Don't Drink The Water.
This post will be an experiment for me, in a new style of writing/blogging. This post is written in real-time, or as near to it as I could get. It is also more like a story than just a journal entry. I expect comments. The whole water thing just happened to be going on when I started writing this. This post is also from the previous day, as I needed the extra time to touch it up, as the word processing tool on my PDA is just not all that great.
"Attention Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center, until further notice do not use tap water, ice machines, or wash hands." Was the message I started my day with. No water, no soda, coffee or tea. Breakfast cost about twice what it normally did, due to the cost of bottled goods. Work was going to be interesting today, this was assured by the loss of yet another good transporter, and the city wide water contamination. We wash our hands a minimum off around forty times a day, today we can't wash them at all. We sit in our office waiting for the post shift change to hit, wondering what we are going to do. All patients are to be considered on temporary contact isolation. No skin to skin contact permitted. We have alcohol based hand sanitizer, this works for normal patients, but it does nothing to MRSA, the most common thing patients are on contact precautions for. We all stock up on gloves. Normally we make do with the gloves on the nursing pods, today we take no risks. The warning about the water repeats every thirty minutes, also in Spanish now. A five-D to ultrasound goes without reason for concern, pregnant lady, ambulatory. No reason to touch her. Arrive back at the office, help an EMT with math. Assigned a CT to Ten-D, patient still in the scanner. When she's done the gloves go on. She has an open wound to her head, with a number of staples in it. We transfer her off the scanner and back onto the stretcher with no problems. When she's complete, I get an eight-A to X-Ray, a patient I've had before, older man in his 70's or early 80's. His I’D band will tell me when we depart the floor. He can walk, though a little hard of hearing. He is eighty years old. We leave the floor and complete at X-Ray. At this point a rush hits, partially a normal rush, but worse by the fact that a truck has arrived bringing us several dozen pallets of bottled water. Half of our staff (already to few for a normal day.) is stolen for the rationing and delivery of the water to the nursing units and testing centers. We're "In the weeds" for over three hours, the pages and patient moves fly by so fast I hardly remember them as I move to the next one. At around eleven AM I'm assigned an ICU move from the second floor, Cardiac ICU. These normally turn out to be easy, but this one is not. Sixty something male, cardiac patient of course, but this one is suspected to have a brain bleed. He tend to move around a lot, and is also violent. He has already injured his nurses arm, and broken a part of his ICU bed (not an easy thing to do I might add.). The nurse has given him enough sedative to stop my heart, and he still thrashes around and mumbles about getting a knife (to cut his restraints we hope.), the nurse and I depart the floor, moving the patient in his bed, and on my portable O2. At ER CT a trauma patient on a vent is being scanned, we hold in the hallway, thrashing patient and all. The trauma comes out and we go in. I hold for the test to complete, they have to scan him three times because he keeps moving. When I'm done with him I grab a Ultrasound to twelve-C. And then I hear the best thing I will probably hear all day, "12:45 Adrian, go to lunch". I tell them I copy in an exasperated sort of way, the dispatcher laughs.
My lunch started with a bowl of chicken teriyaki over rice, which is usually very good, but this time was very nasty. I drank a sobe, and then went outside to smoke. My lunch ended when my dispatchers forgot to talk to each other. At 1:10, five minutes before my lunch ended I got a page, saying only "ADRIAN CALL THE OFFICE STAT!!!”
I run to a phone to find out that they had changed dispatchers, and had no idea I was even on lunch. By the time they got it figured out I had been on lunch for fifteen minutes longer than I should have. After lunch I was made the lab bitc... Err, person. I run up and down the towers and across the parking lots to grab labs and run them down. At 3:03pm I'm assigned a twelve-c to discharge, which will be my last page of the day, if I am lucky. But since I'm not I get an eleven-A to one-B patient belongings. Three-thirty finally comes, and we head home, stopping to buy a little bottled water on the way. I get home and play anarchy-online with phoenix and another org member, attempting to help her gain some levels. Several hours later I crawl into bed.
"Attention Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center, until further notice do not use tap water, ice machines, or wash hands." Was the message I started my day with. No water, no soda, coffee or tea. Breakfast cost about twice what it normally did, due to the cost of bottled goods. Work was going to be interesting today, this was assured by the loss of yet another good transporter, and the city wide water contamination. We wash our hands a minimum off around forty times a day, today we can't wash them at all. We sit in our office waiting for the post shift change to hit, wondering what we are going to do. All patients are to be considered on temporary contact isolation. No skin to skin contact permitted. We have alcohol based hand sanitizer, this works for normal patients, but it does nothing to MRSA, the most common thing patients are on contact precautions for. We all stock up on gloves. Normally we make do with the gloves on the nursing pods, today we take no risks. The warning about the water repeats every thirty minutes, also in Spanish now. A five-D to ultrasound goes without reason for concern, pregnant lady, ambulatory. No reason to touch her. Arrive back at the office, help an EMT with math. Assigned a CT to Ten-D, patient still in the scanner. When she's done the gloves go on. She has an open wound to her head, with a number of staples in it. We transfer her off the scanner and back onto the stretcher with no problems. When she's complete, I get an eight-A to X-Ray, a patient I've had before, older man in his 70's or early 80's. His I’D band will tell me when we depart the floor. He can walk, though a little hard of hearing. He is eighty years old. We leave the floor and complete at X-Ray. At this point a rush hits, partially a normal rush, but worse by the fact that a truck has arrived bringing us several dozen pallets of bottled water. Half of our staff (already to few for a normal day.) is stolen for the rationing and delivery of the water to the nursing units and testing centers. We're "In the weeds" for over three hours, the pages and patient moves fly by so fast I hardly remember them as I move to the next one. At around eleven AM I'm assigned an ICU move from the second floor, Cardiac ICU. These normally turn out to be easy, but this one is not. Sixty something male, cardiac patient of course, but this one is suspected to have a brain bleed. He tend to move around a lot, and is also violent. He has already injured his nurses arm, and broken a part of his ICU bed (not an easy thing to do I might add.). The nurse has given him enough sedative to stop my heart, and he still thrashes around and mumbles about getting a knife (to cut his restraints we hope.), the nurse and I depart the floor, moving the patient in his bed, and on my portable O2. At ER CT a trauma patient on a vent is being scanned, we hold in the hallway, thrashing patient and all. The trauma comes out and we go in. I hold for the test to complete, they have to scan him three times because he keeps moving. When I'm done with him I grab a Ultrasound to twelve-C. And then I hear the best thing I will probably hear all day, "12:45 Adrian, go to lunch". I tell them I copy in an exasperated sort of way, the dispatcher laughs.
My lunch started with a bowl of chicken teriyaki over rice, which is usually very good, but this time was very nasty. I drank a sobe, and then went outside to smoke. My lunch ended when my dispatchers forgot to talk to each other. At 1:10, five minutes before my lunch ended I got a page, saying only "ADRIAN CALL THE OFFICE STAT!!!”
I run to a phone to find out that they had changed dispatchers, and had no idea I was even on lunch. By the time they got it figured out I had been on lunch for fifteen minutes longer than I should have. After lunch I was made the lab bitc... Err, person. I run up and down the towers and across the parking lots to grab labs and run them down. At 3:03pm I'm assigned a twelve-c to discharge, which will be my last page of the day, if I am lucky. But since I'm not I get an eleven-A to one-B patient belongings. Three-thirty finally comes, and we head home, stopping to buy a little bottled water on the way. I get home and play anarchy-online with phoenix and another org member, attempting to help her gain some levels. Several hours later I crawl into bed.