Hilarious Happenstances involving AIR

In all honesty, nursing is quite serious. More often than not, we have our serious faces on and we are quickly and aptly jumping from one task to another, making sure that our patients are okay, everyone is safe, we’re doing everything we can to make sure everyone is on one page, etcetcetc. You get my drift. But, there is always time and space for a mishap. Now if you know me personally, I am not above tripping on air, running into the door frame, or accessing an embarrassing repertoire of Freudian slips. Yes, a major screw up can ultimately cause or lead to death, unless the celestial discharge occurs naturally. Hence, nurses and any medical worker for that matter, have a sense of humor that many people cannot level with, handle or fathom. We look crazy oftentimes in the eyes of the general public. This definitely happens when we can’t help the discussion of grimy details in public places or even cause a break in a romantic conversation to tell this hilarious story when someone farted in our face. I can say with every bit of my heart that we have the most interesting jobs on the planet, and that I would rather spend time with some of my coworkers than others who cannot particularly grip my morbid and often cynical sense of humor.

Please believe that I always operate under the notion of hope and faith. But, I am the same as my likenesses: a total cluster of sane, insane, jokester, with an immense sense of self and my belief systems. Without further ado, I would love to share my own and some other hilarious mishaps that have occurred in my realm that is the World of Nursing. Here is a selection of some of my mini tales.

HOLY HUMIDIFIERS!

In preparing to set up a room for a surgical admit that is fresh out of the Post-Anesthesia Care Unit, nurses are aware of a number of things that are expected to be arranged prior to the sleepy-head’s arrival. To walk you through a brief synopsis of details that I’m sure you could care less about, you must: #1) have the dynamap set up for post-op vitals (this is the machine that takes your blood pressure, measures  your heart rate, and obtains your body’s oxygen saturation in your blood—to make sure you’re breathing enough to LIVE), #2) prepare oxygen tubing for your arrival, because no matter how hard you try, you don’t normally breathe as appropriately straight out of surgery (the lovely meds that we give you that cause sleepy time and amnesia don’t particularly encourage that medulla oblongata to remind you to take nice healthy deep breaths on the regular—no lie), #3) tissues, barf bucket, etcetc are all within reach so when you arrive you hopefully don’t ruin our scrub choice for that day. Regardless of the rest of the details, you come up to a medical-surgical unit and immediately become attached to a multitude of machines that beep, sing, hum and administer medications. Gotta love technology.

It is in the nurse’s best interest to collect and prep all of these things prior to the snoring patient’s presence to decrease frantic chicken with its head cut off performance at their arrival. As many may know, hospital air is terribly dry. It normally stinks, it’s loud, stale and VERY VERY dry. So in prepping this room, my friend thought that it would be a great idea to provide humidified oxygen, instead of plain O2 (that’s oxygen in cooler typed form my friends). NOW! To prepare humidified oxygen, you need to assemble a few more things. (Half the battle of nursing is assembling—mostly your sanity, but that’s beside the point).Basically you need this oddly shaped canister that has water in it. This canister has two hook-ups. One hook up clings to the wall to obtain the O2 that comes out of the wall, the other port is a sort of spout (like a teapot) that you connect the oxygen tubing to that goes to the patient. This fantastically closed port system provides humidified air that it is that much easier to breathe, and in turn doesn’t create snot blockage.

Please understand that for this system to work properly you HAVE to OPEN the canister at BOTH ends. This is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT because if you only open the one port that obtains the air, and not the second port.. Well, the canister will fill with air and it becomes compressed. Very. Tight. Squeeze. This will further lead to a teapot effect.

It didn’t ring a bell sometimes that my friend made this mistake. It didn’t occur until a loud train like whistling sound filled the room. And of course! He looked around, worried about the arrival of this impending train, with no tracks in sight. Seriously?! What the heck?! Then the bubbling sound brought him back to Earth. Realization hit. He had booby-trapped the patient’s room with a bubbling canister of sterile water. Here was the catch-22. If you open the second port, water and air will shoot out.. What’s the next best thing?

PULL  IT FROM THE WALL!

That would stop the whistling and compressing even more air in that tiny little plastic piece.

So, what does he do?

Rip the apparatus from the wall-- Ah, peace and quiet.

NOT!

He’s just built up enough pressure to power wash the entire hospital’s windows. As the truth sinks in deeper, so does his fear. Oh. My. NO!

Water explodes from the top of the bottle and saturates the fresh bed, walls, floor, and his scrubs. Soaking wet. How in the World can that much water and pressure create such a mess? WHY DIDN’T YOU SET IT UP RIGHT IN THE FIRST PLACE?! His patient is on the way and he just recreated Water World, on the floor and on the walls. What’s the next move? Strip the wet linens off the bed, throw them on the floor, and dance some serious Boogie Nights rip off—scooting across the floor trying to mop up the mess. 

Somehow, by the grace of the heavens above, the water was cleaned up, a new humidified O2 was put in place, a new fresh bed was remade and my friend welcomed a sleeping bear with open arms.  Though no one knew of the shenanigans involved, though all questioned the odd whistling that occurred moments earlier, he was off the hook with only this lovely tale to share at a later date. This story, of which all of you missed out on the acting involved to recreate the amazing scene, was pulled out of the vault to make me laugh on one of those days you have to laugh to keep from crying. And that my friends, is how we make it through. 

CPAP EXPLOSION

I was preparing for prepping my own post-surgical room for a person who needed a CPAP machine to breathe properly. CPAPs are interesting machines, they have a whole face hook-up or just a nose hook-up. When the seal isn’t that great it makes this farting sound. Really funny actually. It’s like this suction-fart sound. It gets louder when people try to talk to you with it on.

CPAPs are hooked up to a massive rolling machine thing that is ALSO hooked up to the oxygen in the wall. I needed to prepare my surgical room as well, pretty quickly, and wheel this machine down the hall to connect in another room. Here comes the fun. To DISCONNECT  the CPAP from the wall you need to pull the whole connector from the oxygen connection. I was in a terrible hurry mind you, so I began to unscrew the tubing from the wall, not thinking my whole process through.

Oxygen is a force to be reckoned with. The air rushing into the CPAP was turned up, basically, as high as the settings could go. I am sure you can guess.. That the CPAP oxygen hose BLEW off the wall entirely and shot across the room. Air rushed into the room, blowing my hair in all directions as I stood there trying to cover the air with my hands. Because that will stop it.

My friend came running into the room, her face was bright pink, worried that something awful had happened. When she arrived she stood there wide-eyed, mouth hanging open, not moving as I stood there, trying to affix the hose to the wall.. And continually getting blown away by hurricane force winds. No joke. Finally the “silence” was broken.

My friend shouted over the rushing air, “WHAT TO DO YOU WANT ME TO DO?!” I looked at her in disbelief, “YOU CAN SHUT THE FREAKING DOOR!” She disappeared momentarily and I could barely hear the door slam. When my friend walked back in she took one look at me, and we both started laughing hysterically.

I fought with the rushing air and affixing the bloody tube for what seemed like an eternity. Somehow, I got it, properly removed the apparatus from the wall, and moved the machine to the other room.

As my friend and I stepped from the room together, breathing heavily, trying to regain composure, another coworker stopped us. She looked entirely distressed. “What’s wrong?” We asked worried, thinking that we had missed something awful as we laughed ourselves silly minutes before. “Did you guys hear the power washing going on? Why would they do that in the middle of the afternoon?! It was SO LOUD! This place is RIDICULOUS!”

As my partner in crime and I rounded the corner, we yet again, exploded into tears. A major win in the middle of a busy day.

Never underestimate the power of laughter… And medical air.

Claustrophobia and Sterile Fields

Do you ever remember doing something you’d never done before, and you had that sickened feeling where the presence of butterflies was bordering the unkind verge of vomitus maximus? Well, I would like to say that this is quite the normal sensation as a nervous ninny in nursing school.

The fine day I want to walk you through was like most others: I woke up and immediately began force feeding myself mantras to get out of bed in a timely fashion and furthermore attempting a hand at an 0530 breakfast. Now, these weren’t exactly breakfasts. I mean, I DID break my fast, but this was different. These occurrences were major meals that I couldn’t process or rather feel at this early of a start. BUT! I knew deep down that I wouldn’t get my hands on food for a hot minute once my shift started. Therefore, reason enough to have a scrambled egg, toast and coffee feast. The flavors always eluded me, as they always would at the butt-crack of dawn. (Welcome friends, yet again to digression).

This morning, as similar as it was to many others, was also incredibly and wonderfully different. My very hard-core persona of the nurse-in-training was dead set on rocking an awesome day in the operating room. Yes, I would be on the outskirts, yes my hands would touch absolutely NOTHING, but the excitement of being present while someone’s insides were exposed to the World always sounded heavenly. 

I know this is troubling to many, but I have a stomach of gold when it comes to the Nursing World. I can handle gaping wounds, blood, gore and basically any Quentin Tarantino movie being acted out within the walls of a hospital establishment (some of these characteristics have changed mind you, but that’s besides the point and totally another story). In all honesty, this was the holy grail of days to go to clinicals. I had been praying for a triple bypass, mitral valve repair or even some form of transplant, but really, I was ready to take what I could get!

I showed up like a deer in the headlights, blinking uncontrollably into the harsh fluorescent lights radiating off of the freshly polished linoleum floors. Of course, not knowing my head from my tail, I had to ask some extremely well-seasoned nurse as to where in the heck I was to put myself. What an odd situation clinicals are. You show up at the designated time and usually there’s an awkward scramble to figure out what to do with you until someone claims you (like a bad game of dodge-ball). 

Soon enough, a woman donned in her OR gear grabbed me by the elbow and showed me where I was to change. Here was the second dilemma. I am a peanut of sorts. All 5’3’’ and 120 pounds of me was staring at a rack of OR scrubs that I needed to somehow find the right size. APPARENTLY, these things are color-coded. I had to ask yet another nurse for assistance, then put on the LARGEST extra-small set of scrubs I’ve ever seen. They made WalMart scrubs look like apple-bottom jeans, just sayin’.

People, people, people. 

There is so much more to getting dressed, and I’ve not even gotten to the best part! Apparently you grab a sterile mask, hair net thing, and booties. Goggles are an option too (mind the back spray)! There is also the unfortunate circumstance of the temperature gracing, oh I dunno, minus 10 I think? Maybe I exaggerate, but some lovely soul gave me some other unkown soul’s OR jacket to wear so I didn’t turn blue. Whoever you are, and you’ll never know me, thank you SO MUCH for sharing..Even though you had no idea.

I waited in the sterile area for my preceptor. Ah, the preceptor. For those of you who DON’T know, the preceptor is the person responsible for you during the shift. This role is reserved for guiding frightened nursing students and nurses entering a new job position on the floor. This is the person whose license you are operating under. Whatever shenanigans you cause can lead to sticky situations for these people. God. Bless. Their. Souls. Round of applause please.

She showed up smiling at me, and then very quickly furrowed her brow. “Jacquie, mask!” Right, right! Because in the designated sterile areas of the hospital, it is literally sterile. Even from your halitosis. So put your flipping mask on! Please understand that I was so excited and nervous, this sentence happened well over a dozen more times. When I sensed it was coming and I wasn’t prepared, it was that deer in the headlights look again as I slowly pulled my mask over my face. Let’s talk about the surgical mask for a minute here...

The surgical mask comes in many forms. The one of which I realized I despise with ultimate hatred and deem to be the spawn of everything unholy, is the mask that comes in one piece. This is the mask and face shield combination of which I am speaking. Recall that this was my first choice. All will unveil shortly, I promise. The other option is the mask you tie around your face, and then you can put on goggles separately. This is the better choice for me as I learned so beautifully only an hour or so from this moment we are speaking.

Now that my mask was on, it was safe to head into the operating room suite. This was a smaller hospital, so there were only 6 or 7 suites. If you know me, and you might, I started tooshie kissing as soon as I had the chance. I realized I was in for hernia repairs, gall bladder removals and it’s not that I wasn’t excited, but it’s no open heart surgery. The nurses at this point were laughing at me, but one surgical technologist overheard me and slipped into the adjoining suite to sweet talk my way into this totally brilliant open heart surgery that was to happen only two hours from that very moment. I struggled to control my excitement.

The cases I was assigned to began. The first patient was wheeled in and I was given a trusty stool to stand on so I could see all of the action first-hand. So, thoughtful those nurses. I was standing next to a HUGE machine that was behind me, the sterile field/operating table/patient were all in front of me. The surrounding areas were lights, the anesthesiologist’s corner (at the head of the patient), and the surgeon to my front left-ish. This surgeon was hilariously short, like me, but his head filled the room. He strutted in, swinging his arms and looked at me as if I were standing there next to my new bike with streamers and pigtails in my hair. Fair enough, I’m in the beginning of this career choice, but give me some credit man!

Introductions ensued and then the business began. The surgeon would tease/teach/ask questions over his shoulder as I stood on tiptoes to see the laparoscopic surgeries happening in front of me. Please note, laparoscopic = nothing to see. Literally two to three small incisions in a localized area, and then everything else happens internal. But, I can make a "dull" moment exciting. This is where things get very, very interesting..

It is maybe the third or fourth hernia repair with mesh placement and I’m trying to get a better view, when some terrible awful stench reaches my nose. I realize with absolute disgust that this scent is that of burning flesh. Not because there’s a fire everyone, but because you use a cauterizing machine in operating rooms, especially to prevent bleeding during procedures. Therefore, I realized that the giant machine behind me was actually the cauterizing machine. What a lofty piece that thing is. Positive and negative cables run out of the machine itself that you place onto the patient, and then a third cable is the actual tool. Not that any of you really care what this thing looks like, but if you’re visual like me you need it for “setting the scene”..

Well this stink hits my nose like a grizzly bear chasing you from it’s cubs in the wilderness. If you didn’t get that, it hit me with a vengeance. A terrible awful vengeance. At that point in time I realized that the air turnover in my surgical mask wasn’t as great as I originally had realized. It at least felt that way. Trying to maintain sterile procedure, especially considering I was standing above the patient’s body, I would pull the mask off of my face about a millimeter, and try to take a deep breath. Well, when you’re freaking-out-ish, breathing comes rapidly and heavily. So the heavy breathing just led to me fogging up my own eye shield that was so fantastically engineered to the whole STUPID apparatus. Whoever thought that up, I understand the ease that you take care of two VERY important situations, but is it really that necessary?!

For lack of a better description, little to no air turnover, fogged up mask all lead to the feeling that the room is MUCH smaller than it actually is.

Dizziness hit me and I suddenly became aware of the fact that I was holding my breath. WHOOPS! Oh yes, locked the knees too. Not breathing and locking knees. Not good people, not good at all. 

My first thought was, if I fall, I either land on the patient by falling forward, or on the cauterizing machine in falling backwards. So I chose to step off my platform after trying to regroup and failing miserably. I walked very unsteadily to my preceptor who was seated in the safer outskirts of the operating room, you know, away from the sterile field. She looked up at me and noted oh so sweetly, “Jacquie, you are white as a sheet!” I asked if I could sit, not even able to further formulate words to suggest that I totally agreed. So I sat, hard, on a stool. As soon as my bum hit this lovely chair, the stars began to collect in my peripheral vision. Seconds later, the tunnel vision hustled in rapidly. Oh no no no no noooooo!

All I could think of was totally embarrassing myself by passing out on this amazingly sterile floor in the middle of surgery being performed. Talk about making a name for yourself!

I turned to my preceptor, feeling very green, covered in sweat, and sensing that I may possibly die in this very moment. Not dramatic, I know.

“Hey, uhm, I think I’m going to pass out…” Talk about eloquent word choices. My preceptor squealed, “WHAT!?” And literally, simultaneously pushed my head between my knees. “BREATHE!” She shouted. So I kept on breathing, with this feeling of impending doom—face hitting floor doom. 

Her next statements came in a really quite fast accusatory tone, “Did you eat this morning? Does blood freak you out? Are you sure that you ate?” If I could sigh, I would have, but all I could muster were puny responses, “I did eat. It was at 5:30 AM. Blood doesn’t scare me. Do you realize I made it to four surgeries and now this is happening? Of course I ate, I TRY to eat every three hours.” A little snarky mind you, she was only trying to help, but being out of your element something fierce with your head between your own knees doesn’t make sweet-talk a priority.

At that point she grabbed the back of my scrub top, brought my head up really fast and looked me dead in the eye… “Are you claustrophobic?!” At which I paused, as if the light-bulb just came on, and nodded.

Like Superman, she ripped the eye shield cover from my mask, exposing my eyes to the lack of back-spray (thank you laparoscopic surgeries!) and began fanning my face in a hurried fashion. “How does that feel?” My preceptor asked in a worried voice. “Better actually.” With that, she shoved my head back between my knees.

The surgeon continued to do his fancy handy work with that patient’s insides as I sweated out a fierce almost-passing-out situation. He giggled and made comments, of course. But at that point, I was gracious to have not broken sterile field by passing out ON the PATIENT or breaking a VERY important surgical machine.

Toward the end of the surgery I was led out of the room by the surgical tech that I had spoken to earlier that morning. He got me snacks, ginger ale, and commented on how sweaty and white I was. Thanks for that. He was kind, and even apologized for my circumstances, which only made me laugh. I explained that I have a knack for really strange adventures at the most inopportune times.

How much times passed, I will never remember, but somehow I collected myself and was summoned back to the operating room. The doctor was RELENTLESS with jokes. Holy smokes was he terrible. Determined to not feel small I interjected my own replies and then began asking questions about the surgery.

To my astonishment, he paused, and asked me to come and stand at his shoulder for the rest of the surgery and through the next few.

I guess if you are me, and you find yourself in interesting situations, and then furthermore live up to it and not cave when someone comes swinging, you reap the reward (whatever it may be).

Now, I would have MUCH rather gone about it TOTALLY differently.

But.

Well..

Beggars can’t be choosers friends.

The One Liter Bladder and the Flashlight

Mind you, I had been a student nurse less than a year. I was sleep deprived, angry at silly random assignments, and was fuming at having to write a 60-page care map[1] on an acute care patient who was on 30 medications. Needless to say, waking up at 5 in the morning (yes, I am fully aware people do that every day) left me looking like a zombie that broke into a makeup store and got concealer happy[2] in the darkness of a car mirror before the sun even decided it was a decent time to rise. I would like to add that we need not forget the absolute disgrace that occurs in nursing schools wanting to uphold the “traditional uniform”. White. All white. That is until the nervous yellowish pit stains present in your always damp underarms. OR! Until someone poops, pees or pukes on you. NO amount of bleach can EVER redeem these uniforms. And, being a slightly broke nursing student (who still works full-time on top of going to school and spending full time in the hospital) no one wants to purchase another set. It just doesn’t make sense. Right? Wrong, no one cares about your lack of white laundry concerns. GET TO CLASS AND CLINICAL ON TIME OR ELSE YOU WILL DIE!

Right, so… With all the important things covered…

This story really should account for the terrible occurrence that was the placement of my first catheter in a human being. Now, let’s have a brief recourse to the placement of an 18 French[3] catheter in a manikin in nursing school check-offs. For those of you who have no idea what this means, check-offs were the lovely way that nursing school professors made damn-well-sure that you knew how to do your skills without compromising patient safety as well as sterile technique. But, for all precautionary reasons, were all performed on aptly named manikins with oversized sexual parts, and abnormally large boobs or pectoral muscles. Which, by the way, is ultimately deceiving. Giant accessible parts in school does NOT equal the same in the real world. Heaven forbid the day we all noticed we were slightly screwed and spoiled at the hands of manikin magicians who gave us a false sense of security when it came to some of our lab skills. Forgive the digression, but do try to sympathize. We really are brilliant minds and hands, but do also understand that we had to start somewhere! (Be advised that we are totally capable and grand AND do the dirty work. A-thank-you. Now, back to it..)

Check-offs are terribly stressful. Everyone waits out in the hall with their freshly laundered uniforms on, awkwardly glancing at their watches every 0.114324 seconds. One by one, the baby nurses get called in to perform their tasks under one-to-one supervision. A lucky little lady I was to get one of the COOLEST check-off professors that ever graced the Earth. She shall remain nameless, but I will disclose I envied her fiery red hair, her extremely saucy stature, and the fact that she knew EXACTLY who she was.

I walked in, wringing my hands, if that was even possible, whilst holding the heaping plastic wrapped box that held the oh-so-intimidating sterile catheter kit. I happily and almost gaily announced all my nursing interventions pre-putting a catheter into this plastic person’s “pee-pee hole”. My professor nodded with a grin, as if she hadn’t heard the same interventions noted only seconds before, nay, all day, totally verbatim.

I proceeded with my task at hand. Now, if you’ve ever had a catheter placed, you may know the inner workings of these creepy little devices (mind you, one of the leading sources of infection in a hospital—but I digress again). You have to inflate a little balloon in the catheter to make it stay in place inside a person’s bladder. This fantastically crafted balloon is inflated with saline, 10 cc to be exact. (By the by, all nurses use the phrase cc because it makes us feel cool).

It is absolutely within your best interest to test the balloon before putting it into someone. No leaks = a good catheter. Well I checked mine. I checked it like a champ. But once you inflate the bubble, dear friends, you have to DEFLATE the bubble. I had some terrible difficulty with this task. My balloon would be damned if it were to deflate. It shook its little latex fist in my general direction and laughed a diabolical laugh. Well, I wouldn’t let the balloon win, so I drew back on that 10cc syringe as if my life depended on it-- Which, it kind of did, considering that if I failed this check-off I would have to spend a certain amount of days with one-on-one tutorials in placing catheters in Mrs. Perkins (the manikin with uncannily perky ta-tas).

I drew back like Hercules, and sure enough, as you may figure with the amazing ability of physics, the stopper came flying out of the back of the syringe and all of the 10cc of saline flew out at hyper-speed. So fast and so immense my unbelievable strength, I was able to shoot the saline across the room and completely saturate my professor. Yes. I did just that. In my mind, I had ruined her with pee-pee water. Though it was not a real person, nor real parts, nor a real situation, I died three times over as I watched water dripping from my professor’s perfectly hair-sprayed head. How lucky am I?

            Lucky.

            The luckiest.

            Oh my goodness how could I get so lucky. Right?

“Jacquie, my dear, let’s pretend that didn’t happen.” Oh. My. HOLY CRAP! I have this beautiful trait that is known as verbal diarrhea, and this was no relapse, and therefore my reply was simply, “seriously?” Bless her heart, all my professor could do was nod with tightly pursed eyes. Good heavens. She was serious!

I did as I was told. I placed that catheter and removed it like no one had ever seen. I somehow, magically passed that check-off, which leads into the rest of this lovely tale…

 A 1 liter bottle of Coke has, well, a liter in it! A liter is a LOT of fluid. Now, imagine that you drank an ENTIRE liter of soda and did not pee for 8 straight hours. You would have this lovely mixture of both that bubbly drink and other amazing bodily fluids fighting the good fight to be released from your ever-sensitive kidneys/ureters/urethra/glomeruli. Look that one up you guys. Glomerulus, it will blow your mind!

Of course,  I was in a nursing rotation on one of MANY medical/surgical floors and furthermore in a constant state of butterfly central. These butterflies were in my stomach, in my bladder, in my chest (these may have been palpitations, but you should understand if you’ve ever been scared out of your wits). I was called to the untimely task of placing a Foley catheter. This is not so bad. BUT! This person had not peed for over a certain number of hours, was getting IV fluid, and had been eating and drinking the entire time as well. Imagine the water weight just “hanging out”. My point exactly. Let’s not forget to mention that NO HUMAN BEING has the same anatomy. Well technically they do, but it does not look the same. I don’t care how much you weigh, your BMI, none of that. Men are maybe this lucky, but women, absolutely not! Women are beautiful by the way, I just can't comprehend why our bodies are so bloody confusing. Seriously now. Seriously!

This person was moaning and writhing in bed, not too thrilled to be in this situation. May I please mention with utmost honesty, nor was I. But! My professors had this incredible ability to place me in the most awkward of situations when it came to performing a nursing task for the first time in hospital on a human (living and breathing). In my defense, I assembled a team. It was about 5 people: people holding legs, feet, stomach, what have you so I could… get in “there”. I didn't want to go in blind. But, well folks, blind doesn't even cover it.

I have decided that in every human being, there is at least one very dark hole; very, very dark of which there can often be no return. This was one of those moments.

I was as sterile as sterile can be. Let me tell you what I saw. Absolutely NOTHING. I started to panic. There was nothing, nowhere. No holes, no nothing 

ohmygoshIaminbetweenthisperson’sthighsandIcan’tfindwheretostickthisslipperytube.

Someone “thoughtfully” mentioned to “AIM HIGH!” A person I still have yet to determine who they were, because I would have killed them in that moment and every single second thereafter. By the way, don’t you EVER tell anyone between a person’s legs, trying to place a catheter, to “aim high.” It’s not a video game of Angry Birds! It is someone’s private parts and the calamitous search for the hole of “relief”. Be professional people!

Somehow, by the grace of the nursing gods, I found that hole. The one that really was…invisible. In a matter of seconds, maybe minutes, but I stand by seconds, an entire liter of “Coke” emptied into that collection bag. For the first time in hours, this poor person stopped screaming and writhing in pain. Their relief was brought on by this magical latex catheter, the ultimate fear of a nursing student, and the directional expertise of the gods that directed Columbus in 1492, somewhat straight across the ocean blue. My patient instantly passed out into the deepest sleep of urinary free bliss. What success!

Moral of the story: pee before you’re carrying around a liter of soda, don't be afraid to assemble a team, and always, always

bring a flashlight!

---

[1] A stupidly long research paper on your patient’s current disease/illness state, the medications they were on, and how you, as a lovely smart nurse may attempt to reconcile these terrible situations with your absolutely picturesque ideals of a totally compliant individual. (Ugh, did someone say compliant?!)

[2] I thought I did a great job applying that tinted makeup—Until a picture surfaced of me in the morning pre-clinical. Terrible tragedy, really—and have since been attempting to find the proper matched concealer since then. Reverse raccoon eyes are NOT attractive, by any means.

[3] An abnormally large, but not so abnormally large catheter that gets inserted into your “pee pee hole”, male or female—no one is safe.

Here's to the beginning!

It goes to say that these stories are not entirely my own, nor did they all manifest within the past year. This collection of stories became my beacon into better days as I toyed with the idea of altering my already strictly chosen path of a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Psychology to the ever envied (and not so envied) field of Nursing. As I turned from neuron mapping and the ecological systems theory by Bronfrenbrenner, I felt the urge to tune into the conversations of my college roommate and her friends as they relived hospital and clinic stories from the gruesome battlefield that is nursing school clinicals. But please, let me create the backstory.

When you hear those stories about nurses “eating their young” you have most certainly stumbled into the dark and the ever so hilarious aspects of newbie nursing. These events oftentimes do not get the credit they truly deserve. Now, I’m not saying that these instances are always the theme of each colorful shift one may become elbow deep and partially drowning in. But! I would appreciate the opportunity to allow you the chance to delve into the battlefront with all the mud-slinging, bullets and shrapnel. But do mind the heavy and serious aftermath of PTSD, anxiety and the very real burnout that often follows the majority of one’s shifts (or that culminates over time).

Nursing is and can be the wiping of a brow, the singing of a song or even the mimicking the pristine pressed white atmosphere of the newest Johnson and Johnson commercial. On the flip-side, please do not forget that though we share our sanity, bathroom breaks, emotions and energy on a daily basis, we more often than not find ourselves in the most hilarious, disgusting, dirty and smelly situations that you could never even fathom in your wildest and most twisted dreams.

Therefore, if you have not been an acting constituent of the World of Nursing, please friends, let me take you on a journey of misadventures. This is a journey in which the stories just keep on coming and to which there shall never be a lack. Mind you to keep your nausea remedies at hand, a possible tissue or two and the willingness to see the light in each of these stories, people and situations. As one of my favorite nursing school professors always said, “We have got to keep laughing in order to keep from crying.”

Here my friends, is where we shall start.

Cheers to all the misadventures that happen 24 hours a day and 365 days of the year: this includes all holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, major life events or any other day-to-day proceedings that occur in normal lives. Please, always pay gratitude to those who frequent cleaning spew from their shoes and poop from their hands while most are snug in their beds or enjoying a day off in the sun.

Shall we get started?