It's Been Forever

I know it has been forever since my last post. Work has been very busy and there have been plenty of extra shifts to pick up. This week and last week have been the first two weeks in a while that I haven't picked up a fourth shift. Well, technically last week I only worked 2 1/2 shifts and this week I will only work 2. I'll explain in a second.

Other than work, I have been busy working around the house. The guest bathroom has been painted and the office is finally finished. Just some painting in the master bedroom and bath is left. I'll go ahead and post some pictures as soon as I remember to buy batteries for the camera.

So Saturday night I was at work...everything was going pretty well. It was my second night as charge nurse, but I things were moving fairly smoothly. About 1 am I sat down to catch up on a little charting and catch up with a patient that had spent the beginning part of the shift at dialysis. I sat and began writing, suddenly and I mean suddenly, I felt the sharpest pain in the left area of my back. All I could do was put my head down. I then broke out in a sweat and realized I had about 1 minute to get to the bathroom. Long story short, I realized I could not continue working and at the same time I knew it wasn't a stomach virus so the house nursing supervisor took me to the ER in a wheel chair. Can I tell you what great service you get in the ER when the supervisor brings another nurse down in a wheelchair? I think there were two nurses and a tech in the room. They started asking questions, an IV was started, some good medicine was given to control the pain and nausea, and fairly quickly the ER doctor came in. He told me it sounded like I had a kidney stone and he wanted to do a CT scan to confirm. Sure enough the scan showed a nice 3 mm stone. I left the ER at about 6:30 Sunday morning to pass my new found friend at home. I did not go home empty handed as I had prescriptions for pain medicine and anti-nausea medicine. Sunday and Monday were spent at home pushing fluids and napping. (And for the record I may go a lifetime before I drink any lemonade or lemon flavored drinks!) Finally, at about 11:20 on Monday night the whole ordeal was over.

I did keep my follow-up appointment on Tuesday with the urologist and have been given several things to do over the next month before I see him again. Mainly dietary changes like more vegetables, less animal protein, a 1/2 cup of bran cereal every morning, and lots of water. He did make a comment that it may be the water where I live but I won't know anything until I go back in a month and all the lab tests have returned.

Until then, I am really going to try to do a better job of keeping things updated! :)