Patient count was low on the unit I work in and it’s time to float to another unit again. Originally sent to a regular medical floor to watch a quiet man for the night (and I mean quiet – he was basically mute), I was thanking my lucky stars for having an easy night. Half an hour into the shift, I was told to go to the Intensive Care Unit instead. Darn! There goes the easy night. Maybe I would be as lucky at the ICU as well, but it was not to be. I had to keep an eye on a young man who just underwent a rapid detoxification program from opiates (methadone, oxycontin, duragesic) just a few hours before. (See the website here: http://www.opiates.com/ ). Upon seeing him, I realized that my luck for the night had run out. This man wasn’t even supposed to be on 1:1 watch but I can see that the nurses’ hands were full trying to handle him. The man was not reacting too well from the detox and was actively having visual hallucinations and trying to get out of bed even though he didn’t know what he was doing. He was trying to reach out in thin air grabbing things that weren’t there, and was doing this the whole night. The nurse gave him all the medications he could possibly have that was ordered by the doctor but nothing helped except for about half an hour when he went into a stupor around 1 a.m. It was probably one of the longest nights of my life at work because I had to be constantly on top of what this man was doing so he wouldn’t dive out of bed and hurt himself. The only redeeming factor about working in ICU was being fed by the Filipino nurses who were working there. You can always count on the Flips to bring food and share it J. But back to reality after the good meal. Twelve hours of keeping an eagle eye on a very restless and confused man. He tried to jump out of bed, puked, pooped, tried to pull out his oxygen sensor, and kept removing the oxygen tube from his nose. He was so restless and jumpy that the IV machine kept on indicating that the tubing was occluded because his movements kept on kinking the line. You couldn’t possibly have your emotions get the better of you at this guy’s actions because he wasn’t aware of what he was doing, but it was physically and mentally tiring nevertheless. I was so tired when I got home that I slept until my alarm awoke me, when I usually wake up on my own half an hour to an hour before that happens. Maybe I can catch up on my sleep tonight. I just got an unwanted call from the nursing supervisor cancelling my scheduled shift because of the low patient count. Darn! I wanted to go to work because I figured I couldn’t possibly have two bad nights in a row. But who knows? The unexpected always happens.
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