Monday, April 22, 2013

#532 - S is for Slammed

Can you see the panda with tongue sticking out?
Some days in the ED can be horrific.  Yesterday was one of those days.  Having come back from a glorious 9 days of vacation, I was ill-prepared for a full night shift as waves of patients descended upon the ED.

I hadn't even started my shift and decided to pick up a patient who had just rolled in the door by ambulance so that the prior MD could start in triage and we could let the triage MD go home early since the ED wasn't that busy.  Little did we know that the second that doc walked out the door, all chaos would break loose.

At one point or other I had:
4 dialysis patients all with various complaints
a chest pain patient that went straight to the cath lab
chest pain that got ruled out
cancer patient with a fever
low blood sugar
teen overdose on aspirin (235 pills wow!)
migraine headache
headache and dizzy
pregnant with gallbladder issues
drunk and faking seizures
colitis
terminal ileitis
2 ear pains
2 short of breaths
pneumonia
enlarged thyroid
head bleed with an aneurysm
"I want pain meds"
arm infection
leg infection

and probably several more that I can't remember in the dizzying
deluge that was last night.

Back to the fun tonight...
and, it's a Monday...
ugh...


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

oh my god.. was that kid Suicidal?

just found your blog! Loving it!

-- Christopher

http://thethoughtsofchristopherm.blogspot.com/

Lori said...

I see the panda now! At first it looked like a mask of some kind, then a face. But it didn't look like a panda until I read the caption.

Jeanie said...

You must have been working on adrenalin: even when you got back home, Veronica! That was some shift!
There has to be an art in switching off from all this trauma. When you leave the building, I mean. lol
Thank God for people like you.

Featured Post...

The Mid 40's are in the Books

For some reason I never got around to writing about traveling to National Parks numbers 44, 45 and now 46...! Back at the end of June...