Another busy day.

We were hit early by a barage of doctors. Pages of orders were penned for my patient. Now that's the way I want it. Interventions, doctors doing their jobs. Collaborations. I hope it keeps up. Paging them and telling them what's up is my job but they have to check their patients specially when they are in ICU.

While all this was happening, my other patient's doctor wanted to do a cardiac cath now. Someone cancelled and he can fill the vacancy in the cath lab. Splendid, I'm not done with my coffee, now this? Hahaha. Just kidding. Let's get the consent signed and the patient to the cath lab. He stayed there for a couple of hours. Just enough time for me to catch up on the orders for my other patient who seem to have problems peeing. A medication here and there and the golden fluid started flowing. Oh yeah, only doctors and nurses are happy to see pee flow. In this patient's case, like a horse. He kept going. They also did an ultrasound of his kidneys and they found no obstructions. Good deal.

After the busy day, I was invited to a Bible study. Well, let's see, I have a headache, I'm tired and hungry. Yeahm let's do Bible study. This will fill my spiritual hunger. I was glad I did. Keeps life into perspective. They have lugaw, porridge, too so the hunger was also satisfied. Can't beat that.

Baby sitting the niece.

It's holiday today, president's day. Sister is scheduled for work at 6:30 am. She asked me if I wanted to babysit for a day. I was more than willing. This way, my niece can stay in bed an extra hour. Important sleep for a growing child. My brother in law also left at 6 a.m. By this time I heard a baby like sigh, and a little girl showed up in the guest room. She was rubbing her eye sleepily looking for a familiar face. Since none is around she decided to explore her uncle just to see if he is vaguely familiar. Ah, yes, a smile came to the sleepy face. I led her to the living room as she lazily followed me.

Not for long she was all over the place. I cooked some eggs without cooking oil as I can't find where the bottle of cooking oil is. She ate a little bit of the eggs. The amazing thnig was she know where the cookies and crackers are.

I changed her diaper atleast 6 times that day. That's a lot of diaper. She was a nice kid, didn't fuss much. Harrased to cat more than me. Stared at the dog most of the day.

It was a cold and lazy day so I myself was having catnaps. If things get too quiet, I get up to check on the little one. There she was by the sliding door staring at the dog.

Capped the day playing playstation with the bro in law and singing karaoke with sister. It was a fine day.

New DSL Account.

I quit AOL DSL hoping that Verizon DSL will be faster. Guess again. The only benefit is that it cost less than AOL. I get free MSN account. The wireless router/modem setup is not bad. I hooked up the Mac and it's online in no time.

Work is work. Kinda scary place to work as open heart patient are not seen by their doctors or surgeons later on the day. I had a particularly sick patient. I was used to having doctors at bedside shoving orders to keep the patients well. In this hospital, they don't showup until later in the day. I was told that they are in surgery somewhere else. Wow. I hope I don't get services in this hospital. I talked to my charge nurse and the coordinator of the heart center and what they basically tell me is that I need to do the doctor's job for them. I accept the fact that I am the doctor's eyes and ears but it's not my job to tell them to go to work.

My instincts tell me that the patient need something, like doctor's attention. for instance. My 5 years of experience and 2 years of nursing school doesn't replace 20 years of medical experience and 4 years of medical school. I can't call the doctors and tell them go to work as they are at work at another hospital. They work a lot but I think they are spread very thin. One nurse told me we (the nurses) are on our own. Fine with me. How about the poor patient? I get to go home. They might not. I also heard that a patient died. No doctors around. He was on the phone. Ahh, what good will that do? He can't see what's going on. SCARY.

I might ask for a transfer to another department or just don't do fresh hearts for now. I told the bosses that it's way past my comfort level. I'm used to having doctors doing their rounds in the morning and not after lunch. I guess it was a rare day. But it still happened and during my care. The patient started crashing in the late afternoon, 5pm. The coordinator happens to be checking on me since I complained about the missing doctors. We ended up in the CT scan and preparing the patient to go back to surgery. The doctors showed up and started checking on the patient. Now, we are in a frenzy. Instead of avoiding incidence like this, we are in one. After a couple of hours of extreme stress, all is for not. The patient was sensitive with medications so the doctors changed meds around and she was fine again.

It really sucked. They could have known this in the start. But, they weren't paying attention. The patient survived. Thank God. The coordinator asked me if I have a sixth sense. Ah, yup, I can tell when patients are peeking in the light at the end of the tunnel. It's my job to keep them from falling in the tunnel.

This piece of art is the big brother of a handgun that I do own. The P228. A 9mm short barrel, close contact, concealed handgun that I bought in the aftermath of the LA riot of the early 1990's. Even my none gun believing mom agreed with the purchase of the gun after ashes of the fires fell on top of our apartment building for days. When the threat of death and destruction breath down your front door, you start to be a card carrying member of the NRA.


Sig Sauer P226. Greatest gun ever! Feel special.
Beautiful and reliable but can still scare the
living bejesus outta anyone.


What handgun are you?
brought to you by Quizilla