so tomorrow is our ultrasound date and there are already bets on the sex of the baby. one of my co-workers, an older filipina lady who is our unit secretary had this theory.
benita: kay, i think you're having a boy
me: why?
benita: because you're pangit (which translates into ugly)
how sad! but she said it goes away, it's the hormones ... how nice huh?
then the other theory was that because my butt is getting bigger, i'm having a girl .... so which old wives' tale holds up? we'll see tomorrow ....
in other news, i saw my first open heart surgery on monday. it made me want to stop eating. first i saw the veins being harvested endoscopically, so they just used a small camera-esque thing instead of cutting all along the legs to harvest the vein. so it's pretty cool because the pt only has a tiny suture by the knee instead of a huge incision all along the leg. and then i got to see the poor, diseased heart - the pt had previously had a heart attack so you could see the necrotic part and plus you could see all of the fat too. and you saw it beating and the lungs breathing up and down on this open chest. and then they used this other machine called a cps in which they stop the heart and the cps acts as the heart and lungs of the patient while the ct surgeon performs most of the surgery. he was on the pump for 3 hours! then i saw the same vein that was harvested from the leg be sewn into the heart to bypass the coronary artery that was so damaged. then i got to directly recover the patient on our floor. the surgery lasted from 0700-1500 - a very long case - but i am now 3 more orientations away from being a heart nurse - scary!
i actually got saved on tuesday night too. both of my pts had transfer orders and low and behold, they found rooms for both of them by 2200. so i went to break after that and then helped settle in another pt for one of the other nurses. then i got report that i was getting a pt transferring from the VA but they were going to go to the cath lab first. sounded ok. then the house supervisor came up to our floor to find out who was getting this new transfer. i said it was me. and she said the pt is crashing in cath lab and they need the icu nurse. our charge nurse said that i can't go down there because i'm pregnant and may be exposed. so aileen, one of the other nurses, volunteered to go down. i thank God for being pregnant! when she got down there the pt's blood pressure was 30! they had to start cpr and then she was calling up so that we could mix some meds for him to try to get the blood pressure up. we had to mix 3 different bags of drugs! then the cardiothoracic attending called and said that this pt was going to need cps - the same machine they use for bypass surgery but was going to need it continuously on the unit and a balloon pump that pumps for the heart. there's only a few nurses that are certified to do it and so they had to pull another nurse that had an orientee, another one from the other floor and our charge nurse to go down to the crashing pt. so all together there were 4 of our nurses, the ct attending, a perfusionist, 3 residents and the cath lab nurse. they were gone from midnight until 3 am! and they came back up with the patient and all of the stuff and we were pumping blood and getting lines. it was nuts! if i wasn't pregnant, then i would have been the one coding the patient, doing the cpr and mixing the drugs! so aileen says that i owe her big time and if the baby's a girl, i have to name her aileen.
anyway, that's been my week .... we're going up to san francisco tomorrow so have a nice weekend everyone!
