Wow... It was awesome... I know this will probably be long, but it is some good stuff folks.
To preface, I was incredibly nervous in the hours and days before the rotation. For one, two nights before, I was almost done smoking a great cigar with Steven over at Cory's house when I started to feel really sick. With my best friend by my side, I tried to get the feeling to go away but couldn't. I finally became fed up with the feeling (and the freezing cold) that I walked over to the side yard and puked. That made me feel good enough to walk to my car. Thankfully, I was able to drive home without having to stop along the way (I took the side roads just in case). Anyways... I puked again when I got home, slept for about 4 hours on the bathroom floor by the toilet, then finally got up and slept downstairs in the guest bedroom. I felt a lot better the next day but didn't go to class just so I could recover and get a good night sleep.
Sorry to side step, but that just sucked. Haha... Anyways, I was also nervous because I had no idea where I was supposed to go or what I would be doing; the uncertainty was killing me. The only thing I knew was what basically to wear and that I had to find the charge nurse to check in. I was also a little nervous about how I would react to blood/needles/awkward situations/etc.
So I get there a little early and hang out in the waiting room just because I didn't want to walk in there a half hour early or something. Finally the time comes and I get up to ask for help finding the charge nurse. After about six people pointing me in the right direction, I finally found her. She set me up with a couple ER Techs that I was supposed to hang around with. They would show me around, and get me at least a little bit involved.
Right when I got there, a doctor asked me what my learning objectives were. I told him I was up for everything and wanted to learn as much as possible. He told me of a 79 year old patient with extreme COPD that was having extreme difficulty breathing that I could observe. I walked over to the room and stepped in to observe. There was this awkwardness as the nurse in the room finished her sentence and asked me why I was there. I mentioned to her that I was observing and before I knew it a tech was in the room showing me how to place a 12-lead ECG on this elderly patient. Bam! Patient contact down... For a first patient contact, it was very, very interesting to see. In fact, it was a great contact to have because it was very 'textbook' in the way that the patient presented.
After that contact, I spent almost the entire rest of the night with a tech by the name of Rudy. Great guy, that's for sure. I think I was extremely fortunate to be paired with him. Rudy is a big black guy that only works two days a week in the ER in order to be considered full-time so that he can get benefits. He has been working there for 12 years and primarily works as the owner of a limousine business. He's done well for himself, lol... More on him later.
As the night went on, I learned how to do a bunch of different things. By the end of the night, I was great at running urine litmus tests, changing over beds, and taking vitals. I got to see a CAT (sp?) scan done on a patient. I administered a blood glucose test on a patient. The list goes on.
At 2:00 am, Rudy and I went on a 'lunch' break. As we were on our way to the parking lot, he starts his Hummer from about a hundred yards away. By the time we get there it was already warmed up, lol. He then lets me know about his 4 LCD screens he's got in Hummer and comments on how he is "making it rain", haha... Next he puts on some rap music and cranks the volume. No joke, this was the loudest music I have ever heard. We went to get some coffee and McDonald's. Somehow Starbucks gave us coffee for free, and we headed back to the hospital. He then shows me his three woofers in the back and his 1000 watt sound system. No wonder it was so loud, lol. Wow... (Edit: You want to see what kind of guy he is? The limo company that he started himself has a party bus in its fleet... check this out lol
THE party bus)
After our break, it got really slow. In fact, the nurse I was talking to said it was the slowest they had been in maybe a couple months. This was discouraging! Thankfully about two hours later it picked back up again as we got one of the most exciting calls of the night: a schizophrenic guy had been tased (as in a cop's taser) in the mouth and the prong had pierced his lip. Alright! Now we're talking haha...
He came in with two cops and in four-place restraints. I had to help restrain him as we changed him over into a gown and such. The whole time he was doing the brain fast-forward/rewind type of thing. He kept saying that we were going to crucify him and that it was like he was being abducted (no kidding, those were his words). The doc looks at the other prong and thought it would be simple enough just to go pull it out of the guy's lip... So that's what he does. The guy screamed, but he got it out just fine. We saw that it had actually bent the prong when it hit his tooth on the other side of his lip. After a while we were able to calm him down and he responded to commands just fine. He still kept on talking to himself and had to be observed the entire night.
A couple more highlights... I had to help Rudy wash a 6 year old kid's ear out. I had to restrain the poor kid as she was under intense pain as we forced the fluid into her ear. We eventually got a peanut sized ball of wax out of her ear. That was actually kind of sick, lol. There was another kid, an 18 month old, that I had to help restrain. She was having a lot of difficulty breathing and the nurses were trying to get a blood draw and an IV into. I helped two different nurses try a total of four different times to hit a vein. In the end, they still couldn't get any blood from her. The poor kid had to suffer through four big needle pricks.
Originally I was really worried about how I would react to those kind of situations, especially needles and blood. In the end I actually surprised myself because I had no problem whatsoever with pretty much anything. Holding the kid down as the nurses administered IVs, doing the urine tests, all that was absolutely no problem for me. I feel a lot more confident now. Also, it wasn't that tough (I mean emotionally) to hold the kids down as they were crying and screaming. I new that I was helping and that was all that mattered. It was really a great thing to overcome all that.
I ended up staying a little longer because near the end of my shift, the paramedics brought in possibly the most critical patient of the entire shift. He had been found by the police in his car in the morning. He had apparently been there the entire night and consequently was unconscious and freezing cold. The paramedics had intubated him and he was being bagged as he came in. They were working fast on this guy and it was great to watch. I saw them get a 14 gauge (14 gauge!) IV in him, not to mention a bunch of other cool stuff.
Anyways... It was an extremely great experience and I learned a TON. I definitely wish I could do it all again because being my first time, it was all kind of a blur. It has actually really changed my opinion about hospitals, too. I'm thinking sometime down the road I might want to become a PA (physician's assistant) in an ER or something. That would include a couple or more years of schooling down the road, but it would be a great thing to do after paramedicine, maybe when I have a family.
Whew! I am still recovering and I need to get to bed!
Night,
Daniel
