Steady as she Goes

Yesterday I went to work even though it was saturday.

Work on saturdays is different to regular days of the week. I don't know why. things are just quieter. there is a saturday morning atmosphere. but we were still incredibly busy because we were only 4 nurses and 2 students to 26 patients, one of the nurses was half day.

There were 3 patients who got into a fight. A druggie hit a drunk and a security guard got in between them. All of them had head injuries and every hour we had to chart their reactions and state of consciousness. Then they all had to go to the ear,nose and throat department at the same time and there was panic because if three nurses left the ward, there would be only one left to answers the phones and take care of 26 patients. When we called the ENT people to see if they could come to us, they refused so my friend and i had to take all three of them down between us. Madness, I call it madness.

Later, I had to help a staff nurse turn a very, very annoying patient and while doing so her colostomy bag burst. I wanted to vomit. but to make matters worse, she is horribly demented so she says the same 4 sentences over and over again:

I'm going to fall in the well.
You are hurting me yes, no, just a little bit.
Is Doreen here yet?
Hold me Dor!

Right between my nausea and my receeding tolerance levels I feel this awful pain in my abdomen and I realised I had just got my monthly 7 days too early. And I was wearing white nursing trousers. Oh crap. I ran to the treatment room, grabbed a handful of surgical swabs, ran to the toilet and stuffed them in my undies. Jesus, they were scratchy! Finally break came along and i bought some pads.

I had to clean a patient's laparatomy wound. It was oozing some kind of pus-like crap so we decided to take a sample and send it for investigation. In order to get a good sample, i had to squeeze this person's skin until i had a decent amount of exudate. My friend shouts out "MIND YOUR FACE!" and the fountain of pus missed me by a few millimetres.

But throughout all this, I still felt fine. I was totally Zen about everything that went on. As the Raconteurs say:

So steady as she goes
When you have completed what you thought you had to do
And your blood's depleted to the point of stable glue
Then you'll get along
Then you'll get along