Alyca's Daily Life

I finished reading the new Harry Potter last night. Not too shabby, considering that I bought it at 0930 Saturday morning, and spent that day with Mom at the Kent Cornucopia Days dragonboat races until 430pm, then came home and went to a movie with Ethan. I worked 12 hours on Sunday also, but still managed to find the time to read the entire stinking 650 page book. Now THAT is dedication! It is a testament to how really good this book is. By far my favorite. It is so good, I am regretting reading it, because I am going to have to wait YEARS before reading what comes next! So.

Lets see, I worked 12 hours yesterday, which means I MUST have something to say about work........well, I ended the last 4 hours of the day with the utmost of confused, brain injured patients who has been with us for well over a month (most patients on the trauma floor stay 5-7 days), and will never leave us, since he is a screamer, curser and all around general pain in the neck to take care of, so none of the nursing homes want to take him. So, he SCREAMS at the top of his lungs quite frequency, but I managed to shut him up for the entirety of my 4 hours with him. My secret--I talked to him for about 10 minutes at the start of the shift, told him the plan, told him exactly when I would get him up in the cardiac chair (sort of stretcher that sits up like a chair and can be rolled around), when he could have pain medicine. I asked him which of his many tattoos was his favorite, where he grew up, etc. After our chit chat, he would still call in on the call light every 5 minutes or so, but no screaming. I made sure that when he DID call, I either told him over the call light that he wasn't due for pain meds yet or that he couldn't get up in the chair yet, etc, or went into his room within a few minutes and saw him face to face. I think he gets most frustrated when his addled mind wants something, but he gets no response. I said a lot of 'no', but he still did not get out of control. Go me! Although, it was stressful and time consuming, but not more than some of our other needy patients, so it was doable. I just hope they don't give him to me tomorrow!!!