Peaks and Troughs

Someone once said I should blog a typical day at work as my job sounds fascinating.
Kinda hard to do - there is no typical day. It depends if Im in charge or if I have patients, if its busy with sick patients or we are full of weaners and patients waiting for ward beds. It can change in days, hours, minutes even

Take this weekend..

Friday, we started off at 7am with 2 empty beds - by 8 we'd had 2 admissions. A woman bleeding out and a woman who'd fallen down the stairs, pneumothorax from broken ribs and ? spinal fractures. We also had a post op guy with pneumonia with hardly any lung space left who was struggling and a lady whose recently inserted stent in her right bronchus had moved. She kept coughing, we didnt like that - one enthusiastic cough and that stent could move two ways, up to block her airway or down straight into her heart..Finally we had 2 trachae weaners needing constant suctioning.

We didnt stop all day - by the end of the 12 hours we'd

Cleaned up gallons of blood, took her to endoscopy, prepped her for theatre then withdrew treatment on her when she refused to go.
Suctioned gallons of sputum - forgetting one time to put my visor on I deftly dodged a flying plug of thick green goo...
Blue lighted stent woman to Cardiff to have her chest opened
Took the post op guy to ITU for tubing (tubed and shipped - can't do a work blog without that!), just in the nick of time, he crashed as I got him through the doors.
I also dealt with a relly who fainted. Her mother had a chest drain inserted and she insisted on staying - bad idea. Mother was triple immobilised in bed so couldn't move or see. Good job really as Im bent over her unconscious daughter pissing myself laughing.

I had lunch at 4pm and 2 cold cups of tea



Today(Sunday)..

4 patients - 2 weaners still there, now wardable but ward wont take them as "they cant cope with trachaes". Bleeding lady miraculously still alive, stopped bleeding and sat up like queen mother - did I mention she's 92? And a chronic chest guy who could breathe better if he shut up for 5 minutes. So 4 wardable patients. I was in charge so no patients to look after.

So, we watched TV, drank gallons of tea and ate cake


Peaks and troughs, all or nothing, thats my job - and also the reason I have nothing else to blog about, working all weekend sucks