Work

I am in the middle of my long work weekend. If nothing changes with scheduling (there is a possibility), the next time I will have the long weekend will be the end of July. There is no way in hell that is going to happen. I can barely do this now. If I didn't still have someone there I was training I couldn't do this now. In the nearly eight years that I have worked at my job there has not been anyone with my exact job that has been pregnant. I don't know when my boss would think it would be acceptable to stop taking call. For me it would have been when I told her I was pregnant, but somehow I think that would be unreasonable. I have three more calls scheduled from now until four weeks from today and that is all I am going to do. I'm sure my doctor would be happy to write me a note. My job is kicking my ass!

I was on call last night and I had to stay two half hours after the end of my regular shift. It ticked me off some because there were two people just standing around waiting that do my job. However they had to wait. We had to be ready to bring a trauma patient to the OR immediately if need be. But here was thing that I knew would happen, we finished our room and then still had to take care of the trauma patient. We did get to go home and be off for about two hours before we had to come back and someone else did start the trauma patient. But still we ended up having to take care of the trauma patient. Trauma patients are much harder than regular emergencies because they have so many things wrong with them. It is good to have a some when you have someone orienting so that they can see what you need to do and how you juggle it. It is a juggle and can be a lot harder than our regular job for a few reasons. 1. you are all alone. Most of these patients are after hours and on weekends and there is NO ONE there to help you, no aides to run and get something for you like an instrument you can't find or blood, let alone another nurse there to help you in the room. These cases tend to be what can weed people out or boost people up. They let you see what your nursing skill are when everyone tells us we aren't real nurses back in surgery. 2. You don't always know what you are getting into until you are done. There are many times that a doctor tells you to prepare for a certain case and by the time you have finished it is something completely different. I am the only person that can leave the room so that means I am responsible for getting everything that takes us from whatever we were planning on doing to whatever we actually need to do. 3. Normally we deal with one surgeon and maybe another assisting them and the anesthesiologist. On a trauma patient I personally have had to handle as many as three surgeons working independently and then the anesthesiologist. I only had that happen once and it was terrible. There are very few surgeons that are patient enough to wait while you get something for someone else. They want your undivided adoration, I mean attention. Obviously it is can be extremely stressful and in fact life threatening.

Ours last night wasn't that bad. But it was still a trauma patient. We did have two doctors working on multiple orthopedic issues and an ENT stitching up the severe lacerations on the patient's head. Unfortunately, we had the most demanding anesthesiologist on call. (we have some that are able to do things for themselves like make phone calls to lab or call ICU with vent settings but not this one and mind you he isn't alone we have nurse anesthetists that actually do the cases and the anesthesiologist oversees the case). I just don't know how many more times I can do this at this point. We were able to leave by a little after 2200 but I had to work again today and am on call again tomorrow for the entire day. My Sundays generally suck too. We already had an "emergency" case scheduled for tomorrow by Friday evening. I have never seen that before and to top it off the doctor is an ass. The problem is, we will actually have emergencies still. Too bad someone with a real emergency couldn't bump his case. They could, but we will just wait and see what happens. Anyway, this is too much for me. I can't hustle like I used to/need to for them and I can't do this. It is getting to be too much on me physically. It kills me to do these intense cases or work fifteen out of 24 hours and come back the next day to work again. Surely, with my orientee, I can make it three more times in the next month. For the most part, I am just there to help. Last night we were both extremely busy however and I didn't feel very good. Really, really tired.