Secretions

Secretions are a regular part of my job. Pretty gross, huh? Don't know if I told the blogging world yet, but I got a job as a nurse (woohoo!) at the Children's Hospital of Austin. I work nights on the respiratory floor, so like I said before, I'm all about the secretions.

One of the greatest (and hardest) parts of my job is speaking (and learning) Spanish. I swear, since I speak a little bit, they throw all of the Spanish speaking families my way. It's great and it's intimidating. I am NOT fluent by any means. I know how to ask and say the important stuff, but like last night, I was trying to remember how to say, "I'm going to weigh your baby now" and I couldn't remember the verb to weigh. Pesar? Yo no se.

I worked 12 hours last night (7pm to 7am) and now I'm about to go to class at 9am to 11am. I am insanely tired. Don't worry, I'm riding the bus home so I won't fall asleep at the wheel. I love working nights, thought. I love it.

Let me tell you about a typical night...

6:45pm: I arrive on the unit and "get report," which basically means I listen to the day shift nurse's report over the phone and then go find her/him and ask any questions about the kid.

8pm: I assess all my patients, which basically means I listen to their lungs, heart, bowels, inspect their bodies, and ask the parents about their daughter/son. I clean up the room a bit, put my name on the board and tell them to call me if they need me or lameme si necesita algo. Booyah.

9pm-3am: Give meds, suction noses, listen to more lungs, turn off alarms, start IVs, feed babies, change diapers, hold babies (ahhh, an added bonus of my job), administer oxygen, chart everything, educate my patients and parents, and ever so much more.

4am: My least favorite time -- blood draws. Not a single child or parent or nurse enjoys a blood draw. We had to poke a kid more than 8 times last night. It was ridiculous. And it had nothing to do with poor technique -- he was just what we call a "hard stick." 3 different nurses tried to draw blood from this kid. Ick ick I hate hard sticks.

5am: Get my report ready for the day shift, finish up all my duties/meds/charting. Laugh hysterically with my fellow night nurses because we're all so tired and delerious at this point that everything and anything is funny.

6am-7:30am: Hang out and wait for any questions the oncoming nurses might have about the patients and yawn about 8 hundred times. (I just yawned as I was typing yawn.)

And that is a very simple version of what I'm getting paid to do.

I love it. I love it. I love it.