Happy New Year Everyone! Sorry I couldn’t be at the party, but I still have this plague that has totally congested my chest and nasal passages and I don’t want to pass it along to any of you. Unfortunately, I’m thinking Gabrielle has picked it up from me. At least we have the meds in the house for her should she need them. Is it bad I have concoted a mix of meds in order to maximize the amount of medication I can take in a 24 hour period. So today has been a day of rest in the hopes I’ll be well enough to handle work tomarrow. Other than resting, I have been working on a new look for kiltedbehemoth.net. I hope you guys like it when I roll it out. Here is a sneek preview of the logo

New kiltedbehemoth icon

Again, I wish you all the Happiest New Year.

Let it be known I have the plague….I feel like crap…my sinuses are full of things that are unholy and I ache

On the way home the check engine light comes on oh gr8 so I head to Saturn need an oil change and a tune up car is misfiring on 2 cylinders

Today I woke up with a bit of a sore throat and not feeling very well. Gabrielle let me sleep most of the morning while she played with her new SIMS game. I finally got up around 11:00 and then Gabrielle and I went outside to clear the snow and ice that accumulated through the night…sigh it seems like a never-ending battle. While we cleared snow, John W came over and we headed out to Woodfield Mall to do a bit of shopping for stuff not included with Xmas gifts. John needed a cable from the Apple Store and Gabrielle wanted to get a nice nib pen she has been wanting. After battling traffic and the store mobs we finally made it through the mall and back to the car. However, the fog had really set in, which made getting back to the highway really tough. Once on our way we headed to Borders so Gabrielle could use her gift cards she got for Xmas. John and I browsed but didn’t really find anything. John was searching for a Dilbert calendar but couldn’t find one. While Gabrielle and I checked out I found the LAST Dilbert calendar on display and so John is happy. John dropped us off at home and now I have to get ready for another sleep study for my sleep apnea. Hopefully my sleep apnea is under control and I won’t need a different machine as the one I have cost us $500. Well gotta run toodeloo

Ill post a large pic of the favicon design later or just look at the url…im thinking of making this part of the new kiltedbehemoth logor

Hurray I got the favicon I made for my kiltedbehemoth website to work in both Mozilla and IE. Battery on laptop just died b4 I could plug in

Heh…im being treated with kid gloves today…they got me down in pod three trauma unit….should be a much better day

So today started fine, running a bit late but things were ok. However, I should have stayed in bed. I got up this morning and ran out the door since I had a Disaster Response Committee meeting at work. After fighting lunchtime traffic for 40 minutes and battling for a parking space only to settle for an open air spot on the far end of the fourth (top) floor of the parking garage I made it to work for a meeting that essentially got cancelled. Although technically cancelled, I did get some work done with the ER director and the Safety Department Manager. Ok so the meeting didn’t turn out to be grand or glorious. I’ve never been in a hospital meeting that was. Afterwards, I thought this might be a good time to go up to unit 52 and look at an educational binder they had put together on bariatric patients to see if I could bring any of that information down to the critical care unit as I am on the Bariatric Patient Steering Committee. I pushed the button for the elevator, but it was taking a long time and so…the critical moment…I decided to walk down to the ICU and see if I could get a quick meeting with the unit manager to talk about items from my meeting today. One of which was to review a problem with an overhead page yesterday which never should have happened. The page said and I quote “An emergency has been identified, please stop all unit operations and EVACUATE the building!”….hmmmm not good. Fortunately, nothing serious became of it but still.

Anyway, I stopped in my manager’s office and we chatted for awhile and in the midst of our chat one of the interim managers popped her head in to ask me if I would want to stay and help out with patient care as one of the nurses had twisted her ankle and would be going home after being seen by Occupational Health. Critical moment two…I told her can I have a few minutes to think about it. Now keep in mind, I hadn’t had any breakfast and just fought traffic and parking to come to a cancelled meeting…argh. After finishing up with my manager our clinical educator saw me and said, “oh great you’re here come into the break-room there is an in-service on Lovenox going on and they have brought food.” Well a growlin belly says go and so I went. With a bit of food and some free stuff that all pharmaceutical reps bring I headed to my managers office and said that I would stay….critical moment number three. I was given a ton of “thank you” and “you are the best” and best of all “were are gonna give you report pay (higher level pay) for pitching in. With food digesting and dollar signs in my eyes I headed down into the locker room found some surgical scrubs and headed to my assigned rooms.

I walked to my rooms and the poor nurse I was replacing was sitting at the desk in a wheelchair trying to finish her charting so she could go to Occupational Health and get checked out. I was given her two patients. One was a post spinal surgical patient and the other was a young psychiatric patient who decided to take an overdose of narcotics. Of course, as these are my patients I won’t be stating any specifics or identifiers on they for their protection, but today just sucked big time and I need to vent. My surgical patient was actually doing quite well and needed very little from me….you can guess where my day really started to get bad?

The psych patient had tried to leave his room twice and even pulled off all his monitoring equipment and IV’s. He would be involuntarily admitted to the psych ward tomorrow but he needed and ICU nurse to administer a special medication in his IV to protect his kidneys from the overdose until then. OK well, so I go into his room and introduce myself and he gives that look…it was a mixed look of how am I going to manipulate this guy into getting what I want and crap this nurse is like three times my size. So I get this kid all hooked back up and he quiet for the time being. I’ve got our electronic ICU people in oakbrook watching him on camera and all the unit nurses are being voyeuristic when they can. So I go back to my surgical patient and get him ready to go on a road-trip to x-ray. I leave him sitting up comfortably in a chair eating lunch all is good with him. I head back to the other room and the psych patient is on the phone blaming his mother for all his problems and everything else under the sun. While on the phone he starts disconnecting all his monitors and IV’s again….argh…I should have stayed home…can you see where this is leading? I calmly walk back into the room and explain while in the hospital he has to obey our rules and needs to remain connected to his medication drips and monitors. He just kinda ignored me for awhile and started in on the manipulative talk. He was saying things like we aren’t treating him appropriately and he doesn’t have to stay and he is going to leave. All the while, I’m being gentle but firm and telling him he isn’t going anywhere, that he has been involuntarily been admitted by a psychiatric physician and that he needs to try and calm down. At this point I call my charge nurse again who comes and supports me in my talks with this kid and basically reiterates what I told him…and he isn’t liking it. So we take it to the next level and call security. Now we have myself, my charge nurse, and four security guards (who by the way are bigger than I am) telling this kid his behavior is just unacceptable and that he needs to start complying with our rules. While security talks with the patient, I got on the phone and got an order from our psychiatric liaison to place him in four point restraints if I need to. Now that’s a big deal and requires an awful lot of paperwork and manpower to invoke…again can you see where this is going?

So the kid agrees to lay down and have me reconnect him to all his monitoring equipment and IV’s . Security left reluctantly while muttering under their breaths that this will be short lived and they will be back. Well they were right. So I’m outside the room with the charge nurse writing telephone orders into the chart when I see the kid getting up out of bed pulling all his stuff out again and saying “I”m leaving now!”. I get into the doorway and said “calm down lets talk this out” in which his response was a punch to the face and an attempt to leave. Needless to say the wrestling match began. For a little guy, he was pretty strong and it took a little while to get him to the ground even with my charge and one other nurse helping. Ya know I’m ok in a fight, but it is a different story when you are trying to restrain someone without hurting them. So we eventually got him to the ground and security arrived again. While this kid is on the ground he decided to do some spitting and of course there was blood in his spit from a earlier wound prior to his hospital admission. While I’m holding this kid more nurses are running in and someone says, “Karl, you are bleeding.” Looking at my arm sure enough the little $!*% actually cut me a few times. Probably with his fingernails. Ok remember this was supposed to be my day off….sigh. So I’m holding this kid while bleeding and my manager ran to get a syringe of sedative. She got back pretty quick and dosed him up in his ass. Thankfully, my charge nurse is on the ball and said uh security could you please take over for my bleeding nurse. At that point, I transfer my hold to a security guy and go to wash up my bleeding arm.

Security got him back into bed and we have now placed him in four point leather restraints. So now here I am bleeding and just tangled with a kid with a questionable personal history who was spitting bloody sputum…that’s just great. I immediately invoked my right to have him tested for contagious disease and security called the Downer Grove Police Department because I don’t know if any of you know but it is a FELONY to attack a health care worker while in the performance of his or her duty. One of the nurses in the unit at the time was our wound care nurse and she temporarily bandaged me up and security drove me over to employee health.

The occupational/employee health people got me in right away and said the doctor has to see a couple of other patients first but would be right in. In the meantime I had to get blood drawn for baseline values and get a booster DTAP shot…just in case. By the time that was all done, the police had shown up and I was giving my statement…as it stands right now i just have a complaint filed I now need to decide whether or not to file charges against this guy. On the one hand, he is over 18 and needs to understand there are consequences for his actions and on the other hand he is a psych case and would not probably get the maximum of anything and would most likely get off but with a conviction on his record. This would also mean that I have to go to court….argh. And now because of this kid for next 6 months I have to be tested for HIV, and Hep C, and I would have had to be tested for Hep B but I am immune. The chances are low that I got anything but still…and that means Gabrielle and I have to put off our baby making for 6 months until I get an all clear. Fortunately, the first test, the Rapid HIV test came back negative…phew but it still has an error rate and it is only sensitive to those who have enough HIV to be detectable. What does that mean, well it can be months before an individual has enough HIV to be detectable, so if this kid was just exposed like just before coming into the hospital it could be months before it is detectable and this is why I have to be tested for the next six months….I’m pretty pissed off.

After getting examined by the hospital MD I made my way back to the unit so that I could document everything that happened in this guy’s chart. When on the unit all the managers were still there trying to make things right again. The mother was irate saying we weren’t treating her son correctly, she says we should have been treating him for narcotic withdrawal even though he has no signs or symptoms of withdrawal. I thought about talking to the mother and giving her a piece of my mind but I opted not too and my manager thanked me for not confronting her as well. So I finished up my charting and left. I trudged through the snow back up to the fourth floor of the parking garage. Poor Gabrielle she only got bits and pieces of information throughout this whole thing and it undoubtedly put strain and worry on her…I’m sorry babe.

Finally hit the road around 8pm and decided I need some comfort food and so headed to see my buddy nick at Pita Paradise. I absolutely love Nick’s food he is what I would call a Master Chef. He never limits a customer to the menu and will prepare something special for anyone who does not see something they want. He is also keen on samples for those who are not familiar with mediterranean foods. All I have to say is his egg lemon soup is da bomb! So I get there and Nick and I give our usual hi there and howdies along with our usual banter back and forth while I decide. Today, he had some gorgeous braised 1/2 chickens with his special saffron rice. Ultimately though, what I really wanted from Nick and let it be know that I could eat this by the gallon is his homemade tzatziki sauce (a yogurt cucumber sauce with garlic and lemon—yummy) but of course as the capper to the day he was sold out….this day just got progressively shittier by the moment.

Hungry and tired I dragged my ass home and went through the events of the day with Gabrielle. She of course is worried but supportive…I love my wife.

So how was your day?

Hurray my buddy Romy has transferred back to ccu from surgical services..the quote of the day ”a surgical rn is like a sterile accountant”

Msnow sucks….just leaving work lets see how long it takes me to get home