This internship is hard. I knew it would be, but man. I am totally immersed in nursing, nearly 12 hours a day, at least six days a week. I see it so much that I don’t even want to watch Discovery Health. I miss my husband. My dog hates me. My feet hurt constantly, despite my expensive shoes which normally do the trick. And I’m just plain tired all.the.time.

However, today made it all worth it. Here’s what happened today on my 3:30am-4:00pm shift:

1. By 6:15am, my patient pulled out his cordis (a type of central line we use at our hospital.) In case you’re not familiar with these things, they are the approximate width of a plastic coffee stirrer, stuck right into your neck. Not something I want to be yanking on, for sure, but this guy was confused and alternated between thinking he was in the Dominican Republic or on an Indian reservation, and even once, at my house, generally around 1960. He did do me the courtesy of ringing his call light when he pulled the cordis out, so when I came to check on him, I found him covered in blood with a big, gaping hole in the neck. Just one more thing I don’t have to experience for the first time as a new nurse, I guess.
2. I got to put in an IV (actually one, but two tries) and a Dobhoff tube, successfully. We nursing students like to complete these tasky things. It makes us feel good about ourselves. Especially since I’m also in my psych clinical where we do none of these things and it feels like we’re totally helpless.
3. By about noon, we had had two false alarm codes and so we (the interns) got to run around the hospital chasing the nurses and the respiratory therapists. We’re on the 4^th floor, and the first Core was to the 8^th. We got to exactly floor seven and a half before it was cancelled. Wrong button. But there was a nice sense of camaraderie.
4.  And the ringer…

About three hours before my shift ended, we had a real code on our very own little unit. One of the post-heart patients who had been on a 2:1 ratio all day. Apparently they were just about to reintubate him when his pressures went through the floor.

And that was that.

The next three hours were spent watching this guy, this scene, this unbelievable scene. Nurses, doctors, respiratory therapists, pharmacists, managers, and a tiny little cluster of med and nursing students huddled in a corner, trying to be invisible so as not to get kicked out. About an hour into it, they decided to crack open his chest at the bedside, hoping to apply direct electricity to the heart muscle to get it going again.

The nurse who ran the show is a hero and an inspiration. And I mean ran the show.

I’m so close to this event that I can’t describe it with words, yet.

I feel exhilarated. It was my first code and it was major. And I got to help. I was part of the team. I wasn’t doing compressions or giving meds but I took it upon myself to check on the other patients and get hourly vitals while the nurses were tied up. I reported blood pressures, looked up orders, and some other stuff that I hadn’t yet been able to do on my own. I gave myself a purpose and I felt good about it, even if it wasn’t all action-oriented.

I feel stressed out. I wasn’t even part of it but the tension was palpable.

I feel inspired. The teamwork in that room was unbelievable. I mean, absolutely unbelievable. It’s a team I want to be a part of. It’s a show I want to run someday. I was just blown away by the skill in that room, and the 100% teamwork. I should have known it would be just like that.

I feel exhausted. I ran up and down a bunch of stairs. I walked in on a blood covered patient and only realized my knees were shaking after the event. And I witnessed a guy get his check cracked open in the ICU.

I feel sad. Just sad. I can’t think of a fancier word. The guy’s son came in after they’d cleaned him up and covered his chest. I can’t get that image out of my face. I shouldn’t. I won’t forget the nurses who cried as they left the room in defeat. And then of course, my own tears, probably a combination of all these emotions and more, as I walked to my car. I’m not a big crier but everything poured out.

Is it like what you see on Discovery Health? Well, physically, I guess so. But it’s like someone turned the volume down on the emotion.

I’ll not forget those faces and that patient and this day. Every piece of the puzzle, the good and the bad and the stuff that you can’t even allow yourself to feel because you have to go back tomorrow; it’s made every ounce of tiredness, crankiness, sore feetedness worth it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 4:33 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.