Helter Skelter

With little by means of homework tonight, I thought it might be a good idea to call in for a quick four hours of extra time.  Naively hoping it wouldn't be that busy of a Monday, I even brought a book along with me to see if I could get some studying done in the downtime... a classic rookie mistake.  It's that kind of thinking that inevitably results in me getting slammed.

Passed triage on my way in and saw around twenty charts staked up for patients still waiting to be seen.  Checked the schedule and discovered that I would be the only tech on one half of the ER, covering three patient care teams.  Grateful at least for good nurses to work with, I spent my "princess shift" moving nonstop from one patient to the next.  

Bad asthma attack came in next door to the rule out CVA, both down the hall from the suicidal Motrin overdose.  Moved her out to receive the pre-op patient with abnormal labs, and then got tied up with the possibly septic cancer patient whose pressure would not move out of the 70s.  Another asthma patient snuck in between the pair of elderly ladies given the boot by their nursing homes, both of whom were yelling at each other loud enough to annoy the 25 year old with the bad migraine.  After correctly spotting a-fib on a patient's EKG, I learned from a PA how to apply steri-strips to an older gentleman's sliced finger before wrapping it in tube gauze in sending him on his way.

Needless to say, no time for studying, but still a quick, fun, and hands-on mini-shift after a day stuck in lectures.  And I was even called handsome by a young female schizophrenic, which counts as compliment even if she didn't know what she was saying, right?