...

Grandma's healed!! Her INR is down to normal levels and she's didn't need the ICU. Yet another success story for nursing :) Unfortunately, that's just about the only thing that went right tonight. Tonight was one of those shifts where everything falls to pieces. My poor patient who came in with a severe UTI starts wheezing really badly at the same time as my 83 year old dementia patient drops his pressure to 88/44 at the same time as my post-op gallbladder's heart rate shoots up to 130 and I realize he has inadequate urine output for my shift. Now I'm a good nurse, but I still am only ONE PERSON and I can only handle ONE CRISIS at a time. So I'm way way behind (typical). Then to top it off, an ICU RN followed me on the night shift, and starts talking about how our patient's lungs sound horrible and he can't perfuse his kidneys with such a low blood pressure and maybe he has aspiration pneumonia and on and on. And there I am. I thought his lungs sounded better than yesterday. I told the doctor about his blood pressure, but he wasn't symptomatic so I honestly wasn't very concerned. The ICU nurse had just stepped onto the floor, and already she's calling the doctor and getting a chest x-ray and talking about labs. Watching her effortlessly do the job that, for me, requires A LOT of work was not easy for me. Working in such a big hospital with so many knowledgeable people, I sometimes have days where I feel very very small. Today was one of them.