Fuzzy Books

Wednesday, June 14th will go down in my own personal history book as the worst day I've had in the ED thus far. I won't go into details because it's just too long and boring to recap, but the short version is as follows. We had waaaay too many sick patients (by which I mean our acuity was a lot higher than normal), way too many non-sick--but vocal--patients, and not enough doctors or nurses. By 2330 all of our rooms were full, three in the hallway (which is a lot in a 12 bed department) and 9 to be brough in. And we're a small hospital, there's only one doctor after 2200 to see all of these patients! So at 2345 we went on diversion and it somehow all got better. Of course, I didn't end up getting out until 0130 but whatever.

Oh yeah, then on my way home I came across a car off the road. He wasn't moving, or seatbelted, and his foot was wedged on the gas pedal so the tires were spinning. I called 911 and didn't get out of my car until other people arrived at the scene (reminder to myself; call my EMT instructor and thank him for teaching me about scene safety because it kept me from running to the car to assess the patient. Because, come on, I'm young, very blonde, and cute...someone could have had his way with me then killed me and no one would have known. Or his car could have exploded, leaving my kids mommyless and my husband alone. Or the car could have taken off into the woods with me hanging from the window. Or it was an elaborate set-up to rob me of my Mazda Protege-haha. Sorry, I digress...) Turns out that the dude in the car was drunk (shock!) and had passed out at the wheel. So I guess no one was trying to have his way with me. Sigh :)

And this is all what this blog is about because I came home from that night, got into bed at around 0215 and right as I was drifting to sleep Lily (the 2 year old) awoke screaming because her teeth hurt (she's cutting 4 new teeth). It is so crazy for me that I went from taking care of a 650 lb man (I'll write about him sometime) to reading fuzzy books with my daughter in the span of a few hours. I know there are many working mums and dads out there who switch the gears from work to home very quickly, so it shouldn't be anything special that we nurses do it. But to me, it is. We take care of the sick as we would our children, or husbands, or mothers and it's just what we do. Even on those horrible days in the ED when I'm considering looking up the nearest Borders to see if they're hiring, I really don't think that I'm cut out to do anything else. How sadistic is that?