Was it a Puma?

So it's been awhile. I've been a busy girl!

First off, I've gotten through two weeks on night shift. The whole day/night/day/night thing is weird. I'm still not sure which day is today and which day is last night and which day is tomorrow. But, I'm adjusting and I got my own admission last Monday which was great and I had a lot of help and everything was very bueno. I start on my own next week after two days of trauma nurse classes. I'm a little scared. Our night supervisor came by Wednesday and gave me a packet of stuff for my 90 day eval in Febuary and said "If you aren't up to snuff, you're out". I know this is true...but it was scary to actually hear someone say it! I just have to keep reminding myself that I got hired for a reason and I'll be fine.

I am also a little further along in buying the house. Inspection is done, now I'm waiting to see if the seller will fix what needs to be fixed and do some more stuff for the mortgage guy, which is fun and exciting and way overwhelming...I got a big ol' packet in the mail today full of stuff I don't quite understand, so I'm hoping we can find a time Monday to go over all that information.

Mostly I've been working, recovering from working and working again. I did have a very good Thanksgiving with my brother and his wife and her family. It wasn't my parents, but it was very nice to have some family to spend the holiday with, plus, I had a great nap!

Yesterday I had lunch with Megan Winkler (nee, Oakley) from high school and it was actually really great to see her. I hadn't seen her since her wedding six or so years ago so we had a lot of talking and catching up to do. I'm sure it's mean, but I'm always relieved to meet people who, like me, didn't exactly take the know exactly what you want to do and graduate college four years or less after you get out of high school route. Granted, she moved to Japan with her husband and had a baby...and I had too much fun, but still. She and I were good friends and ran with the same crowd in high school so it was nice to catch up with someone so familiar.

After lunch I went over to Shelly's house in Dallas, met up with her, John, D*licious (new name), Kevin and Christy and headed up to Tulsa for some Boland at Cain's Ballroom. The Ballroom was blissfully smoke free and Boland sounded great...but even more important I had FUUUUUUUN!!!! We laughed and sang and danced and I got ragged on a LOT (seriously...a LOT. It's a little ridiculous. I'm honestly not a fan.) and I had an overall GREAT time. Occasional drama...but hey, what is a road trip without a little overacting???? There are pictures on my myspace.

I have a few other general wonderings about the opposite sex that I will choose not to discuss here because it's just a can of worms I'm not all about opening and I know it won't end well for me at all, which is a shame, but I guess, as D*licious and John say - it is what it is.

I'll go on to say this: I am ready to have this whole home buying business over with.

Woooo!

I got the house!!

Pictures to follow!

Dr. Yummy

So it is 3:45 on Friday afternoon and I'm sitting at my desk in my pajamas eating dark chocolate.

How lame!

I have night shift 3/3 tonight and I'm done for the week! So far the change to nights has been pretty underwhelming. The patients I've had have been pretty easy and pretty low key so honestly, I've been pretty bored. Plus, I don't really know anyone on nights now so I don't really have anyone I can go sit next to while I'm bored and everyone already knows each other and I'm only outgoing once I know people... so I mostly just sit there. Maybe I'll try to pick up a magazine on the way tonight. Tonight though, I think we're going to get one patient and be open for a hit, and it's a Friday night...so that is good. I like getting hit...ha!

I'm hoping the night shift thing picks up, otherwise I may think about putting my name on the list and going back to days. More stuff to keep me occupied plus working nights kind of takes up four days instead of three...the day of the first shift you're trying to sleep, then the next two days you sleep all day then the day after your third shift you end up sleeping all day anyway...no bueno! Plus I like the busyness of days. You get report, you do your assessments, you chart, you do meds, the docs round, you assess again, you do whatever orders you got, give more meds maybe a trip to ct, maybe a bath, you assess and chart again, docs are still running around and you have more orders and then you give report and leave and I like that. I like having the docs around all the time just in case. I like rounding with the attendings. Plus...you go to bed early the night before and you can still maybe have dinner with friends one of the nights you work.

However...new doctor crush. And apparently, he likes taking extra call shifts at night so he can get into the OR. Yummy. I'm sure he's secretly a huge butthead.

So anyway...off to get dressed and go save lives!

And for your viewing pleasure, baby Ashley and me!

Moral looseness

So I'm a bit of a post whore, apparently. I'm okay with that.

So last night was Toadies Tuesday with Shelly, Sarah D and a late appearance by Andrew. I learned a LOT. Seriously, a LOT. Some that I didn't really want to know about. Some that I'm sure I needed to hear. Some that has crushed my hope for the inherent good in others.

Sigh.

Maybe it's that I'm naive, maybe it's that I've led a pretty sheltered life where nothing bad has happened to me. I don't know. But I have a really hard time with the theory that people aren't inherently good and I really don't get why people aren't nice!

I'm not a stupid girl, I know there are shitty people who do shitty things and that they were probably wired wrong from the beginning. I also know that shitty circumstances make morally ambiguous people do bad things. But overall? Basic human kind? I think is good. I don't think most people set out in their day thinking "alright, who am I going to hurt today, cause I'm all about it!"

What I hate the very most is when people that I thought were nice people turn out to be not so nice. That is the worst kind of disappointment.

Ugh.

Saw a threesome in the making last night. Speaking of morally ambiguous. We saw a girl make out with no fewer than three men who were sitting at the same damn table. The one who was obviously the official boyfriend did not see the other two that she made out with. The sad guy in the jacket took her back to the mens bathroom (!!!) and then saw her lovin' up on the other two. Guy number three just saw her with the official boyfriend. She went home with the official boyfriend and sad guy in the jacket.

Eye opening, to say the least.

Still waiting to hear back about the contract.

Offer!

I put an offer in!!!!!!

Now...I wait!

just kidding

So you know when I said last week that I had found a house?

I was just kidding.

THIS week I found a house.

It's about 30 years newer than the other one (!!!) AND it actually has electricity in the kitchen. AND a garage. Woot!

Billy, my realtor, is going to run numbers tonight and we'll start moving forward tomorrow.

Yay!!!

It's a really good house.

http://ntreislistings.marketlinx.com/portal/publiclist.aspx?PID=687367&MID=0562785&LID=2716061&AT=3

Otherwise? Not much. I start working nights this week, which kind of blows. I had just kind of gottent he hang of the day shift. Blah. But...I'm excited because in two weeks I get cut loose and I'm really for real a big girl nurse...it will be MY name up on the board!!!

Great Times

So I can say this now because I am no longer at work and no longer run the chance of jinxing myself...

Thursday through Saturday at work...I was BORED!!!!

Sure, I like having fairly uncomplicated patients where I do my assessments and pull my meds and round with the doctors and monitor their progress and all that.

But three shifts in a row??????? In the ICU????????

Not so much.

It is sick and twisted but I LOVE that moment where the thought going through your head is "Oh F. I need an extra set of hands, a physician and some pressors!"

Yesterday I was hoping for floor or tele (next step of care down...telemetry) orders so I could maybe get a trauma.

Sick, I tell ya.

Good times after work. Got home, changed (I apologize to all those who did not get to see me all hot and cute last night...it just wasn't gonna happen!) and met Cori, Shelley and Amanda for dinner at yummy Risky's BBQ and then off to Billy Bob's for some Jack Ingram (!!!!!) and a little of John's birthday.

So I have previously (on my myspace blog) mentioned the smallness of the world. I was reminded again last night!

Found John at Billy Bob's and ended up hanging out with him and his friends becuase we were all General Admission. Well, apparently John's best friend Misty and her fiance and his friends all went to Tech at the same time I did. Not only that, we were all in APO together. And one of the girls is in nursing school at TCU and she knows all the other people that I went through my internship with.

Small world!!

good times last night. Good tunes. Good birthday for John. Small world for me. Plus, I slept HARD man. It was GREAT!!!

Today I need to go take my too big Lands End shirt back...need to find a Sears. Bonus points if the Sears has a replacement for me! I also need to take back a pair of pants, go to the gym (!!!...whoa) and clean my damn room.

I'm tired again!

best laid plans

So good day in ICU land.

Bad day in "Nikki plans" land.

First off, I didn't wake up until 6:20. I usually leave the house by 6:05...whoops!

Got to work, did my job, was a great nurse...blah blah blah.

I had this great plan to go to Pei Wei on the way home get dinner tonight and lunch for tomorrow...left my wallet at home this morning...

Not Bueno!

then I was going to get home, eat some leftovers, shower and go to bed by the end of Grey's.

9:40...no shower yet!

I am hella jealous of HayJay and her house!!!!

Got my shirt that I ordered from Lands End in the mail today and it is wicked huge...it shall go back. No use in thinking you're ordering a nice white top that will show off your boobs without being slutty if it hangs off your arms like a sack.

Yoga pants fit though...yay!

So...shower, bed. Actually going to get to work on time tomorrow!!!

Holy F!

an update, if you care

I've decided to use this as sort of the actual blog...cause it's cooler than myspace...I guess.

So I kind of love Sara Ramirez singing on the Spamalot soundtrack...fyi.

I am down to three weeks to go for my internship and I have days when I am totally sure that I'll be okay when I'm on my own. Days like Wednesday and Thursday, when I have my patients who are sick and have problems, but are more or less stable.

I also have days like yesterday when I am given what was a resonable assignment at 0600, but by 0715 when one patient has coded twice in the last hour and I subsequently spend the next 12 hours of the day exclusively in that room save for using the bathroom and the half hour or so when I am uncerimoniously escorted out of the room for lunch at 1630 (in defense of my preceptor, I was offered to go to lunch much earlier but the offer was something like "you can go to lunch now, I've got it, but they're going to float the Swan-Ganz catheter in now, so you can go eat, or help with the Swan...it's up to you"...I picked the Swan placement.) ...those are the days when I have this little mantra in my head that I repeat over and over that goes something along these lines "they WON'T let me kill someone...they WON'T let me kill someone...they WON'T let me kill someone..."

I've had more good days than bad, for sure...but it seems like I get one of THOSE days every week...a day when I end up spending the whole day in one room with a majorly critical patient wondering "why on earth did they give this patient to ME????? Do the other orientees get self inflicted, donor GSW's also? Do they also get the patient who spontaneously ruptures their spleen????...F" (as far as the spleen goes...the team leaders didn't know at the time of making assignments that that would happen...the guy next door had a Swan they wanted me to see; too bad I never made it into his room at all...whoops.)

I keep telling myself that I really won't have those patients from the start if they can at all help it. But then I think "well, I'm going to have to get those patients eventually...when will I know if I can do it if I don't get the patients..." I mean, this isn't like most entry level right out of college jobs...I'm not making budget reports or faxing memos (although I do fax orders) or just making presentations...these are critically ill patients. Some of them have died on me (two!!!) and a lot of them have certainly had the potential. It's not like the learning curve is dealing with paper work or presentations, and it's not like the learning curve contains difficult INFORMATION...I'm picking stuff up and trying to read as much as I can and listening to what the docs are saying...it's just that my learning curve is in the middle of life and death situations and once it's my patient...I'm sort of in charge of what goes on in my rooms...which is a little scary. I can tell the docs "no, not gonna do that..." and then I have to give them a reason and then sometimes they listen to me! I think I've had a healthy respect and fear for the situations I'm putting myself into right out of school; I knew this was going to be hard and I knew the learning curve would be steep and I knew this would be a big mental and emotional challenge, but I think that the closer I get to being on my own, the more I'm REALLY REALLY getting it. I'm the last line of defense for some of these patients. It's sort of scary.

I was the one in the room yesterday while the docs put in chest tubes...ME. They asked ME for things and I assisted with the procedure...it was very cool and very surreal. I wonder when that gets less weird. I had to stop myself from doing a dance after the attending said "Thanks Nicole" and then gave me orders for labs...it was all very grown up.

Last week we got a really nice kid in and his family was great...scared but great. Mom poked her head out while I was in the other room and told my preceptor "well, I was looking for Nicole since she's his actual nurse..." Whoa!!!!!!!! When we were transferring him to the floor (yay!!!! he was VERY bueno) she told me "I'm glad we're getting out of here...We love you, but I'm glad he's getting out of ICU". My ego just loves getting stroked like that!

Oh, and I really didn't realize this...when an adolescent gets in a traumatic accident...Cook Children's doesn't take them. Apparently the rule is that if they have facial and/or pubic hair then they come to my hospital. I think that is kind of suprising. I would think that Childrens would mean "anyone who sees a pediatrician ie, anyone under 18". Guess not! Hmmm, maybe we should also get donations from people wanting to help Children since we get patients from puberty up. Greedy girl. I also didn't really realize how fast our ER is. When they say "we stabilize and transfer", they REALLY mean it. A few of the trauma's I've gotten, I think their door to ICU time is less than 20 minutes. Quick assessment in the ER, CT and up stairs...When you get report, you best be ready cause they aren't kidding with they say "I'll see you in a few minutes" cause CT takes about 5 minutes when you don't have those stupid IV poles to worry about!

I'm on days this last week and then next week I switch to night shift...I'm pretty excited about the money! Like I said...Greedy girl.

I looked at some houses last weekend...two are very real possibilities. I'm going to look back at one hopefully sometime this week. I'm kind of hoping to find something and close sometime in December...taxes and all! Plus, I'm ready for it. I'm ready to finally be a real adult and pay my own way (now that I have a good job where I can actually afford it!) and do grownup things like paint (!!) and buy chair railing, which I hope is cheap.

I saw my neice last night. She is still freakin' adorable. I didn't get any new pictures though. I suck. We did however discuss football and how to put in chest tubes and the importance of deflating the balloon when floating a Swan and what wedge pressures REALLY mean to her.