Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Dream

So last night was a hot mess, again.

Walked in to get report, and waiting for me was a vented patient with a pressure of 54/crap - asked the doc for something to counter her propofol drip but "nah, just hang some more fluid" was the response - when the day shift RN peaced out, two other patients (of mine) getting admitted, 9 admissions out of 12 rooms total (all tele/critical care) and a patient who wanted to keep coding in the room next door.

Since my patient was very close to dying but the patient next door was actively dying, all the available help went to that room. I'm sure it was mildly interesting to watch new-nurse-me run around and try to keep my patient from pulling her vent out ("just give her 1 of ativan, and up the propofol drip" [?!?]) and titrate her propofol and keep her pressure above crap and get the blood cultures and start another line and find the pressure bags and explain everything to her family and call report and everything else.

Finally, the admitting doc wrote orders for levophed, and magically her pressure shot up to 90/60 and life was good.

But that's not what this post is about.

I'm really here to tell you that I had my first frequent-flyer dream today! I dreamed that one of our oft returning nausea/vomiting/I'm pregnant patients came in with 3 of her friends, and all we had open were trauma rooms. So the four of them went into the trauma rooms, and all of a sudden we had vented patients in the itty bitty rooms, and traumas in the hallways, and codes in the storage room, but nobody would move the frequent flyers out. "They're really sick, they need those rooms!" is the response we kept getting.

It was a traumatic dream, for sure.

Scary.

2 comments:

Bats, S.N. said...

Whoa! What a scary dream indeed.

I hope your other patient is still OK.

CountyRat said...

Work dreams. Welcome to the profession.