Stories

I had an interesting set of days at work. Saturday I discovered a lump on someone's eyebrow which they stated nonchalantly was from bumping their head on the wall after they stood up from the toilet. It happened at 6 in the morning, and the soft-spoken CNA informed the night nurse while she was giving report, so she actually didn't hear him. Lots of paperwork, neuro checks, so forth. The resident couldn't see what all the fuss was about. Then I replaced an indwelling urinary catheter which . . . [here I was going to add something snide about what other people didn't do, but decided to leave it out. You can easily imagine it.]

That wasn't so remarkable, although for some reason even after all these years I still feel a rush of relief after placing a Foley successfully. What was remarkable was that after that, the resident was on their side and I was able to see and identify a deep tissue injury on their heel. It was necessary to educate the doctor about what identifies a deep tissue injury and how it is staged; also very lucky that I recently took an online class that made it much easier to identify. More paperwork.

Sunday I discovered numerous new bruises on someone, and today we discovered a place behind someone's ear where oxygen tubing had created pressure and an open area. More paperwork. I'm starting to feel like the queen of incident reports.

After I placed little pieces of foam tubing to cushion the oxygen tubing behind the person's ears, I said I hoped it wasn't uncomfortable, as it caused her ears to stand out somewhat. She mentioned that she had been called "Big Ears" as a child because her short haircut revealed her ears sticking out.

I became curious about why she had the short haircut, which turned out to be related to having such curly, bushy hair that it was best managed by cutting her hair. We talked about permanents, and how they turned her hair almost into an "Afro". I looked through the memory book of photos of her and her daughter, and ended up talking about how I and my sisters all wore braids, as the way to manage our hair. In this conversation I completely lost track of time. This was fun, as I am greatly expanding my toleration for socialization at work.

Towards the end of my shift when I had things mostly in hand and was waiting to give meds to the last person, give report and go home, I was called to a room to see a resident awash in very dark liquid "emesis", testing positive for blood and with frank blood and a smell of iron. [Sorry about this.] Anyway, her blood pressure was very low and I had a hard time getting it.

I really wanted to send her out to the ER for a GI bleed, but the [young, enthusiastic and inexperienced] doctor wanted to keep an eye on her, check her blood pressure every hour, and get an abdominal x-ray. It's in the hands of the night nurse, now. The good thing is that I photocopied documents from her chart to send along if it's necessary to send her out, and the facility is very close to the hospital.

The odd thing is that I'm usually very laid-back, wanting to just keep an eye on people, not wanting to get all excited and send people out unnecessarily. If I want to send someone out, there's usually really something wrong.

I'll be off for two days, and when I come back I'll be able to learn the rest of the story.