WEAK IN THE KNEES

you know the feeling...your mouth goes dry, your palms get sweaty (hell your whole body sweats), you feel dizzy, everything loses focus...

yet again I've come close to falling flat on my face while watching a procedure in the hospital. this time it was an open chest incision. my patient had a one foot long, 2 inch wide piece of flesh (taken from her lower abdomen) stapled to her chest wall (where her sternum used to be) after complications following her open heart surgery 2 months prior. While this piece of flesh was oozy and purple/pink and we were required to poke it with a needle and soak it with heparin to promote bleeding in an attempt to get circulation in it and start the healing process - this part I was fine with. What got me was when i came in to find Dr. M from plastics with a scalpel cutting pieces of skin away (with no anesthetic or pain meds!! luckily the clinical nurse noticed and quickly ordered morphine IM stat). She had most of her hand in her chest and was pulling out pieces of flesh (red/purple/yellow nodular looking flesh) and feeling around inside. My first reaction was

that's so neat. What can you feel in there? Her heart? Bone? and then...
Ohhh, this looks really painful. and then...
Oooo that's pretty nasty looking, but still kinda cool...i wonder if she'd let me make one of the cuts? and then...
Ohh fuck. not again... as i felt my head getting dizzy....sooo i moved slightly away from the bed, in case i accidentally collapsed onto my pt and starred out the window for a minute (probably looking like I was uninterested or bored :S)...but then I quickly busied myself up by opening gauze and handing suction tubes and cleaning up. I seriously need to get over this if I'm ever gonna survive the OR!

Other exciting things that have occurred in my first few shifts...i've been the target of projectile vomit, projectile trach sputum, i've been deep suctioning and doing trach care almost everyday, cleaning chest & leg incisions, removing chest staples, hanging and priming IVs (Vanco, KCl, Mg, NS, 2/3 & 1/3, Humulin R etc), transcribing meds, updating care plans, reading ECGs, setting up telemetries etc etc etc....it's certainly never boring!
Today we were short staffed so Dr. R came in for a bit in the morning to help with pt care (so unheard of, but GREATLY appreciated!)-he also bought pizza for everyone working in an attempt to boost morale. and somehow team P squared managed to leave the unit at 19:45 today! 15 mins late, but still an hour earlier than usual!