Hey guys, update is delayed until tomorrow-- we are emergently moving to a new apartment (ours is suffering the wrath of every backed-up storm drain in the neighborhood thanks to a failed drain valve) and my laptop is infected with this horrible virus that's disabled my wifi.

The virus is really bad and has taken a while to deal with, but a friend of mine took it to her bearded beloved and had the damage repaired, to my endless gratitude and debt.

Watch out for the virus, you guys. It's called Windows 10. Do NOT download this horrible piece of malware, or it will wreck all your hardware inside-out.*

(This is tongue-in-cheek. Technically, even if it destroys your computer, it's not EXACTLY a virus.)

Whitney the Muslim

I apologize for the brevity of this post. For those of you that follow my scrawlings on Something Awful, I’ve been doing an AMA for the last twenty-four hours on the BYOB forum, which has diverted just a little of my writing powers.

I did manage to rant with embarrassing fervor about fruit that I like.

Anyway.

Sometimes the ICU runs like you expect it to: occasional periods of panic, lots of gross chores, and a slump around 1600 when you can catch up on your charting. Sometimes it gets a little crazy, and if you have a really rowdy pt with a lot of things going wrong, you can easily spend a whole shift on your feet and do all your charting after you’ve passed your pt to the next shift. And sometimes, the whole ICU loses its goddamn mind at once, and all your pts are desperately high-acuity and breaks only happen if everyone works together, and staffing calls random people on their days off and begs them to come in—not to take pts, but to serve as an extra flex nurse, just to help people get all their chores done.

When this happens, you have to be a special kind of dumbass to actually answer your phone, let alone come in extra. Unfortunately for me, I am that exact kind of dumbass. That week, I worked a lot.

Post incoming tomorrow! Eventually I hope to be able to update every Saturday night, but right now my husband's schedule and mine are both in flux. Sunday nights might work better for me this spring.

I hope you guys are okay with a whole bunch of griping about terrible human beings, cause that's what I've got for you. Also, my religious alignment has apparently been reassigned. That's how bad my week was.

Wishbone, Leah, and the Return of Crowbarrens

Every shift, we introduce ourselves to our pts, explain how long we’ll be there today, and talk about our goals for the day. Some people have very simple goals: don’t die is popular, as are things like control pain and get out of bed. Some people will have procedures during the day, endoscopies or central line placements or dialysis.

Occasionally, the most important goals aren’t things we can cheerfully schedule with our pts: come to peace with impending death, or manage not to shit directly on anyone’s scrubs. In those cases, we find simpler goals: order breakfast and lunch early so they don’t have to wait, take a walk and get some sunlight, that kind of thing.

Then we do our assessments, because nothing helps your day get moving like peering at some guy’s butt and hoping that pink spot on his tailbone isn’t turning into a pressure ulcer.