June 28, 2007

All Is Well

The King's bloodwork came back, and all is normal. Apparently, despite eating french fries nine time a day, he is healthy as a horse, and with a good blood glucose level to boot. Yay for him.

Now that that weight is off my shoulders, I can scootch off to the hospital for work this afternoon with a light heart.* Hopefully I won't kill anyone today.

______
* All those weight metaphors are kind of weird, aren't they?

June 25, 2007

Blood Work

The King and I went to a health and wellness fair this weekend (by accident--it was billed as a solstice festival), and there was a lady giving free blood sugar tests to screen for diabetes. She told us our sugar level should be between 80 and 100, given when we had last eaten. My test showed 89, just perfect.

The King's number was 302.

I called a friend of mine who has diabetes yesterday, trying not to panic. She said that with a number that insanely high, in someone who is healthy and has no other signs, it was probably a testing mistake. The King had some ice cream earlier in the day, and if he had any little smidgen of it on his finger where they drew the blood, it could have affected the result like that.

The King is supposed to go to sick call today and schedule a fasting blood test so we can make sure he's okay. In the meantime, I am just going to sit here and try to breathe slowly and deeply and not panic.

June 22, 2007

This Was Supposed to Be a Really Funny Story About a Naked, Demented, Old Guy, But Then He Died

I started volunteering at a local hospital as a nurses assistant on the Medical/Surgical ward. I want to be an RN and thought this would be a good experience. All I did the first day was paperwork, which sucked. But yesterday, I got to do real patient care! The nurse manager asked me to sit in the hallway in front of the doorway of a patient who likes to climb out of his bed, even though he's partially paralyzed and get help if he tried to get out of bed. They call it "sitting," because, well, that's what you do.

Naturally, about three seconds after the nurse left me alone, the guy, an 85-year-old man, started yelling and trying to pull himself up. I grabbed the nearest nurse and got her to calm him down. She did, and left. Then the guy sat up and saw me in the hallway. He yelled, "Come in here, hey, come here!" I didn't want to, but I felt weird just ignoring him. So in I go.

As I get to his bedside, he flings back the sheet, revealing his completely buck-ass naked 85-year-old self, and yells loud enough for the whole ward to hear, "Hey baby! Jump on, you're hot!"

Yeah. So that's how I got this really funny story for my blog about how a naked, demented, old guy wants to have sex with me.

Except that after I sat back down at my post, the guy calmed down. I thought he fell asleep, until a few minutes later when a nurse when to check on him. She shook him once, did a double-take, shook him again, then looked up at me and shouted, "CODE BLUE!"

It was just like ER. Two dozen nurses suddenly appeared, running into his room with carts and needles and stands. One of them jumped on his bed and I watched them pound on his chest over and over while another pushed about a gallon of something (atropine, I think, but I don't really know) into his IV port. They pumped and pumped away at him for almost an hour. It was insane. The half-dozen nursing students who were on the ward all took turns giving him CPR, which they were clearly terrified about. But it didn't work.

At 1:22 pm, he died. The head nurse asked, "Who do we notify?" The RN checked the chart and said quietly, "No one. He doesn't have any friends or family. We just call the coroner."

Sorry, Mr. Ethan. I'm sorry you died alone. I'm sorry the last words you ever spoke were embarrassing and dirty. I'm sorry I saw you take your last breath and didn't even know it. Maybe if I had known and told someone a few minutes earlier, they would have brought you back. I'm sorry you don't have any family. I'm just really, really sorry.

June 15, 2007

To the Babysitter Who Won't Go Home

You know the couple you're babysitting for, the two who just got home from celebrating their wedding anniversary with an incredibly romantic candlelit dinner and a walk on the sands of Waikiki in the moonlight? They don't want to hear about your new boyfriend. They don't want to hear about how you think Sanjaya never should have been on American Idol, and they don't want to know who you think is the prettiest America's Next Top Model. THEY WANT TO HAVE SEX. GO HOME!