I have all the time in the world.

It was not an easy day.We were short-staffed, and I had a patient on palliative care, whose family needed my attention much more than the patient did. Let ' s face it: when their urine output drops below 20 ccs an hour (those Foleys are placed for comfort care, but it ' s more the nurses ' comfort than the patient ' s--we can tell how close to dying you are by how well your kidneys are working) there ' s not much we can do. We turn and do a partial bath every two hours and wipe their faces and clean their mouths, but it ' s all for the family. The person who ' s dying has long since ceased to care.So I had this palliative care patient, and a patient on a titrated drip, and a walkie-talkie woman, ninety-f.ing-six years old, with a tiny lacunar stroke that didn ' t affect her at all. The most we were doing was tuning her up; making sure her blood pressure was okay and her electrolytes were within normal limits. We weren ' t going to try to change her diet or stop her from smoking. At ninety-six, you ' re running on genetics, and who am I to say you should give up the Parliaments for an extra, horrible year of life? Keep smoking and die at 102.So I was in a hurry that morning, making sure her breakfast was to her liking. " My husband, " she said, " always liked a poached egg every morning. "She hadn ' t ordered poached eggs. " I can ' t stand them. Slimy things " she said.She had an omelette with mushrooms and sausage and cheddar cheese. I remember this exactly because I love th...
Source: Head Nurse - Category: Nursing Authors: Source Type: blogs