It's amazing to me how annoyed I get when patients are independent. You would think that this would be a good thing- that they can eat, get up to the bathroom, and hold a conversation with you. Good for you, trauma victim, but you need to get out of the ICU already.
It's bothersome when you spend 45 minutes helping meemaw eat her red jello. It takes 45 minutes because she chews like a cow and somehow everything seems come back up and get chewed again. Precious meemaw, but I really don't have time for this. Then she will undoubtably throw it up in 15 minutes and now you are back to square one with a vomit bucket that patients think is blood. Don't freak out, meemaw, remember, it's your jello.
Sweet Lupita can get up to use the bedside commode. So you unhook her leads, saline lock her IV's, put down the bedrails, swing her legs over, help her up, and finally back down on the makeshift toilet (we don't have real bathrooms, our hospital is slightly ghetto...). You leave the room, she sits there for 5 minutes, and you do the whole fiasco backwards. 35 minutes later you start again. She mentions something about overactive bladder. Ah. Perfect.
Meanwhile you are giving saline boluses for low blood pressure and administering blood products on your clearly sicker patient. But Lupita can't wait. At this point, you sequester the help of your neighborly nurses and promise to write them a nice "star" on the board. They are clearly overjoyed at this high honor. Yeah right. But they help you out anyway.
Clark is lonely. And he wants to tell you his life story. He was married, then decided he was gay and then his lover died etc etc etc. He's full of drama. Clark wants you to read his text messages from his new lover, to decide if he's really serious about him or not. Well has he come to visit you in the hospital? That might be a good indicator...
You avoid Clark as best you can, not because you aren't interested in his tumultuous love life (it's clearly interesting), but because you're behind and you have to be efficient. Clark finally appears to be asleep so you sneak in to count up the I&O's (intake and output). You tip toe around the room, obviously holding your breath because Clark has some seriously intune senses. You manage to do your job and it looks like escape is within your grasp when....the apnea alarm goes off. It's very loud and annoying and clearly I can see him breathing so it's a false alarm. Your cover is blown and Clark pops open his eyes to show you the most recent text. Well, it was a good effort. Better luck next time.
Sometimes the root of this annoyance is making sure you give good care to both patients. But mostly it's selfishness. It makes my job harder and I'd rather you just lay there sedated and intubated. No talking, no consciousness. Sounds terrible, but ask any ICU nurse and they will admit the same thing. I'd rather be busy anyday titrating pressors and giving blood and going to stat CT scan than helping you up to pee about one drop then get back in bed to do this all over again. I guess that's why I don't work on the floor.
The Lord has been teaching me patience lately mostly because of this issue. This entry is a comic confession of my sinfulness. I like things to happen quickly and efficiently and I get frustrated when something doesn't go the way it should. But the reality is life is just like that, no matter what job you have or what you are doing. Things don't go as planned and it will go a lot better in the future if you and I realize this now. I am attempting to give up some of this type A control issue and pursue a more relaxed and flexible perspective.
So I bite my tongue and do my job, suppressing the thought in my head that this is a pain in the ass. At least I have good stories right? And there's always Clark there to give me relationship advice. He's actually a good listener with great advice. Who would have thought.
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