First post

So it's a warm Saturday (which is odd because this seems to be the city that spring, and summer, forgot).

It's 4:50, which means only about an hour and a half before I head to that awful place where I spend 36 hours a week.

I'm a nurse. RN, to be exact. Have been for several years. Working in the ER of a large, busy, inner-city, level 1 trauma center. We get burns, psych, drug OD's...anything that walks through the door we will accept with open arms.


This is a blog about the realities of nursing, and patienting, as I see them. I see and hear and do a lot of shit. I've seen really great things happen, and really awful things happen. And I like talking about the things that I see, and that I hear, and that I do. I hope you like reading about them.

So it's a warm saturday afternoon. A neighborhood block party is going on, so undoubtedly we will see tons of drunkards, and OD's and other forms of inebriation. I swear, I would have died and had no street cred (well, the little that I had anyways) had I been taken to the ER for "drunkenness" in my youth. Blah! What pussies! Always 14 and 18 and 22 year olds, can't handle the hooch, come in spitting and ranting, so we dope them up and make them sober up, sleep it off and piss on themselves for 8 hours. Great time to be had by all. A great use of federal and state funds, by the way...

Or oh! It's Saturday night which is perfect for getting shitfaced and getting behind the wheel of a car and plowing into 2 other autos whilst going the wrong way down the interstate. Enter outraged family of DUI'er who threaten to sue you each time you mention that their dear lovely little lovey was shitfaced and driving, which are 2 things that should never go together.

Gotta love families.

Or the people who come in for toenail pain, and get frothy because they have to wait in the waiting room for 8 hours. And they have all 18 of their kids with them, rolling on the floor, digging through trash cans. I'm not a babysitter. I really don't give a shit if your kid gets a needle stick from digging through garbage. Yeah, heartless? Probably. But I got other shit to do, like keep people alive when their bodies have other ideas. Like keep an eye on the med students & residents who do things like write orders for a heparin drip for someone with a GI bleed (BUT THEY HAVE AFIB!! yes, and your point would be...??) . Oh and fielding the at least once a week question of "but can't you just IV push the potassium?" No. I can't. You can, though :evilgrin:

So off to work it is in an hour and a half.

If I'm your nurse, you're probably having the worst day of your life.