stress mess.

stress CAN make you sick! [&by you i mean me].

i love my job. i've even been loving it more &more the more i am there, learning and getting to know my co-workers and loving my patients. but last week i had a bad night. ughh. i only remember key points by now because i have blocked it out.

i had a sweet, sweet young girl who had a spontaneous pneumothorax and she had a chest tube. i have never had a patient with a chest tube before so i was just being extra careful &asking questions and monitoring her closely. her pneumo had healed and she was recovering. so i go in there and she's complaining of tightness in her chest &a cough and i could hear air leaking from her insertion site... not good. i got help from one of my older/more experienced/extremely sarcastic/thinks he is superior co-workers [who is nice sometimes &even helped me out later in the shift]. anywho, after getting chest x-rays done, calling the doctor in the middle of the night twice, trying to reinforce her dressing on her insertion site, switching the chest tube to suction... a couple hours later we got another chest x-ray done and her pneumo came back &was WORSE. so i call the doctor again &we transfer her to ICU and she has to get her chest tube reinserted.

i had 8 patients that night, one of my other ones was confused from some medication he had been given. i went in there to check on him &there was blood everywhere from the bed to the bathroom and he was just standing there trying to figure out what was going on. poor thing. ended up he had pulled out his IV, i made sure he was okay (stopped the bleeding), reoriented him, cleaned up the blood, got him back in bed, and started a new IV. poor thing. [but he was so cute &his 85 year old wife slept next to him every night he was there on the COUCH... married for 70 years, i asked him for advice &he told me "make it stick"].

it's... a LITTLE stressful when i have patients like this and then on top of those 2 i have 6 other patients i am taking care of all my by myself, constantly needing me for this& that. i wish i could paint of picture of what those nights can be like.

i am supposed to get off my shift at 7:00, had to stay until 9:00 finishing everything- making dan late to his chemistry lab from having to WALK... miles... my fault, which i felt so bad about &might have called ten people from the ward at 6:30 in the morning for a ride.

as i was finishing up my work i got a drink of water because i was starting to get a headache. i started to feel a little nausea, but i finished my work and headed out. the second those big automatic doors opened and i walked outside i just burst into tears, which decided they did not want to stop any time soon. i called dan just so i could here his voice &leave a message on his machine, but he picked up! blessing: he had gotten out of his lab early so i jeered off course so i could meet him. by this time i was feeling ill: my body was aching, i was feeling weak, nauseated, and i had a headache. i met dan and by that point i could barely walk. he lovingly walked me to the car as i cried and cried and took the tiniest grandma steps and stopped in the middle of the road. we had to stop twice on the way home as i got out of the car on my knees and had to throw up. i managed to throw up all over the street [i did feel a lot better afterwards]. i was the most pitiful, writhing, moaning &crying soul we had ever beheld. we got to our apartment complex & because i could hardly walk, dan carried me [in his arms, like a baby] all the way down three long hallways and up a flight of stairs to our apartment. i have such a good man.

i fell asleep and felt better when i woke up, still yucky tho. and then off to work again that night. stinky. i managed to get mildly sick with different things the next two nights. i would go to work and be sick by the morning, go home, sleep all day and evening, wake up and try to regain my composure for 2 hours so i could go back to work. not the best week,

i will not forget or fail to add, i was blessed with strength. Heavenly Father answered my prayers in so many ways and helped me get through the nights.

it really amazed me how i became so physically ill from stress. it is so real that our mind can affect our bodies. how true that we must take care of both accordingly. i learned how important it is to always have emotional composure at work. thankfully, i was able to stay focused and take care of my patients... but it was obviously building up inside &all hit me the second i finished.

i also learned that my husband is even more wonderful that i had ever had an opportunity to realize. i slept for days &days and did not do a thing. he cooked, he cleaned, he planned family home evening with a sweet friend, he babied me, he took care of me, he would come to my side &love me all that i needed. did i mention i am soo lucky to have such a good man who adores me?

i am going to start doing a post about nursing every week, just so i can chronicle all the hilarious, sweet, and unpredictably loco things that happen to me. only time will tell.