The best shift ever!

So I'm home visiting family for the holidays, and I needed some cash money money. I picked up a 6 hour dayshift at Home Hospital yesterday morning because they were shortstaffed. Can we just note, I picked up a day shift. DAY shift. I got up at 0530. I thought I was going to keel over and fall asleep and die any second. It was terrible.

But besides being up at an ungodly hour, I had what may have been the best shift I've ever worked. It was amazing. Seriously. I worked with a weirdly awesome dayshift staff, and all of the ancillary staff was fabulous too. I was given a free cup of Starbucks from one of the EMS guys who came in, because "they gave us an extra" and I just happened to like the kind of brew they brought. The department was busy, but not stupid chaotic. It was busy to where I felt like an actual ER nurse, prioritizing and doing real things but not feeling overwhelmed.

I also had some amazingly awesome patients. The first lady was super nice and got Adenosine, which is my all time FAVORITE drug to give. For real though, I love Adenosine. I love it, so much. It's the most fun ever to give. The lady was funny too, and thanked us profusely even while making us laugh. She also happened to have been brought to the ER by a staff member who was in the gas station at the time she had palpitations - so I got to unexpectedly say hello to someone I didn't think I'd see while in town.

My next couple of patients were all young - below 30 years old - and they all had real trauma issues which were resolved without a lot of hassle. I had a guy who fell off a scaffolding a broke his wrist (conscious sedation with propofol and a super amusing recovery moment of secret revealing), a nice girl who slipped on the sidewalk and hit her head who required a few stitches but had a negative CT, and another guy who hit a deer while driving and came in backboarded but had only soft tissue injury.

I then had an older lady who had hyperglycemia for an unknown reason. She was nice, her husband was hilarious, and their kids brought donuts for the whole staff. Obviously I was predisposed to like her based on their bribery, but she had an easy to spot tiny diabetic ulcer which was the cause of the hyperglycemia. She was compliant with home meds and happened to be best friends with the local endocrinologist, so he discharged her home to follow up with him tomorrow "and also we'll talk about our neighborhood homeowners' association." So that was a nice easy case.

Seriously. Not a single thing went badly. I'm almost afraid to go into work this coming Thanksgiving Eve, because I'll probably have the most awful, horrible, terrible shift from hell. I do, however, wish shifts like this happened more often. Because it made me warm and fuzzy inside, and I felt good about being a nurse. And also a patient brought me donuts, which is always amazing.