Lina23's Weblog

Why bother?

lina23 — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 22:16:10 +0000

You would think that most patients that are admitted to hospitals are actually sick and that they will comply with what the doctors/nurses tell them to do so they get “better”. Well you are grossly mistaken, my friends. It’s patients like this that make my job more stressful than a full blown cardiac arrest code. I’ve had patients who have hidden away snacks from the hospital kitchen when they’ve been deemed NPO (nothing by mouth); smokers who disappeared off the floor to go smoke in the bathroom/utility closet; heroin addicts who have bought drugs off of dealers in their hospital beds (not even kidding), and the list goes on. As a new nurse, I found this incredibly frustrating. I mean, here I am giving a patient tons of IV Antibiotics, IV fluids and taking the time to answer all their ridiculous questions and after all that, they are noncompliant with their care.

Eventually though, I got over it. You have to. I like that nursing is so idealistic, but it’s really not realistic to expect patients to comply with everything. Recently, I found much humor in this. I was taking care of a patient that had a nasogastic tube. She was hooked up to low suction in order to drain fluids out of her stomach. Well, you would think that someone with an NG tube would understand that they can’t eat anything since the entire point of it is to REMOVE gastric content. I walk into her room and I see several blue Mentos candies being suctioned up in the canister. I couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

Love Story.

lina23 — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 04:20:02 +0000

A week ago, I took care of a 70 something year old woman who became disabled after a tragic surgery gone wrong. Post operatively, she basically became a living vegetable, only able to open and close her eyes. She has been living this way for the past 16 years with the help of her husband who has devoted his life to take care of her at home. On an ordinary day, he feeds her breakfast, washes her up, picks her up out of bed and places her in chair for a few hours, feeds her lunch, places her back in bed, and the cycle continues the next day.

After talking with him about the burdens of having to take care of someone 24/7, I was completely in awe of what this man had sacrificed for nearly two decades. Being elderly himself, he has neglected his own health in order to take care of his wife who can barely speak, let alone reciprocate any of his tremendous love. However, while she was hospitalized, she would only eat when he fed her. She knew his movements so well that she would not tolerate food if another hand gave it to her. For him, her dependence was what kept him going. It gave him a purpose, and that alone was enough for him to do it all over again the next day.

Playing nurse.

lina23 — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 02:13:44 +0000

Having come off my new grad nursing orientation just a few weeks ago, I did not expect to feel so comfortable in my new “nursing” skin. The three months of training that the orientation provided were more than enough for me to get a handle on what a nurse does. I’ve figured out that nursing is much more than just knowing a&p and passing medications: it’s knowing how to multi task as a social worker, an investigator as well as an interpreter (trust me, doctors write orders in another language) . It can be stressful at times, okay probably most of the time, but at the end of the day a feeling of satisfaction takes hold of you, and you can’t help but go back to work the next day. Ultimately, I’ve realized that it’s a profession that is unlike any other. Everyday is completely different; you NEVER know what to expect. That’s what I love about it.

In my blog, I’m going to share some of the nursing experiences that have left an impression on me.

Cheers to New Beginnings!

lina23 — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 20:10:31 +0000

SO, this past year was definitely a defining one. I managed to finally graduate from UCONN after five years with a degree in nursing excited as ever to finally join my friends in living in the “real world”. However, I’ve only come to realize that I don’t really know what this “real world” is. I feel a need to have an ongoing chronicle of my day to day experiences. I have never blogged before, and I am thrilled to finally start one!