Exciting nights at work

Again, breaking with the tradition of not blogging about work, I have to write about some stuff! For those of you who don't know, I'm working on a women's floor -- we do pregnant ladies, new moms and babies, fetal deaths and the occasional lady with another type of surgery. We do a lot of high-risk pregnancies also. As is my custom, I worked Friday and Saturday nights 7pm to 7am and both nights had more than my fair share of excitement. I guess it will eventually look good on a resume, as well as increasing my confidence in my ability to care for these ladies. Friday night I get there and my assignment is 5 patients, one of whom is a woman 7 1/2 months pregnant with.....quadruplets!!! So I'm going along, getting my stuff done, and my quads lady starts feeling bad, having contractions, etc. Okay, well when that happens, we kind of move fast. I found her doc, who happened to be around, and he gives me 3 orders: start IV fluids (which also means starting an IV since she has no access), give her meds to stop the contractions, and get all 4 babies on the fetal monitor. (to get their heartbeats & make sure they're handling the contractions well.) A lot of times it's hard enough to get one baby's heartbeat. So you can imagine how long it took for us to get all 4. There were 4 nurses in there working on this poor lady, who was really nice throughout the whole thing. She ended up being fine and delivered the babies via c-section the next day. After that, the night was ok.

Saturday night, it was even crazier. I get there and the nurse whom I'm coming to relieve tells me up front, "I won't sugar coat it. It's been a bad day." That's not what you want to hear when you're coming on. She's had several patients, 2 of whom were 7 1/2 months pregnant, one of whom has been contracting all day with nothing for pain. Moaning and screaming all day and no one wants to give her anything. This nurse and I both believe she's in labor at 33 weeks, and this nurse used to do maternity nursing in Nigeria. She's probably delivered more babies than a lot of MDs in the US. This patient starts bleeding. Finally they rush her over to Labor & Delivery, where she has the baby (premature) almost immediately. Fortunately, the previous nurse stayed with this patient and helped immensely. Well, the next bit of excitement comes when I go in another pregnant lady's room who's in with pregnancy-induced hypertension (PIH)/preeclampsia. When that happens, the blood flow to the placenta (and therefore the baby) is reduced and you have a great risk of a baby dying in utero. The only known cure is to deliver the baby. We have orders to call if her blood pressure's over a certain number. Guess what?! It was. I retook it, same thing. So I call the doc, she asks me to take it again in an hour. No change. So, this lady won herself a ticket to get induced. Fortunately, she was not bursting at the seams and we could make the transition a little more calmly. That night I got the nickname "Queen of the Breaking Antepartums." (translated: you had a lot of pregnant ladies to send over to Labor & Delivery) Well earned, I might add. The night settled down after that and I ended up walking laps around the floor to keep awake. (And helping the other nurses since most of them had more patients than me. They tried not to give me more admissions because I'd already had my share of excitement.)

On the home front, we're all having a quiet day. Jesus only had to work a couple hours, so we're all hanging out in our bedroom. Hubs is fiddling with his cellphone, I'm obviously blogging, and my boy is pushing the laundry basket full of clothes around the floor like a car and going "vrooom vroom." The menfolk enjoyed watching Elmo on Sesame Street earlier.

Last item -- does anyone else watch that show "Prison Break"? We do and really like it.