Double Public Holiday

5th - 6th October (Sunday - Monday) - Noon to morning shift, as you can see, that's how my shift often goes. Although there were some staffs whom challenged me to take on noon to night shift, then go back in the morning and then take on the next day which is noon shift. Now look, I'm only here to do my job, learn as much as I can, and then upgrade myself. I'm not here to dig my own grave by competing against others on a who-can-do-more-shifts match. Although money is important to me, knowledge is more important, at least, in my opinion. Since usually I only spend my money on books. (House of Night Redeemed and Shopaholic to the Stars...)
Let's see, today there's a blood transfusion going on. It's been a long time since I set a blood transfusion. I only done platelets, but that was like more than a year ago. I still got the theory with me, but theory and practical, as we all know, it's a totally different thing. Now, before you give blood products, always remember, pre and post flushing with Normal Saline. I remember back then I used Lasix after normal saline to prevent fluid overload. Different hospitals, different practices. So check the blood product, flush with saline, put up the blood with the warmer, let it run, then put up another saline. Yep, same flow.
It seems that people often thinks I never follow profs. Well, that's not fully true. I do follow profs, just not often. And sometimes I follow the profs, I ended up doing really silly things, like asking the profs' names, end up tripping when I dash to grab something, well, you get the idea when you're a newbie junior. Some profs are nice, some profs are impatient, some are tolerant, some are really scary... I've been making a list of who is whom but even I myself can't remember them all, although they remember me cause of being the only sore thumb sticking out. Sigh... There's not much patient, but even so, there are two that are seriously fussy. I try not to talk with them too much because they often jump into conclusions. From my experience, when you encounter these kinds of patients, sometimes it's better to act dumb and talk less.
Since these two days are a public holidays, there's actually not much patients. I went to the downstairs ward to help out. And was reunited with my other two friends. Not much of a chance to be reunited, so let's enjoy the day today. Today the patients are okay, except for two. One is the family of an elderly lady and a young man. I'll get into the story one by by one. Let's start off with the elderly lady. She's nice, really, but her family is a little bit of a worrier-type, almost like the lady that I took care of, the one with he blood transfusion. When I did the BP checking, they were all hopping that it shouldn't be that high. Now let's assess, the lady is in her 60's, with an average diagnosis (I'm not stating it in detail), she may need chemo and she's on NG feeding with CBD with drips. Of course her BP will be ranging around 140-160. But they insist on me to check every hour. ahhh, the TL was a little annoyed and ordered me not to, shall we say, serve their needs too much. Because we have other patients who needs more attention besides her. Not to say that I refuse to serve her, but the family request are a little bit too much.
I also met a cute little girl who's in love with ducks. Ohhh, how I love Donald Duck, and she had a whole row of rubber ducks of all sizes, and a little soft yellow duck plush. She even let me poke it a little, so soft and cite. She's going to be discharged tomorrow, but I'm glad to be able to meet her, even if it's only briefly.
Okay, the second patient. He's not as bad as the elderly lady's family, but he's the type that we categorize as the spoon-fed type. You see, he's rather sick, not terminal ill, but just sick. He's on NG tube free drain, PICC with Kabiven and saline drip, and CBD. And he's very young. only few years older than me. Once I knew that his CBD is something that needs to be measured hourly, I went into his room every hour, sit on a chair and slowly "milk" the catheter to get the urine out to a decent amount. Because his urine are all at borderline range, we are all worried. I won't go into further details, but he kept begging the prof to remove his catheter which is causing him pain on his you-know-where. While I was "milking the catheter", he kept begging me to take off the catheter, but the prof told him to keep it for one more day, but he's nearly in tears and kept crying to me, "Sister, please help me. Please remove the catheter. It hurts badly, Sister." Now I really pity him, but orders are orders. I tried to get him to walk a little to get his kidneys active but he kept saying his you-know-where hurts and that he has to strain a lot to get the urine or stool out. Sigh, poor guy. In the end after talking with the senior staff, she told me to give him Lignocaine gel to apply down there. I gave it to him and he immediately applied down there. I hope it helps him to bear the night. That's all for today.