What do hospitals and the military have in common? Both have strict schedules. VERY strict schedules. Especially for post-op patients. And my doctor, being a military man is VERY particular about his patients and their post-op care, even more so than other doctors (according to the RN gossip mill!) Overall, things post-op were going very well, I has happily drugged out of my gourd on anesthesia, morphine, and vicodin. Then, as time went by, things took a dark and ugly turn. With every shift change, the new staff would come in and introduce themselves. With the nightshift, I knew would come a challenge: My own personal Nurse Ratchett*. Now, don't get me wrong, I think she's an amazing nurse, and actually, towards the end of her shift, we were joking around. However, it was her charge to make sure my vitals were taken every 2 hours by the tech. Oh yeah, and one of the post-op tools is to use this funky breathing machine where you inhale slowly, and have to get the little blue doo-hickey between the blue arrows and the other blue thingamabob up to a certain measured level (the purpose of this is to help patients use their lower lungs to keep pneumonia from setting in.) As with the vitals, I had to do 10 reps of this every 2 hours. All night long. And Nurse R wasn't about to let me just sleep in my drug haze either! Now, for the most part, I was in/out on Facebook and Frontierville, so these 2 hour checks weren't too bad. Until 6am.
I don't remember the 4am check, but I knew when Nurse R woke me up at 6am, I had been sleeping for a good stretch of time. Oh yeah, and I f'uckin' HATE mornings. Ask anyone! My mom will testify with her hand on a bible, torah, quran, *insert sacred text here*, that at no point in my life have I EVER done well with mornings. To the point where she should pour water on my face to get me up, and ice cubes down my jammies because I refused to get out of bed. With that in mind, I'm sure you can imagine how much I loved being woken up at 6am after everything that had happened the day before. Add to this - Nurse R informed me it was time to take out my catheter, per MD orders (damn him and his post-op schedule!).
Let me first say, that having a catheter in when you're stoned out of your gourd in bed is AWESOME! Never get the urge to go, and you can just lay there and enjoy the buzz without the hassles or inconvenience of going to the bathroom. The downside of catheters (and maybe this is just a woman thing), is that walking w/ a catheter is just weird! I don't know how you guys do it - stuff dangling between your legs. Can you say, AWKWARD! Maybe it's because I was a first-timer, but seriously guys, WTH!??! It's just cumbersome and bizarre!!
Ok, enough of a tangent. So Nurse R comes in at 6am, with her happy cheery its-the-end-of-my-shift-so-don't-give-me-any-shit way, and announces that it's time to take out the catheter. Honestly, the process itself isn't a big deal and didn't hurt at all (yay for short urethras!) Having it done at 6am when I'm at my peak grumpiness = not a good situation. Of course I announced my displeasure and in very mom-like fashion, was promptly told to stop whining. It was epic awesomeness. Seriously, Nurse N even gave me the mommy glare. And yes, I totally deserved it, because in my completely stoned and narcotic addled brain, the only way I could articulate my displeasure was to whine. Like a 3 year old being dragged away from her bowl of ice cream at the circus as she's about to get an elephant ride. After being told to, in essence, shut my pie hole, the grown up in me woke up and took hold and realized that I hate whiners above all, and here I was on the verge of an epic toddler meltdown. After that, things went smoothly, it only took a few minutes and I was allowed to go back to sleep to the gentle whirring of my leg warmer's motor gently squeezing my right calf....
*Just to clarify, I think she's an awesome nurse - extremely capable, professional, efficient, and clearly knows what she's doing (which, to me inspires a lot of trust and confidence). But she's also very strong willed (like me) and has a take-charge authoritative presence, which as mom will testify on a pile of sacred texts is not always the best mix with my personality. Add to this a shit-ton of narcotics, and I think my perception of her is probably a little skewed. Like I said, we actually ended up joking around a bit - I'm sure she'd be a kick to shoot back a few whiskeys with! LOL!
No comments:
Post a Comment