all in a day’s work

 firstly, dan and i have broken up.  i barely heard from him after last monday, when he found out about his job.  when he finally decided he wanted to see me, he was shocked that i wasn’t affectionate.  things went swiftly downhill from there and it would seem that he was waiting for me to break up with him rather than him having to break up with me.  all it’s done is confirm to me that i want someone who has enough passion about me to at least fight for me.  

on another note, things in work are going very well.  my manager said she wants me to do my chemotherapy training, and she will personally pay out of her budget for me to do it. 

also, i had a very special weekend, which has resulted in people thinking i saved a man’s life.  i maintain that i was just doing my job, but nobody in work will hear a thing of it and several people have come up to me to tell me i did a really good job.

basically, we had a patient who was admitted with shortness of breath, and after some treatment, the doctors decided on friday he was ready to come off his IVs and go home after the weekend.  when i met him on saturday morning, he had taken a turn and had become poorly.  he was HIV positive, and in remission from lymphoma.  essentially, over the weekend he was becoming more and more poorly, and i was looking after him and having to make decisions about his care.

i involved critical care outreach, who are intensive care nurses who offer support for highly dependent patients on the wards, and i asked the registrar to review him.  we were back and forth all weekend, until eventually he was diagnosed with pcp pneumonia, presumably related to his HIV.  there was also what now seems like a fairly dramatic moment, where i rang the registrar and said she must review this patient immediately because i could see him dying in front of me and she needed to do something about it.  i’m pretty certain she thought i was being dramatic until she looked at my man and realised he was in fact as unwell as i thought.

long story short, i went home on sunday and he was alive, albeit incredibly unwell.  my colleague liz looked after him on monday and sent me a message to let me know he was being transferred to the infectious diseases department at a local, bigger hospital, and that i had saved his life and should be proud.  i came to work today and my manager called me to her office and said she needed to talk to me about something.  my immediate reaction was ‘shit what have i done?!’ but she said the registrar who had been on call over the weekend had come to her on monday to tell her that she was incredibly impressed with my work and i had undoubtedly saved our man’s life. our ward junior doctor also approached me today and said he had been on call over the weekend and had been speaking to the registrar about our man (he was part of the team who deemed him well enough to stop all his treatment on friday, albeit it was a consultant decision and not his decision).  he said she had said to him also how impressed she was with me and he was like ‘well done you!’

most of the time, it is all in a day’s work, and we look after poorly patients day in day out.  but sometimes you have days that are truly special, that you come home from and think yeh, i did good today.  for my colleagues to have recognised it is incredibly embarrassing, as it is what i’m paid for, and i didn’t feel i had gone especially above and beyond, just that i had been persistent in advocating for my patient and delivering good care.  but it is also incredibly rewarding, it’s nice to know that my judgement and skills as a nurse are recognised, and especially for a registrar to come to seek out my ward manager to tell her how impressed she was with my work, well that kind of thing doesn’t happen every day and it does make me proud.

we save lives every single day, every colleague of mine does.  every little thing we do for our patients contributes to their well being.  but i suppose it is a rare day where you can say were it not for the action i took today, a man would have died.  he needed immediate, lifesaving treatment, and i delivered that.  not only that but i fought for that man for every minute of my two shifts.  our intensive care doctors didn’t want to take him because they deemed he wouldn’t be suitable for ventilation, in terms of if he was vented he was unlikely to come off the vent.  so ultimately, we ended up delivering high dependency care on a medical ward, and again, i do feel incredibly proud.

not to mention this man was one of my 11 patients that day.  all this outrage in the press about nurses with their eight patients, welcome to my world. i have eight patients every time i walk through the door, more if we’re short staffed, or if another ward is short staffed and they move one of us to help out.  that is my reality, that is every day.  i wouldn’t know what to do with myself if i just had 4 patients.  i’ve proven, as have my colleagues, that we can care for critically ill patients, plus a handful of other seriously ill patients, and do it incredibly well.  none of my ten other patients knew that my 11th patient was critically ill. because the minute i walk out of his room, and into their room, then they are my focus.  i might be making lists in my head, and counting down the minutes until i need to check another set of obs but the patient in front of me would never know.

this weekend has given me a renewed vigour for my job.  i love what i do, but some days it’s bloody hard work.  this weekend, i made a difference to that man and his family.  i did that, i fought for him, i saved his life.

xx