just let me tell ya bout/this fuckin' day I'm havin'. Sailing along midday when a patient's dropped into one of my rooms: left-sided weakness, right-sided facial droop, disoriented to time/place/situation, found by her friend on the floor, last known normal yesterday 1pm. So we're thinking stroke, although left weakness and right facial droop make no fucking sense for stroke but whatever she's out of the treatment window no biggie. Drag her to CT and nothing shows- she's not stroking, but she's definitely Ay-1 fucked up. Getting an IV in her takes forever because she's big and old and dehydrated and UGH so it's a good hour and a half before she's lined and phlebotomy can finally get all the blood we need; BUN comes back in the 40s uh oh Creat comes back 3.3 nonono K comes back 6.1 oh come the fuck on lactic comes back 7.2 7.2 FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

back it up

Lactic is an indicator of how much oxygen the cells in your body are working with. It's the best indicator of sepsis, wherein due to a major infectious process your cells are working on anaerobic metabolism and pumping out lactic acid and basically that's not supposed to happen for protracted periods of time and it's not a good sign if your lactics are high. Normal lactic is 0.6 to 1.2.

So this lady is basically circling the drain and I'm in the weeds and my other three patients are just treading water while I flounder and I'm still on orientation and my nurse preceptor has to jump in and save me and

back it up

You may not know me at this point. I'm seeing a lot of grey names in this thread and in general and that means I've been gone awhile and there are new faces or else old faces stopped giving a shit about me which is fine. Either way, let the record show that I once said some stuff here and posted some content here and I may again at some point in the future. For the time being, here's me:

A year and change ago I joined an accelerated nursing program- BSN in one year, which for those in the know is fucking crazy, the normal accel program is two years compressed from four. We started the year with 120 students, ended with 78. I made it through not to toot my own horn (totally to fucking toot my own horn) top of class with all sorts of silly awards to show for it. I managed to postpone the nervous breakdown I'd been denying all year until graduation day, which I skipped in favor of staying in my bed, terrified that I was dying. For the better part of two months. Happy graduation, I guess. Five months and a Buspar prescription later, I'm a nurse in the ER, and by God I feel like I'm helping people. 60 percent of the time. The other 40 percent I feel like I'm just constantly fucking up.

And now here I am, month three into my orientation and holy hell, some days I just don't know if I can do it. Most folks on my unit started somewhere sleepier, like telemetry or general med-surg. I'm beginning to see the benefit to that. It's like picking up a pair of skis for the first time after watching some skiing videos and being like "I'm a skier now!" and then heli-dropping into some triple black diamond in the swiss alps and there are hungry bears on surfboards riding an avalanche after you.

Days like today, I feel like just disappearing, not showing back up to work or anywhere day after tomorrow. And I don't have many friends and I don't have many outlets so here I am, ghosted for the better part of a year only to show up briefly to shit out my worries in the corner of an imaginary bar. You're welcome, world