Some Minor Delusion and Self-Deception

Have a few minutes before I have to go dashing out the door to work again...

Worked the 7p to 7a last night. Rolled in about 7:45 this morning and babysat for the three liluns while Michael and Amanda worked. Michael relieved me just before 11am, and I will confess to being exhausted and slightly cross-eyed by the time he got home.

I hit the bed directly and was awake by 4pm. Good thing I'm only doing 4 hours tonight. And, there will be three of us there. Yippee!! (Provided Chi doesn't call off again this weekend. She's in school and had just made it home from clinicals last Saturday at 7pm and was due in at 11pm. If she calls off again tonight, it means I'll be spending the night. Not good at all on about 5 hours sleep and me supposed to be back in tomorrow at 3pm. That will pretty well suck indeed.)

I am contributing to Amanda's inadvertent snow globe collection. Someone had bought one for her once upon a time. Michael saw it, assumed that she liked snow globes, and bought her another. I saw the pair of them, assumed that she liked them, and bought her one more. The snow globe collection was born. (As Christopher Lowell said, it takes at least three items to make a proper display grouping in decor. LOL) Come to find out, a total of 7 or 8 snow globes down the road, she really doesn't really care for these particular more things to have to dust knickknacks. Avon came out with a snow globe for Christmas this year that has a working ferris wheel, lights (I think fiber optic.), and plays eight different Christmas carols. You have the option of having it on without playing the music. In a household with four children, quiet is a good thing. It was like $25 and being that it is Christmas themed, it will only have to make an appearance yearly. I figure that the kiddos will like it, so I added it to her collection. Just another of the myriad of complimentary services that mothers provide.

I had taken a whole passel of paperwork back to the office to work on last night. Being that I haven't worked an overnight in forever; it took me longer than usual to get my meds together for this morning's med pass. Having not seen me in forever, the overnight staff all wanted to talk. I had three guys up all night. One of them, an unstable bipolar guy with a temper. Another was one of my severe cardiac patients who gave the appearance that he could be taking his last breath at any moment. He has an order not to give CPR and to administer comfort measures only. He has chronic pain issues, so of course they have abruptly cut the dose of his pain patch by half. He was due for a new patch this morning, and those patches do not last the full 72 hours that they are said to last. So, I was medicating and monitoring him all night long. I had his roommate out of bed and up my ass (literally at times) all night long because he wasn't staying in the bedroom with this guy's moaning and yelling all night. I cannot blame him for that. I had Mona out of bed at one point. She was removing all of the food from the refrigerator and attempting to make room on the shelf for her to sit in the refrigerator and close the door behind her. Must be getting close to time for her ureteral stent replacement. She starts having really wonky behaviors when that stent begins to calcify. I had one guy who had been readmitted from the hospital yesterday evening who seemed to be having some respiratory issues upon return. His electrolyte balance was off. I wasn't his nurse, and the nurse who had him was the same nurse who had told my staff last week when Martha got sick that not voiding for a whole shift was not an issue as people can go up to five days without urinating. So, I put an extra staff in that apartment (one who just finished the LPN program and is waiting to sit for boards) to have them keep an eye on this guy as I cannot be every place at once.

For now, I have to jump in the shower and head in to see what surprises await.

I'll be back later (hopefully) after an uneventful four hours and a quick, cheap trip to Wal-Mart.

I hope you all believe that because I'm not convincing myself of that reality.