Howdy, folks!

I haven’t updated recently because prior to today, there wasn’t much to say. But today was mighty interesting! I’ll cover Friday, Monday and Tuesday also …

Friday was a late shift, I started at 1:15pm and finished at 9:45pm. I was spewin’, too because on Thursday I got to go home at 8:30pm. On Friday, as soon as it got to 8:00pm I was thinking “not long now!” so you can imagine, every minute dragged on and on and on and on. I know you’ve all been in that position at one time or another, so you know the feeling. Friday was a quiet day. I got to look after Super Old Sick Man and Big Sick Bikie Guy again. Not much to report, really. I did get to spend a bit of time with each of them though, and have a good ol’ chat. I found out Super Old Sick Man has a good singing canary and he loves doing jigsaw puzzles, and not crappy 200 piece ones either. I mean, decent one to two thousand piece ones. I asked him if I bought in a puzzle would he like to do it but he said he doesn’t have the patients for it anymore. He’s convinced he’s not going to get better. I tried to convince him how good it would be if he could get home for an hour or two over the week-end but he didn’t seem to want to hear it.

On Monday I got to my early shift and found out Super Old Sick Man had had a turn over the week-end had gotten even worse    he didn’t make it home for an hour or two either. He’s been pretty out of it all week. Although, I haven’t had to look after him personally this week, every now and then I pop in to say hello.

Monday I got to work with a preceptor who … I can’t quite make up my mind about her. She seemed too busy for me sometimes, other times she was happy for me to draw up antibiotics … hmmm. I got to look after two patients with MRSA. That’s some sort of nasty disease I think, and when you’re diagnosed with it, you have to be isolated from other patients. Also, anyone who enters the room they’re in have to put on disposable gloves and a disposable gown before they enter and take it off and bin it before they leave. I think I entered and exited thier rooms about 50 gowns worth of times. Both of these patients were easy to look after, though, so it was no bigie.

The first was Li’l Ol’ Lady. I got to remove her catheter. First time I ever removed a catheter before. It went fine. I took her for a good walk and a sit in the sun room for an hour before lunch and at one point she asked me “shouldn’t you be doing work?” to which I replied “I am! I’m looking after you and this man over here (my other MRSA patient, also sitting in the sun room) today and you’re both almost good enough to go home so there’s not much for me to do.” – It was a very relaxing shift. The other man I looked after was Mr. Angry Pants. Mr. Angry Pants was fed up with being in hospital and just wanted to go home. I was told he was angry at hand-over and braced myself for it, but he was fine. As soon as I told him he was allowed to be angry and that it didn’t bother me, he cooled his socks, he was actually very friendly. I sat and had a good chat with him for an hour after breakfast, took him for a walk, and he was just thankful to have someone listen to him. Noth patients were discharged home the next morning so I doubt I’ll ever see them again. I finished at 2:45pm so I was stoked! Home before 3pm … noice!

Tuesday I had a late shift, and worked with the same preceptor again. She seemed more obliging this day. I got to look after Cheeky Old Man #1 and Cheeky Old Man #2. Cheeky Old Man #1 had had his prostate removed and had two holes either side of his belly button were blood and clots drained out into two clear bags with plugs at the end. I had to flush them at one point during my shift. That means I emptied the contents of the bags into a kidney dish, recorded how much blood there was (in mls) and then rinsed it with water and made sure it was all nice and clean and clear. Draining blood and clots  from two holes in a man’s belly made me nauseas.

Cheeky Old Man #2 had had part of one of his kidney’s removed. He was a heavy smoker his whole life and he’s paying for it now. I refer to them both as being cheeky because Cheeky Old Man #1 held my hand awful tight when I took him for a walk and wanted to go for a swim with me and Cheeky Old Man #2 asked for my number. All in all, it was a pretty cruisy shift. I got to leave at 8:45pm as well, so that’s a boon.

Now, let’s get to today. Today was a fascinating day. I’ll sum it up in dot points:

I took blood from a patient for the very first time (Cheeky Old Man #2)! I put a tourniquet round his arm, tested which vein felt good, stabbed it with a needle and watched as vials got filled with his still warm blood.

I went with my preceptor (AWESOME lady, today!!!) and Cheeky Old Man #2 to get his abdomen x-rayed this evening because he wasn’t doing too good. We wheeled him in a wheel-chair down to level 1 and whilst we were waiting for the radiologist, I found another wheel chair and challenged Cheeky Old Man #2 to a race. He said no but promised to tomorrow.

The radiologist I met knows my old man and is a Collingwood supporter.

A doctor spoke to me today.

This part I don’t want to sum up in dot points.

We had a man come in today with rectal bleeding. If anyone knows anything about vampire bats, they may know that they are called so because thier diet is comprised 100% of blood, which means vampire bat guano and vampire bat caves have a very VERY distinctive smell. Similarly, rectal bleeding causes poo to have a distinctive smell. Something about the blood, I hypothesize. Anyway, Old Anus is Bleeding Man today had … something of an accident, we might say. After he showered, we put him in what we in the nursing profession call “pad in pants” where we get a giant pad, and put it into these hospital underpants called mollipants. An hour or two after his shower, he was lying in bed and I assumed one of the four men in this room had farted and just not owned up to it. But the smell wasn’t going away … and it had that same familiar, sickening scent the bathroom had after Old Anus is Bleeding Man had used it. Also it seemed to continually punch you in the face.

I took the initiative to ask him how everything was going “downstairs” and asked him if I could check it out. Nothing could’ve prepared me for what I saw/smelt. For starters, his mollipants were stuck with bloody poo to his flano pyjamas. I got him up out of bed and in my careful consideration, grabbed the following: a big towel for him to stand on, two small hand towels (one wet with hot water, one dry), a roll of toilet paper, a medical waste garbage bag, an adult diaper and a handy pair of rubber gloves. So we got his pants down, we got his mollipants down, and his pad stayed, stuck to his thighs. So, I got that out of the way and watched as handfuls of dough-like, sticky, dark, bloody shit fell out of his ass, and landed on the prepared towel. He said he couldn’t quite reach around to clean himself so … yours truly did the honours. I literally wiped mounds of bloody poo off an old man’s ass today. Once I got rid of the bulk of that with the toilet paper, I gave it a good clean with the hot, wet hand towel, dried it with the dry hand towel and by this stage my preceptor came to help me as we got him into an adult diaper. I accidentally got his IV caught up in his diaper so we had to undo it, untangle it and get the diaper stuck back together. But then he was in his bed, I disposed of all the mess appropriately and the room no longer smelt of bloody human faeces!

Don’t youse all wish you were doing nursing??