Why does everyone dislike Monday’s? I've heard from many individuals that it's the "WORST DAY of the week." I am on the fence with this one. There are days I don't mind them and other days where I dread them! But this Monday, besides putting myself to bed at an unearthly hour Sunday night, I was eager and pumped with excitement.
It took me the usual - 40-45 minutes to get to my preceptorship placement. One thing that I love about my commute is the sun rise! SOOO exciting! Can someone say SUMMER? Not only that, but the sky was clear blue - all day! I enjoyed it from inside!
Once I arrived to work, I was assigned two patients. This was the first I was juggling two in this setting. One was a total care, which took up the majority of my day, and the other was a child who was cared for by his mom. On my total care patient, I had to do blood glucose checks on him every 4 hours (before feeds), NG tube feeds at 0800, 1200, and 1600, pH level checks (from the NG tube), charting, vitals, etc. It was overwhelming, but a great learning experience. Let’s just say the day FLEW by. It was so busy, I could hardly catch a breath. Little gaffers were crying, babies fussing, children needing to be turned and changed, oh the list goes on.
I get a kick out of the little children (ages 2-4) who are pushed around the ward by the nurses in their strollers because they can’t be left alone (or else they SCREAM at the top of their lungs), trust me, it's LOUD! So at times, we have a traffic jam in our nursing station, for we’ll have up to 3 strollers surrounding the tables as we all do our charting.
During the day, my other patient (8 yrs), had a rough afternoon. Because he wasn’t eating much - from chemo and radiation treatments, the doctor ordered an NG tube. I was given the privilege to do this. My nurse, E explained everything to the mom and patient, regarding why he needed to have one. Unable to communicate (verbally), he did a great job during the insertion. Just as we got the tube in, but before we had it taped to his cheek, he had a nauseous episode (to put it nicely). We were all a bit bummed when the tube came out with everything else. Because this kid was on chemo, we had to be careful with his bodily fluids. We quickly grabbed some extra gloves and cleaned everything up. My heart was saddened for this guy. He was so tough, so brave... you could tell he was poor in spirits after it came out. We gave him 40 minutes to re-group, relax and just have some private time. After that, we came back and gave it another go. Second time was the charm. As we put it in the second time, you could see his eyes start to well up with tears. We did everything we could to encourage him. I wish you could all see how brave he was.
All in all, today was a great day. As busy as it was, we survived! It was nice to have the day fly by though! One thing I learned from it all was that I need to stay organized - write everything down, for it’ll help me when it comes time to charting! I know with time, things will get easier on me. I can say that I finally feel apart of the team. The staff are incredibly friendly and inviting. I had no trouble going to them, asking questions. I look forward to the remainder of this week.
"They may forget your name, but they will never forget how you made them feel." Maya Angelou
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