Und raus bist du.

Colleague: "..and all these corpses here.."
Me: "Wow.. You're having faith in our patients, don't you?"
Him: *staring at the wall with room numbers and patients names on it* "Well.. Let's see who will bite the dust pretty soon. Number one, two, four, eight and ten.."
It sounded a bit like: "Eeny meeny miny moe-"

Bad news: He's probably right.

One of my favourite docs seems to have a hard time at the intesive ward as well:
"I'm pretty sure there's nothing left of his brain after they reanimated him for thirty minutes. Hopefully we can cut the cords soon, it's an affront against humanity what we are doing with people nowadays, goddamnit.."

Link love

Hiraeth  I think this is pretty relatable for anyone.

The most beautiful abandoned places on earth

16 Steps for getting rid of your crap, it's hilarious.

All you can do is feel..

Hey,

I've had night shift this week and it's been pretty exhausting because I started working at my new job (which is something not hospital related) and the nights were rough.

One night I received an emergency patient who was slightly awake when he arrived but his whole left lung wasn't working and his general condition worsened so we had to put a tube in his airway. (One of the docs called his daughter whether this was okay or not, because he was suffering from cancer and it was not clearly what his attitude towards intensive care and being reanimated was..)

Long story short:

At three am his wife and daughter (a nurse working two wards above mine) came and started to cry when they saw him.

His daughter looked at me and cried: "I'm sorry, I did not know what to do, when the Doctor called me I suddenly stopped being a nurse and I started being only his daughter.. I just don't want him to suffer, oh my god.."

so I hugged her slightly and said:
"I know you don't want your dad to suffer and you don't have to feel guilty. Everybody would've reacted this way. In a moment like this you cannot think, all you can do is feel."
She held her head against my shoulder for a moment and then turned around to her mum, which was silently crying next to her husband, caressing his hand.

"Mum, he is not feeling any pain at the moment, they made him sleep and they are looking for him, don't you worry. " She was back in her nurse mode.

He died yesterday evening because the cancer already destroyed his lungs and his brain and there was no chance for him, so they turned down the whole treatmeant. My colleague said, that he looked peacefully when he died surrounded by his relatives.

But being in this situation made me notice something:

I'm feeling symphathy and I'm feeling and acting mild and gentle again.
It's been a long time since this has happened  and I thought I lost this part of me but I think it's been there the whole time, only covered under cynicism and despair.

I guess, I care again.

Hospitalism

Patient shouting everytime the monitor of his neighbour gives an alarm:
" YES! Come in!"

beep beep

"YES! Come in already!"

beep beep

"It's open, come in!"

beep beep

" ... (Name of wife), open the door!"

So I entered his room, smiled and said: "Hey Mister X, is everything alright with you?"
And he looked at me, obviously pretty surprised and answered:
"Fo sho'."

XD Geez, in a hospital everyone is fucking nuts after a while, the only difference is the name badge.

Don't make me do it.

Dear colleague L.,

good for you that your last night shift for this week ended this morning.
You were, no lie, so close of getting a punch in the face from me, you have seriously no idea. 

You're giving me the handover of a patient of who I will take care in my morning shift, while I simultaneously check the oxygen parameters (horrible, the oxygen and the carbon dioxide parameters already crossed), the vital signs (horrible, almost no blood pressure, the patient is very cold, only about 35° C) and the electrolyte balance (horrible: very, very high potassium, very high blood sugar, the PH is 7,06) and while you talk, the patients oxygen saturation drops below 85%. 

We (one of my very experienced colleagues and I) get everything ready for an emergency bronchoscopy, I grab the emergency drugs and you fuckhead dare to say: "Well, can't I just give you the handover for the other patient before you guys start all this, cause: I wanna go home and sleep.." 

Later, after you left and we saved the patients life by getting big clots of old nasty blood out of his lung, which already clotted one tube of his bronchia. I check the monitor and notice that the patients state of health has worsen since three o clock at night rapidly. And you didn't do anything useful, you prick.

The very next morning, you tell me you already washed one of the patients which is obviously a lie because the patient is still dirty (old blood, lymph dripping out of several tiny wounds and you did not change any wound dressings because I always sign my wound dressings discretely and I have a certain way of folding pads. So you actually faked a document by putting your sign under "Washing the whole patient" "Cleaning mouth and teeth" "Changing the wound dressing" etc etc..

and, to put a cherry on top, you dare to be rude and disgusting by saying things like "You're really good in bed, aren't you?"  while I was like "What the actual fuck? Excuse me?!" 
L., even if you were the last talking and walking being in the whole universe, I would rather turn into a nun than to talk about that, or, perish the thought, actually perform anything more intimate than a handshake with you and I prefer to skip the handshake as well, thank you very much. 
If you continue on being like that and doing things like that, I am going to talk to my boss and if you still not change your behaviour, I am going to sue you, because you're an asshole.

Yours contemptuously,

T. 

Rant over and out.

So, to get back to something nice, here's a nice song I really like.

Pre- Tavi

It's half past midnight or something, my favourite internist comes in and says that we will receive an emergency patient from my old ward. They are already reanimating him.
I have to prepare everything and then we wait in front of the elevator (which is in front of our team desks, monitoring so he sits on an unused bed covered in plastic foil while I walk around, excited (because you never now what to expect when they come in while reanimating someone) and pretty amped by all the coffeine.

Then they are finally there, a female doctor, a male doctor, an intensive ward nurse and a nurse (which I really liked) from my old ward  and of course the patient, a 89 year old male, looking pretty dead already (they said that he was turning rosy again, duh, the only one being all rosy was the intensive ward nurse sitting on him, reanimating the shit out of him)

We do all the stuff we have to do in an emergency situation and I wonder how calm I am.
Usually I feel like I am getting ventricular fibrillation too but this time, I already now, that nothing much can go wrong because I know we won't save him.

He already had one phial  Atropine, seven milligramme Adrenaline and some other stuff, I don't remember. They shocked him once, oh god, and what else..

The docs seemed unable/ unwilling to deceide whether to continue or not  and although I said: "Well.. just think about his prognosis even if we would get him back.. He would be braindead." they were murmuring into their phones, talking to their senior physicians, so finally my colleague P. screamed:
"Will you pricks finally stop now." and to my young colleague: "Stop it, I say!"

He had been reanimated for over one hour and twenty minutes. It was pointless.

Later that night, around 3 or 4, his son and his wife came to say goodbye.

An old little woman who was in shock and looking so lost and forlorn, it really made me sad.
My colleague P. said: "I am sorry for her, just imagine they had been married for about sixty years and suddenly he is gone forever with no chance of saying goodbye or anything like that."

I think it's the worst thing if you lose someone so suddenly and you cannot stop thinking about all the things you wanted to say and do but there is no turning back.
It's all impossible in the blink of an eye and you have to live with this feeling.

But they had a whole life together and they had children so I guess that's how life goes.
You live ... and then you die.

The Postyr Project - My future self

I met myself last night staring at a window..

I'm not afraid, I'll make it through  as my future self.

We'll be okay, just keep it cool..