The Other Side of The Bed

So this was the week where I became the patient and not the clinician.  Started off with a virus (which I ignored, nurses are good at this) which developed into a UTI (sucks to be a woman sometimes) which developed into Pylonephritis, yikes how did that happen.  Well as soon as I realized I had  UTI called my primary who put me on Cipro, me thinks "Cipro never works for me but too sick to argue with him"  Guess what, 48 hours later I am worse so go to my doc again who throws his hands up and says, you are too sick, go to the ER..........I hate the ER!!  I hate the waiting, I hate going over the story again just give me some Bactrim, let me crawl back to bed and I will be fine.

Predictably the ER was horrifically busy, I knew it was not going to get any better when the Helicopter landed bringing in a patient in life threatening condition.  An hour into my wait the triage nurse called me in.  Despite being very sick I tried very hard to engage her with my incredible humor and huge personality.......no eye contact, not one iota of warmth from her cold detached manner.  Maybe she was having a bad day, maybe she was really tired but does any of that matter to the one patient (not necessarily me) sitting in front of her.  Two hours and a pee pot (full of you know what) later I left with my script for Bactrim.  Two days later still feeling like death, when the hospital called me saying the urine culture had come back with a particular nasty resistant bug and would I like to start another antibiotic before we resort to IV medication because I now had pylonephritis!!!  Well now Friday, I do finally feel better but a bit of a washed out, over cooked wet noodle.  Good for nothing.  But of course have been musing the experience all week as all I could do was lie in bed and play on my Ipad and watch way too much daytime TV.  Here are my thoughts.

• Its OK for us to speak up for ourselves and our patients when we are not sure the right treatment is being prescribed, not sure I would have got better on Bactrim as the front line drug but I kick myself that I settled because I did not feel great.  We must learn to put advocate in our vocabulary.
• Therapeutic touch and communication are as important as taking an accurate set of vitals.  Eye contact is a must, listening is essential.  If we do not develop these skills in ourselves and future nurses it shuts down communication which means we as nurses may not get essential information which could be a huge safety issue.
• I am sooooo grateful my husband was in town (he should have been in Chicago but trip got cancelled) and he unexpectedly showed up in the ER even though I told him not to with a cup of tea and a smile in hand!!!!!

So, I missed simulation day which I was hugely disappointed about but now I am going to comfort myself with a whole weekends worth of grading and lengthy evaluations.  Bring it on!!!!