Experience pays off!

Before I begin I need to preface this post by letting you guys know that I have been an ER nurse for 12 yrs now. 4 yrs past the normal "burn out" rate for ER nurses. I have worked in HUGE and busy emergency rooms, and medium size busy emergency rooms and now I am in a smaller busy emergency room.

Career-wise I am just tired. I hate the low lifes who jump from one ER to another looking for narcotics, I hate people who think their sense of "feeling strange" at 3:00am is an emergency, I hate people who beat their kids, and who beat their wives, and who drink themselves into a drunken stupor and then expect us to take care of them and jump to their every whim. I hate people who get pissed off because their sinus headache has to wait while I try to save the life of someone who cant breathe, or a child who has accidentally drowned. You get the idea.

Last night I told Dana if I could find another job in the hospital that was the least bit interesting and didnt involve direct patient care, I would take it. I am in a huge need of a break.

So, I go in to work and while talking with the unit secretary, I look up and this lady walks in the door holding a limp 22 month old in her arms. This baby had fallen off of a rock in the desert and a large (about 3 times his size) boulder had rolled down on top of him! My friend Elaine and I took this kid, got him immobilized, called a trauma alert, got him packaged and sent him up the hill to the trauma center! I think it took less than 15 minutes. Two old experienced, seasoned nurses shoved everyone else out of the way and helped give this little guy the major part of his golden hour. He went to surgery on arrival at the trauma center.

Then towards early morning (around 1:30 or 2:00am) a lady came in by private auto in anaphylactic shock. It became the Tonjia and Elaine show again, I had to push one of our new nurses (who has been chosen to TRAIN another new nurse) out of the way because she didnt know what to do and the patient was losing her pulse.... and Elaine and I stabilized this person. she came very close to death. Later the doctor came and told us that if we had not been there the lady surely would have died. This doctor NEVER offers pro-nurse comments, she is a real hard to please kind of doc.

Do you think God is trying to tell me something? LOLOL Maybe I just need a vacation.