Dinner at Work
One of the girls went to Texas Roadhouse to get dinner for all of us. I got country chicken, baked potato, and a salad.
Although against the rules, we have to eat at the nurses' station because there is not enough staff to cover all the patients.
Where I work there is an intensive care unit (ICU) at the north end of the hall. That is where I usually work. In spite of what some may think, I am a very skilled nurse. So I wind up working with the more difficult patients.
The ICU nurses' station seat where I was sitting and charting is about 10-15 feet from patient B. He has frequent, smelly diarrhea.
Anyway, I have all of my patients cared for and put down for their night's sleep. I am very hungry, since it is after 11 pm and I haven't eaten anything since breakfast. I microwave my food and sit down to eat.
At that point, patient D complains and needs to be suctioned. Suctioning involves using a small plastic tube to place down the tracheostomy to suck out nice, thick, respiratory secretions. When I was a new nurse, respiratory secretions made me gag. Nowadays, it's nothing to me. If you have ever walked along a sidewalk and noticed a glob of thick, disgusting, yellow mucus on the concrete, that is what comes from the lungs sometimes. I suck it out.
When I come back, I find that patient B has had diarrhea again. I go and help the aide clean the patient. There is something special about the diarrhea produced by tube feeding. It has an evil all its own.
After that is completed, I go back to my food and attempt to eat.
I get a few bites down when patient A's sat monitoring drops below normal. I go and fix that situation. While in there, I notice the patient's tube feeding has become disconnected from the PEG tube and has spilled into the bed. The aide and I change the patient's bedding, all the while hearing complaints by the patient.
The food is still there when I get back. I finish eating with the smell of fresh diarrhea in the air. The food was tasty.
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Originally Posted by Perianne
