2 Panic Attacks, 2 Saves

After a lot of deliberation I decided to be candid and post it all

Thursday we had a weird shift, an extra aide and an extra nurse added to our mix and a lot of stress as we tried to teach them the ways of our unit and take care of our patients appropriately. A certain patient had been on the call light asking for pain meds continuously, and I reminded the nurse to remember his pain meds before too much more time passed. The nurse flipped out and got angry with me, claiming that I was telling her how to care for her patient. The extra aide walked into the patient room (it was her patient) and helped him settle again and stop the screaming and moaning, while the nurse went ahead to ream me a new one...and I wasn't sure why.

" You don't tell me how to take care of my patients. He can't have pain meds for another hour. Can't you read these? Let me tell you what I'm doing, I'm dealing with a little girl that could be dying." She said standing nose-to-nose with me. I'm not allowed to touch the pain meds, access the Omnicell they come in let alone suggest that pain meds are coming. I am not allowed to read the medicaion reports, meds are strictly for nurses. I was amazed that she was assuming all of this.

"Everyone is someone who could be dying." I replied, meaner than what I wanted to be. "I am just asking that a patient be taken care of, if it aint time for meds, it aint time. Thats fine, do what you were doing, I'm just doing MY job." The nurse pulled in closer to me.

"Listen to me you little shit, you're being inappropriate." I looked to our other nurse, who was called in to assist who shook her head and mouthed to me 'no your not, no your not'.

"Me doing MY job is inappropriate?!" I asked. "Well then do tell me what is appropriate." I said leaning back in my chair, just waiting to hear her explaination.

"I'm gonna write your ass up!" She yelled going into the patient room. "I am gonna have your license revoked. You are a worthless aide and I have no honest idea why they hired you!" I shook my head and fought back tears. 'What a bitch.' I thought, then gathered my things. I was off in 1.5 hrs anyways, I figured she was gonna send me home. As she returned from the patient room she glared at me. "What do you think your doing?" She yelled.

"I'm thinking ahead." I said, setting my bag down and organizing a few items.

"Don't think your going anywhere." She snarled and I lost it. I felt a hot tear hit my cheek and I looked up to her. The day had been rough. First my biological mother had gotten mad at me, my future mother in law was not happy with me, and now my co-workers and adult example was pulling this off-the-wall stunt. She heard me sniff and watched me excuse myself from the unit, then grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me outside to yell at me some more.

After it was all said and done, I don't remember the entire conversation, I don't remember what was said or done, but I do remember having my first set of panic attacks. I do remember realizing what was wrong with me and trying to focus on just calming down as she yelled at me some more. I sat on the floor, thinking 'inhale, exhale, breathe Dani, breathe.'

___________

Friday I wore a set of scrubs I never wear. My hair was out of place and my makeup was only half done. I was still in a funk from Thursday night and I had no intention of trying to get out of it alive. After a long pep-talk from the nurse who yelled at me I started to work.

I did everything I needed to do and then more. Glucoses were done, rechecked and noted correctly. Vitals were done for my Q4's and Post-Operatively and the patients had lots of ice packs and snacks to keep them comfortable. Urinals and foleys were emptied and I had even help a few patients walk the halls before going to bed for the night. Things were going well. The nurse and I had nothing more to say to each other about last night and we even joked about wedding dresses (I was browsing at our slow points) and my fiance wearing a kilt to the wedding. Things picked up again at 0200 and I jumped back into action.

The patient we had gotten in the arguement over the night before was yelling in pain, gripping the bed rails with white knuckles and yelling loudly. Either he had bad nerve receptors or the bupivicaine block simply wasn't working, either way we had to take care of him. I decided to pack both of his surgical sites (they were casted) with gel packs, figuring the more ice, the better to help his pain. I never touched his cast, but I touched the blankets and pillows around it gently and he screamed loudly in pain. "STOP!" He yelled. "You're killing me! I am gonna die here!"

I hurried to his head and held his hand, encouraging him that he wasn't going to die on my watch or at my hospital. As he calmed down I heard his pulse ox machine beep loudly and I looked up. The kid was on 2L 02 and had his sats drop to 60 and his pulse was 100 before, was reading 210 now. I yelled to his nurse who didn't help me, so I started to asses him before I dared push the code button.

"Breathe!" I yelled to him pushing his O2 up to 6L. "Hey!" I yelled, shaking him and making him focus on me. "You are gonna need to breathe." In all honesty, he was breathing, and it was an adequate inhale and exhale, which is what scared me. We got him breathing normally and I shouted to the nurse again, his pulse was 164 taken manually. Either way, for a healthy young man, that was bad. As I continued my assessment on him and tried to help him stablilize the nurse busted in and I gave my quick report on him. She told me to go get a face mask and more ice packs and I did so, by this time he was stablilized. She had the ambu bag lying out at the head of his bed and he was breathing normally. I grabbed his hand and rubbed his back, he really wasn't satting....his hands were ice cold and looking pale.

As we left his room and had him settled again the nurse looked at me and nodded. "Thank god your an EMT." She said. I looked at her, confused. "You saved his life, Dani. You may not consider it a save, but it is." I smiled and nodded. "Good work." She said, patting my back.

About an hour later I was taking an early blood glucose, figuring why not take it early, the patient slept all night and was doing well all night, little to no pain, no worries, not even a need for a potty break. As I took it she was talking to me, smiling, laughing at my lame jokes and talking about going home. I looked at the beeping glucometer and sighed. 'RRLO.'

I grabbed an orange juice and gave it to her, then reset my glucometer for a retest. After five minutes I took it again, 'RRLO.' This time I gave her a cranberry juice and reset the glucometer again. Grabbing her chart I remembered she had high blood sugars before she went to bed and I felt bad, she wanted to go home so bad and this may compromise this. I took a third blood sugar. 'RRLO.' I ran to the nurse and notified her of this and made the patient breakfast, complete with MORE sugar and fruit. She ate it and the nurse spoke with her. I gave it ten more minutes and tested a fourth time. '166.' I sighed a breath of relief and as I charted it the relief aide walked in, smiling from a well-rested night. I laughed at this and smiled at the nurse as she walked past.

"Dani made two saves tonight on her own. We need to just have her as an EMT and not a CNA, get her a pay raise and better benefits so that we can get more done, she's done really well tonight."

"She's rocked this shift." The other nurse said as she glanced up from her chart. I smiled.
2 Panic attacks, 2 Saves.

When Your Busy Making Other Plans

Life happens when your busy making other plans.

The last few months I have been focused on the upcoming EMT-I course, passing time til I can start applications for transfers to the ER, and waiting until I am 21 so I can work on an ambulance. Meanwhile I was busy planning my life and career, and not even worried about the rest of it, but life happens.

Yesterday my boyfriend and I took a drive up and into the mountains and as took a hike in the rainy weather, it was beautiful and we were the only two up there. As I paused to take a picture he dropped to one knee and as I turned around I saw him there, ring in hand. I almost cried, I was too busy making plans for the other part of my life to realize this part of life was happening. But it did, and I kissed him and gave him my answer 'YES!'

Its a whole different chapter of my life, a chapter I didn't really think through, spending all of my time thinking about my life once I was a Flight Nurse and about all the lives I would save. But this is something I have always wanted in my life.

Before bed last night I joked with him, about kids and how they would survive with a Paramedic mother and a Cop for a father (that's what he is going into). He laughed and gave me the best answer; "Well, we definitley wont be spending alot of time in ER's, and if we do, you'll probably pick the best one, not closest one, and if they get in trouble we'll have some 'come to jesus' talks. They'll be scared to screw with us." Both of us burst out laughing.

Sometimes I wake up and stare at the ceiling, wondering if life had really happened. Sometimes I stare at the wall and wonder if I have done it right. Is there a right way to live?

But this morning I woke up and looked at my left hand and smiled. It really did happen, and its a new chapter of my life I am more than happy to embrace. I'm an adventure seeker, and its just more adventure to be had.

Living my Happily Right Now

When I was a kid I lived to read, and I loved to go to the library and check out books. I hated reading all the junk in between the beginning chapter and the last one, so I would skim as much as possible so that I could read the ending. I lived for 'happily ever after's'.

Getting older it started to dawn on me that 'happily ever after' was just a fairy tale, and that made me angry. How was it possible that happily ever afters' weren't real, when it seemed so real to me as a child? Unfortunately alot of things seemed real to me as a child, but I tucked all of this into the back of my mind and returned to living like it still exsisted.

Life got difficult and I was facing challenges I never thought would happen to me in my life, and so I reverted to reruns of Grey's Anatomy. In one episode they quoted "It doesn't matter that its not happily ever after, what matters is that its happily right now."

When you see so many bad things happening all around you, you begin to focus on the possibilites that you will also land happily ever after, trying to make sure that you are nothing like your patients. Sometimes, it gets to be so worrysome that you forget a crucial point. "{But} at some point you start to realize your life is happening now. Not after med school, not after residency, right now. This is it. It's here. Blink and you'll miss it." (Greys 5.23)

I had spent so much time before these last few weeks involved in anything other than my life, and farther from happily ever after than I had thought possible. I was angry, I was stressed and more than anything I was unhappy. But then, life throws things your way that makes you realize you need to be living.

This weekend simply reinforced my belief that this is life, and this is now. Gathered around dinner tables, talking to old friends, catching up with family, events that are so simple yet happen so rarely, I have finally felt like I was living again. All this time I had convinced myself I was simply 'wasting time' until I landed my dream job, or until I found my prince charming and got married, but its so far from that. Its every morning, its every evening, its going on right now.

So I challenged myself to live my life before its too late. I wrote down my list of things I want to do, things that will make my everyday more worthwhile. Singing loudly to the radio in the car. Dancing to country music videos whenever I feel the urge. Searching for stupid jokes just so that I can laugh out loud. Watching my favorite movie, over and over until its no longer my favorite. Telling people that I care, that I miss them, before its too late. Focusing on what I find fascinating, and searching for my passions. Learning from people, even if I've never met them before that conversation.

Not too long after I started doing this I realized something about life, something that I wish I had learned long before this.

Reality. It's so much more interesting than living happily ever after.