Tuesday, January 6, 2009

ambitious projects afoot

Yesterday was a long, tiring, yet worthwhile day at work. Near the end of my 12 hour shift, I had a patient wheezing loudly and desatting rapidly. Respiratory was paged, without response. The supervisor was paged. No response. 20 minutes later they showed up to give this guy his albuterol treatment. I was fuming mad. Only a few minutes later, I gave a scheduled dose of IV metoprolol to 73-year-old patient with a HR of 77. Less than a minute later, she was bradying down to 42. I stat paged our assistant charge, and then paged her service. She was asymptomatic so I wasn't panicking, just concerned. Everything worked out fine with both patients.

I spent much of the day working out the details of our unit trek to Nepal this coming fall. Springing the idea on my supervisor was nerve-wracking. She seemed cautious and I hope the idea will grow on her. We will be able to put a lot more in stone when the holiday schedule and vacation schedule comes out.

Today I met with the program coordinator for the Alzheimer's and Dementia certificate program at my alma mater. She was ready to sign me up for classes right then and there! Unfortunately, financial and time arrangements prevented that. I am hoping to get started right away and can't help but feel SO excited about it. Just working towards another academic goal thrills me to death.

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