Podcast Host (likely a nurse sharing personal stories) (10:00)
Let me re up. You don't like what I have to say. As a constituent of this podcast. You don't like what I have to say. YouTube. Because I want to talk about democracy. Because I want to talk about physical fascism and a fasciotomy. The Pulse is below 40. It's too late. You have to cut. Starting at the radial pulse and up to the elbow. You have to let the pressure go or else we're at risk of losing the ulnar forever. Now glove up, glove up those sterile gloves. Glove up those sterile gloves and scalpel. And it's gonna feel weird to cut because it's gonna be quite easy, but we have to let the fluid go. It's an electrocution. I've been watching the Pit, obviously, and you know what it is? It's a genius concept because each, each episode is one hour of the day starting at 7am so here I am. Here I am. I am moving through the 12 hour day with the medical personnel, with the multidisciplinary team. So I have to sit my ass right on this couch to get through one day of work. No, I cannot stop. I'm there. It's my duty to be with these patients. I much want. I must watch until the end. How is this day? How is this day gonna end? Am I gonna be able to go to sleep at night or am I gonna be thinking of that patient that went pulseless after an egg sandwich? That'll keep you up at night. Along with Nardell's insomnia. Luckily, with insomnia, I don't have dreams anymore that I'm on the floor. An unlicensed nurse waiting for the manager to come get me. But they need the help. And I know what I'm doing. Let me go. It wakes me up in a sweat. This is what it's like being a nurse. And this is the problem I have with the show, the pit. I don't know if I mentioned that earlier, I think I did. Because here are all the doctors going room to room to room, taking up all the excitement. But you don't. But. But where are all the nurses? Where are all the nurses in this ER? We get to see them for five seconds, maybe every 30 minutes. No, they have a bigger presence than that and you know it. You just want to steal our thunder for entertainment value. Because it's more exciting, the rush. The rush of being under pressure, getting emergency after emergency. Well, let me tell you, the doctors aren't transitioning, aren't mo. Their patients from gurney to hospital bed know the nurses are. They're not around. It takes six or seven nurses to all gather, to all leave their patients, to trans. To transfer the patient onto your hospital bed, and the doctors are nowhere to be found. This is up to us as the nurse. You've never seen. I've never seen a doctor push any kind of medication. They don't know what they're doing. They don't know how to draw it up in a syringe and what the right dosage is and the right route and the right administration. This is up to the nurse. When you're pushing that calcium chloride really fast, mind you, of course they're dead, but let's not make them any deader. The nurses are the ones finding the patients with no carotid pulse and immediately starting cpr. Lie the. Lie the bed flat with the stomp of a foot to make the bed hard, adequate for compressions. Now start in 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 to the beat of staying alive. Not the slow one, the quick one. Sweating, perspiring a broken rib. The nurse says traumatizing, but in the pit, the doctors are the ones doing all of this. I don't think so. Where's our. Where's our recognition as registered nurses? Not around there, you don't. But in real life, there are you. You. You think you can check a gcs, a Glasgow Coma Scale, to see if your patient is awake and alert enough? Oh, they're down. No, the nurses. We're sternal rubbing and slapping them on the face. No, we actually don't do that, but we're shaking them around. Wake up. We wake up. Wake up. And checking the pupils and then reporting back to the doctors. The doctors aren't finding their patients like this. We're checking cognitive function every hour, maybe every 30 minutes, mind you, because a lot of times we cannot leave the room. The nurses are the ones. The nurses are the ones intervene. Oh, your patient's blood pressure is dropping. What should we do? Put the legs above the head, Recycle the cuff, maybe give them a little extra fluid. You try every kind of intervention you can and go straight to the doctor so you can list off what they're going to suggest to you. Check it off. No, I've already tried that, that and that and that. Now it's an emergency. We need norepinephrine to make the blood vessels a little tight so their blood pressure can perfuse the rest of the organs. I think it's time for dialysis. And insert a Foley catheter as to monitor the urine every hour because it's an early sign of organ failure. Yeah. Yeah. The doctors, they write the orders and that we need them for, but we're the ones doing everything. And where are we? In the pit. One charge nurse. One charge nurse. She's quite good. If I may. If I may. And then what's the other nurse doing on the pit? She. She's putting ultrasound jelly and checking EKGs. No, these are for special kinds of technicians. We're assessing our patient and listening to the lungs. They're crackly. They're crackly. What do we do? Diaries. Give him some lasiks. There's EKG technicians. And yes, I want a woman. My titties are out. Look away. You pervert and echocardiogram people who put the ultrasound on the chest. I don't know what I'm looking at. What? You think I can do everything, which I probably can because nurses wear many hats. The doctors aren't going in and talking to the family about their advance directive. Maybe when it needs time for signing of the paperwork. But the nurse is initiating this conversation. Meemaw is at the end of her rope. She's 95 years old. I do not think it would be of benefit to her to make her suffer by putting a big tube on her larynx and restraining her to the bed and sedating her. She could wake up delirious. I don't know if you want her to be a full code. We initiate that conversation, sit down next to the nice family. I'm sorry. Let the doctor know. And the doctor goes in and wraps up the conversation. But I started it. At a mere 22 years old, I was having these conversations. So what does the pit have to say about that? Not much, it seems. But we're running the show. We're running the show and we're not. You can't have a stethoscope. You can't wear a stethoscope around your neck. The whole time it weighs you down. You got to keep it at the nurses station. Instead, you have to hold a brick of the phone with wireless communication from the laboratory and from the CT scan, where the ones who know the potassium is at 7.1, we're the ones to know there's a brain bleed. And then, of course, I go tell the doctor because they do have a skill set. They are important. They are important. And they went to medical school. They spent eight years of their life with their nose in a book, and I didn't. And they deserve that. But I'm the one implementing. Every other room, every other minute, there's somebody unconscious, brain dead, on the pit. Their brain stem, it's herniated. Okay, in the first two minutes, what kind of note did you get from HBO that said we needed a brain deader right away? Just like that. Just like that, it happens. And then we see. And then. And then we see a young lady come in. Unresponsive, pulseless. They say pulseless means you're d. E D dead. She gets a shot in arcan and she's awake. Her pulse came back. I don't. I don't think that's what they. I don't think that's how it works. And Narcan is for opiates only, I'm pretty sure. Don't quote me on that, but that's how I've always given it for. Too much fentanyl. Maybe you got into the oxy at home. It's okay. There's rehab centers for that. Now is not the time for guilt. Not for a half of a Xanax. I'm sorry, and listen to your doctor, but it doesn't normally leave you pulseless and pale and unconscious and. Or on a gurney rushing through the hospital walls, halls. I mean, this just isn't how it goes. It's not. The doctors aren't on their feet for 12 hours a day like the nurses. These dance goes and compression socks are only doing so much for the pain in my legs. And now my arches are falling. I need to sit down. I need a glass of water. I need to pee. I haven't peed for the first eight hours of my shift because there's no time to drink any water. Oh, great. Now who? Now the student becomes the teacher. I have a uti, and I need Keflex of some kind because it's crawling up into my kidneys from t. High hydration. So this is what. This is what a nurse's life is really like. Other than that, I Do think it's a really good show. Like I said, it's very addictive. I like that little nervous kind of med school resident who's really pale and looks out of it most of the time. The girl intern, she is so annoying. The one who calls the other one Crash. It's like, give it up. Why are you so eager? You're inappropriate. Appropriate. Have some humanity. These are people's lives. They're not bodies to be studied. No, the patient doesn't need a cardiocentesis or a chest tube. They need more sedation and rest. Please, doctor. They know what's going on. Even though they're sedated. And you can talk to them, you talk to them nicely. Because they can hear. Just because they're asleep doesn't mean that they can't hear. And I thought they were going to touch on this. One of the first things I've learned as a nurse is that after a patient dies, they can still hear for a long time. So you. So you talk to them while they're in their transition to the gates of heaven or hell. Oh, I'm not here to judge who holds the patient's hand when they're dying. Not the doctor. They don't have any time for that. The nurse. I've sat with numerous patients as they pass away. No wonder why I'm maxing out my medication. I'm on all kinds of atypicals. I have the trauma, and I haven't even started talking about my mother yet. So, anyways, how are you guys? I hope you're having a good Thursday. Oh, yeah. Same, same. Honestly, it's going great. But it is. It is Tuesday. I'll let you in on something I record early. Okay. I'm not recording the date before as to be conscientious of my editor's time, but I have been late time and time again into that. I apologize. Okay, well, let's. Let's move on to a lighter topic, shall we? Robbie and I went on our honeymoon, one of many because we're dinkers. Dual income, no kids, forever. Even though our electricity bill is $4,000. Somehow every two months, we can have a little money to take as many honeymoons as we want. We call a honeymoon anytime we leave the house. We went to Santa Barbara for something called a mini moon and had omakase sushi. Don't do it. Don't do it. If you're staying at the Miramar, you'll leave unsatiated and ready for a McDonald's number two. Two cheeseburgers please. And a side of fries. I'm starving after all that sea urchin. So we went to Santa Barbara. And then. And then we decided to take our real honeymoo for 10 days to the Hamptons. I don't know what I thought of it. I can't tell you what I think of anything. That's for you to decide. We were there for 10 days in Amigenza. Iconic of sorts. I just saw a picture of Marilyn Monroe there way back when. It was a gore. A gorgeous photo. However, we were the only lesbians within sight. No clear homophobia. But maybe whispers behind my back. Actually, I don't know. I shouldn't say. I shouldn't say that. I can't just go around calling people homophobic for no reason, now can I? We went to a nice coffee shop every morning. It was Italian. It was really great. And espresso straight to the dome. Maybe a little too much, you know. I had to get a half caf, but it was delicious going down with the butter croissant. So yeah, we were there for 10 days. We took a break mid honeymoon to go to Fire Island. We'll get into that, don't worry. And we stayed. We stayed in something of. For lack of a better term, an old person's community. We rented this really cute apartment. It was the only everything really affordable for 10 days in the Hamptons. These people are out of their mind. Wacky with the prices. But luckily we found one kind of decent walking distance to the beach. So many codes, impossible to remember. And really it's barely walking distance. It's. It's. It's an E bike distance away. But I took. I took the trail every other day in my platform capernaus. There goes my ankle on the uneven. It was like wood. What do you call that? Pathway? Pathway is what it's called. And. And this community called for a lot of silence. Much like the Korean spa that we frequent. There were signs everywhere. Do not talk loud. Must keep to a whisper. As you can imagine, knowing my wife in beloved Robbie, it's hard for her. She naturally speaks at a very high octave and projects. It's a gift of hers. And much like the case spot, we get in trouble everywhere we go. She's talking too loud. Babe, lower your voice. And then something happened. And then something happened. There's a fly around here. I gotta get my fly swatter. One second.