Here's my story of Christmas morning that I promised I would blog about.
I worked an 8 hour night shift from 11:30pm on Christmas Eve until the morning of Christmas Day. My shift was supposed to end at 7:45am but I didn't end up getting out of the hospital until 9:10am.
This is why.
The shift was going pretty well. I had a nice recovery room assignment when I came on. There was a little lull after I transferred my patient, which was nice. I was hoping that it would stay that way =) Then I got a laboring patient.
I anticipated a quick delivery, but it came quicker than I expected when that baby was finally ready to come. I found myself quickly delivering that baby on my own, with just the mom and myself in the room and when I had the baby in my right hand, crying and safe, I pulled the emergency call bell with my left to notify my fellow nurses that I was in need of some assistance!
In the midst of the excitement of delivery, I got soaked....and I mean SOAKED...with amniotic fluid. It got in my right eye, on my glasses, my face, in my mouth and all over my clothes. Yucky!
Needless to say, I spent the next few hours in Emergency on Christmas morning. I had to get paperwork and blood drawn because of being exposed in a big way to body fluids from a patient. By 8:00am I was getting frustrated in Emerg just waiting for the confusion of what needed to be done to get sorted out. So, I went upstairs back to the ward to get it figured out myself.
In the frustration of something that should have taken minutes instead taking hours of my time on Christmas morning when my husband was waiting for me to open presents and I wanted to get to bed at a decent hour....I cried. Out of frustration.
It ended up being fine! I got home somewhere around 9:30am and immediately showered, before letting Shane greet me with kiss. I needed to wash off any remaining amniotic fluid! Then we opened presents, called the family and ate cinnamon buns for breakfast. It was nice!
I got to bed later than I'd hoped but still got a good sleep before waking up to spend the evening with my husband and siblings!
Yikes...Merry Christmas to me! That was quite the present!
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
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1 comment:
I laughed so hard. I think I have the right since I have been in similar situations except with blood. Yuck is right! It reminds me of the night I was working a 12, when the DEA (police) came and told us that we all had to be drug tested becuase someone was caught stealing drugs. I normally would have gotten off at 7:45p, but didn't get home till after midnight. We had to go downtown and do lab work then stay and fill out paper work. The next morning I had another 12 waiting me, that I was less than bright eyes and bushy taled for.
Sometimes nursing seems like the dumbest thing I decided to do. :0
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