Fresh Feelings, 2.0

I thought I should update you guys on the guy from the last post, because it's not often that I have feelings and I want to get the full effect here.

The other night I found out the post-arrest guy was on one of the inpatient floors. Not the ICU, but med surg. Med surg! He had been downgraded through the hospital ranks, so when I realized I was admitting another patient to the same floor I offered to transport them myself so I could check in on him. I rounded the hallway corner and came face to face with the patient's wife - she immediately recognized me, and asked me to come in to say hi. When I dropped the other patient off, I walked into post-arrest guys room - and he was sitting up! In bed! Awake! Without oxygen! And talking!

I said "I don't expect you remember me, but I'm the one who started chest compressions on you." He immediately burst into tears and asked if he could give me a hug. Let me tell you, he was not the only one crying.

We had the most wonderful conversation, and as he kept repeating, "we're talking to each other! I'm here because of the work everyone did for me!"

You guys. Sometimes we really do make a difference. It's a fantastic feeling, for everyone involved. I love my job.

Fresh feelings

Part of being a nurse for ten (10!) years is that the mundane, ridiculous stuff no longer warrants a blog post. I have seen a lot, been called a lot of names, and witnessed such a wide variety of foreign bodies in rectums that I no longer rush home to write about all these events. The shit that I used to write about four times a week is still happening, but there's only so many times I can reword the same feelings into fresh posts.

But this week, I experienced a patient that truly made me want to come home and write about it. So here I am!

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The highest potassium I had ever seen before, up until this week, was 8.3 - I thought that would be a record to stand for a long while. But a few days ago we pulled a patient out of a car who was pulseless, gray, and apneic. I jumped onto compressions and we got started with the usual code process.

When the labs came back a few minutes later, the potassium was 8.9...EIGHT POINT NINE. You didn't read that wrong.

We gave more calcium, bicarb, insulin, and dextrose that I've ever given to someone before. After 45 minutes and the third round of CPR with subsequent ROSC, a coworker called out to the doctor that the patient had opened his eyes. I thought that surely she was imagining things but when I went over to the patient and asked him to squeeze my hand he promptly followed that command.

I went up to visit him in the ICU the next day. He's awake and though still critically ill, intubated, and on pressors is following all commands.

As any of you ER people know, this is the rarest of occasions. We don't usually get wins like this. Normally the okay people stay okay, the really sick ones we often prevent from getting sicker, and the dead ones stay dead. There's only been a few times in my career where I can look back and say definitively that I and my coworkers took a dead person and made them alive again. This week it happened, and I am still so happy I was a part of his care.

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If there's anyone out there still reading this blog, thank you for caring about what I have to say!