA' in the Army. Why? Because something always goes wrong! I went to bed around... oh, 5:30 this morning, read for awhile and racked out. Then I was rudely disrupted from my slumber by a really loudly ringing phone at 9:50. It was my head nurse asking why I hadn't shown up for a mandatory UA by now? I'm obviously dead asleep while I'm talking to him and I muttered that I'd be right in. The UA's usually have to be submitted by 1100. So WHY am I just receiving my first notice at 10am? Well, ok, I have to go in. There's no choice. So, I get up and throw on PT's (because if I've learned anything, it's that PT's count as uniform) and shaved my legs really quick... there's nothing like having someone watch you pee with hairy legs. I got there, and of course they'd packed up early so now I had to go to the company. When I got to the company, SSG Degraw was like "...umm, ma'am, come with me". So, I followed him. I followed him right into the commander's office. I was then drilled with questions about when I got my first notice about the UA, how long did it take me to get here, when did I last work, who was my head nurse, and blah, blah, blah. Then, because I was the last person in the company LAST UA, I got asked abut why I was the last person for that one too. Well, I had a patient with an unstable chest tube in 10/10 uncontrollable pain, we had to notify the MD, get a CXR STAT, put the patient on higher oxygen, check the chest tube, etc, etc. and when they only give you 2 hours to pee, you're running on poor odds. So, now I'm off the hook and the problem is going up the chain, but that's rediculous. How hard is it to say, "I didn't get ahold of McCulloch, you needs to call her before 6am. If you don't get through on her cell phone, CALL HER HOME PHONE!" I was AWAKE at 6, I would have been happy (well, not happy) to not go to sleep yet and come right on in. So, OK, I'm ready, I'm at the company, I'm kosher with the commander again but.... oooh but there's NO FEMALE in the office to watch me! I'm in the orderly room with 5 guys. Not to mention all the supplies are still up at the hospital. So, I sat for 45 minutes waiting for them to come back so that I could pee and get out. There's almost always a UA after a 4-day weekend, so I should have seen it coming. Oh the drama. Go Army.

I've got a spot to go to Switzerland on Saturday! YAAY!

7 DAYS until I FLY!

I might be getting a new kitten. I just got a call from a friend who said they found a kitten on the side of the road. She's with the vet right now for a few days to make sure if somoene's looking they can find her. But, if not, I'm getting the call :-)

...the one with the solar pannels

So, I just got off of a holiday weekend of 12 hour shifts, it's currently 12:46PM (going on 21 hours) and what is my landlord doing??? He's installing solar pannels with a freaking power tool that produces sound at decibels that make sleep IMPOSSIBLE. He was also supposed to go into my basement... 40 minutes ago... to hook them up to the electricity. I think it's pretty cool that I'm getting solar pannels on my house, however, I'm not sure if they're going through MY electricity or my landlords. My landlord does run his business from the basement, and my side has the box, so I'm sure it's a process. It's SOOO LOUD!!! There is NO escape, they're on my side of the house and from either floor, the window is right where they are at.Currently, I am charge nurse for 10D right now. I actually really like it. At least, I like it my way. It's a lot harder when someone is breathing down your neck telling you to do it their way. 'New' Navy comes in September and current Navy leaves in mid October so it's going to get exciting soon. Our census has been running between 7 -12 which is around half capacity. We have become the German hospice ward. It's rather... not what we all imagined doing at LRMC.

I went to Munich last weekend with my friend Michele. It was a long drive, a rainy day, a quick lunch at the Hofbrauhaus, and a sobering tour of Dachau. Dachau is a concentration camp from WWII known for performing medical experiments on those captive there. It's horrifying to walk through the halls, the gas chamber (which they claim was never used there), and see the ovens they used to burn the bodies. It's a place full of ghosts. None of the barracks stand except two they rebuilt. However, you can see how militaristicly it was formatted. The parade grounds where they stood in formations every day to be counted until everyone was accounted for... It's been very sterilized, but you still get an ominous sense from walking through a huge chunk of history that demonstrates how horrible many humans can be to each other and how resilient and compasionate others can be despite living in hell. Viktor Frankl was transported to a concentration camp not far from Dachau in the last weeks before the American liberation.

"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

Currently, I am 8 days away from flying to the states!!! This time, I'm flying commercial! No more Fort Gordon, no overnights in the North Carolina airport.

This is what my cat thinks about all the noise... stinker.