Tweet round-up

Real bloggers do this, sometimes, don't they? I think the Bloggess does. She calls it phoning it in. Anyway, here are some of my most recent tweets for those of you who don't have the pleasure of subscribing to my brilliance there.

• March 25th: I feel genuinely excited to be about to clean my bathroom with lemon comet while I listen to an EMT podcast. 30 isn't too different from 29.
• March 26th: PT [physical therapy]asked me to come help push a guy's leg and then when I did it went kablooey and sprayed blood. And I didn't faint!
• April 7th: My shift is half over and very boring, I'm watching an old man watch baseball.
• April 8th: My confused elderly patient told me our relationship won't work if I don't stop lying to him & pretending we're at the hospital.
• April 15th: Hospital riddle: you're working a double and get a 1:1 for a confused impulsive fall risk old man. What word do you least want to hear him say when you walk into the room? ...My real answer (and what he said) = Vietnam. Other contenders?
• April 27th: What should I watch on VHS, crossroads or 3 men and a baby?
• April 29th: I'm still sick. Wheen I finally get better I have a new life goal: pinup girl gator wrestling queen. Seriously, I like Louisiana, waterproof makeup, alligators and crocodiles in general and I could dust off the fisticuffs.
• today: OMG I just got to cut off a patient's undies for the first time: today is AWESOME!!

First week of hospital orientation

I finished my first week of hospital orientation, which translated into multiple 8-hour days of class, basically. Seriously, I finally got a tour of my unit the last day, AFTER everything else (except restraints) had been covered.

And how was all this class, you wonder?

Pretty cool, for the most part. We're the pilot program of them implementing CNA's at Father Sainty's, so every single one of the CNA's for my floor was hired and trained all together. So it feels like we're a graduating class together after all these days of orientation classes together, which is neat. Dayshift, swing shift, and noc shift all got trained and oriented together for the pre-floor stuff. We learned new things (bladder scans!) and slung each other around using the overhead lifts in the patient rooms. Good times!

Now for the humiliating news: I passed out. Cold. In front of every single other CNA on my floor, two nurse educators, and one of my managers. It was AWFUL. We were in the classroom and I have a needle phobia.

I do okay when someone is actually in front of me bleeding or has an IV inserted or whatever, but that's because I can move around to keep my BP up, and because I know I'm responsible for them and cannot faint. I've cared for someone through a compound fracture and been okay. But when it comes to the classroom setting, when someone verbally starts describing blood draws or the like, I get woozy. Even if I'm listening to a nursing podcast and they get too graphic, I have to change it or I'd be a danger on the road.

So not only do I have a crazy phobia, it's ridiculously specialized; a DESCRIPTION of blood and needles phobia.

So our nurse educator is merrily telling us how to do glucose checks, and going on and on about it, and about how we may not "milk" their fingertips to get more blood, and I was getting woozier by the second. I trying to hang on as long as I could, then I figured I'd better get out in the hallway where I can put my head down without anyone seeing me. So I stood up and started walking towards the door.

Who can guess how that turned out?


Yep, I woke up flat on my back on the floor, with people over me going "Are you okay Polly? Are you okay???".

So. Freaking. Unbelievably. Embarrassing.

So now one of my managers thinks I'm going to do this while working the floor, and the rest seem undecided. All I can do is prove them wrong. And once I do, hopefully this will become a funny story about way back when I first started working at Father Sainty's.

Oy.

Oh, Gross!

When I tell people what I do for a living now, a lot of them get hung up on the fact that I wipe butts and change adult diapers. I get asked "Do you have a really strong stomach?" (answer: no) and "Is that the worst part?" (again: no). It's just like anything else; you get used to it. It's just another task that needs to be done, and it's one that has a pretty obvious correlation to whether my patient is comfortable and healthy or not. Would you be feeling good sitting in a soaking wet diaper? Would it be fun for you to no longer be able to get up and go to the bathroom when you need to? Of course not. So by handling those things promptly, I improve someone's quality of life instantly. Not bad, really.

Besides, I'm a blood phobic, so anything involving blood is approximately 8,000,000times worse in my mind than any poop, vomit or urine could be. Blood makes me faint, usually. I mean really faint. Out cold, hitting my head on the way down type of fainting. Yikes.

So you can imagine how anxious I was when one of my clients had to have his toenail removed recently. Completely gone. Double yikes.

He got home with a sheet of instructions that read "soak foot for 10 min daily, loosely apply bandaid, can use small amount of antiobiotic ointment if needed". Wow, thanks for the hints about what I'm going to see under the weird blue gauze you packed him in, doc. Scribbled on a prescription notepad was the additional "for first treatment, remove bandage first. If dressing sticks, use peroxide to loosen."

Oh. Okay. Bandage sticking to never before exposed skin?? That can't be fun.

I got my client settled, got all my supplies lined up, and gloved up. Oh my lord, how I love disposable gloves. I cannot imagine doing this job without them. The first nurses were SAINTS to do what they did, and to do it bare-handed.

I gently began removing the dressing from this poor man's foot, and blood really started flowing. Like dripping-onto-the-carpet flowing. Crap! I got that bandaging off as fast as I could and dunked his foot into the little basin of water, which immediately began looking as if a shark attack had taken place. My client was woozy at this point, and shut his eyes, claiming to be too much of a "sissy" to look. Me too, buddy. Me too.

Luckily the bleeding stopped after a few minutes in the water, and after a very messy dry-off, the beast was safely bandaged up again. Ew.

I left that apartment a little woozy myself, and vowing to inspect my own feet every night for the rest of my life so I never, EVER have to have that done on myself. But you know what? I did it! I dealt with a bleeding wound without fainting, vomiting, or freezing up. I'm awesome! I'm brave! I'm a nursing assistant rockstar!

I'd also still prefer a diaper to that, no contest. Especially one as aptly named as this ...



That's right, buddies, me and the disposable briefs? We'll prevail!