Busy week

I'm long overdue for a post. This past week was crazy. I worked a total of 71+ hours. Lots of crazy stuff at work this week...

Thursday. The day was going well. I was in the OR most of the day. About 3pm we had finally finished. My doc and I decided to go "nipple" a bite to eat! I had just sat down with my PB&J and my docs cell goes off. We were in the doctors lounge where the reception is horrible. All he can hear is PICU (Pediatric Intensive Care unit). He didn't know who was calling. I picked up a land line and started calling around. Finally called the PICU and one of the other PAs Kassondra was down there and needed help. They had a very sick kid. So I took of running and Dr. G followed behind. They had an 11 year old girl that had already coded (heart stopped) in the ER. They brought her back but couldn't get an IV. By this time one of the other surgeons was already down there. Kassondra couldn't find Dr. G, so she pulled Dr. J out of clinic because she needed a surgeon right away. Anyways, they did what they call a cut down to get an IV. This means you make an incision over the vein and then visualize the vein and put an IV into it. They finished that and pulled the drapes down and saw this little girls belly was as hard as a rock. Immediately, they were like we have to open her belly here. Shes to unstable to go to the operating room. So we brought the operating room down to her. I had to go with my surgeon to tell the family that their little girl was sick and had a 95% chance of not making it. It was rather sad to say the least. So we opened her belly and her entire gut was dead. It smelled awful. She was bleeding from every orifice. We left her belly open and put her guts in a plastic bag. There was to much pressure to put them back in her belly. She ended up dying about 3 hours later. I'm still not to sure what happened. She was developmentally delayed kid. Her foster mom said that she had been having diarrhea for a day and that morning she noticed blood in her stool so she made an appt to take her to the doctor that afternoon. Well she went to the bathroom and stood up and collapsed to the floor in cardiac arrest. She had to have had some overwhelming infection or something. The bad part is, we will never know.

Friday at work was uneventful thankfully. I was exhausted.

Saturday I was on call. I worked until about 2pm. Nothing to exciting at work. Came home and thought I might get a nap. Ha ha. My pager proceeded to go off every 15 minutes the entire afternoon. Nothing serious just questions from nurses and new patients for surgery for today. At about 7:20 I got a call from the ER. A 4 day old with what looked like his gut had twisted on itself and was most likely dead. The kid was "lethargic" in the ED. This term is not used in medicine unless it is true. The kid was pretty much laying lifeless on the bed not even barely crying. My doc and I raced to the hospital. Took the little boy to surgery about 8:30. Half his gut was dead but there was no twisting or anything. Were not sure what the heck happened but somehow 1/2 his gut was black. We did not resect any of it as hopefully it will come back to life. It had good blood flow during the case. We left his belly open as well. We sewed a plastic sheet material over his incision so we could see inside at the bowel. He is scheduled to go back to the OR tomorrow morning for a relook to see how things look. I really hope he does OK. The family was so sweet. Mom just couldn't stop crying and I don't blame her. I cant even imagine if it were my child. I didn't get home from the hospital till about 12:30 this morning.

I didn't have to work today, THANK GOD! I was exhausted. I pretty much slept until 2:30 this afternoon. Boy did I need it. I'm off to bed hear shortly to get some good rest for the week.

My roommates boyfriend Freddy is staying with us this week. He is moving back to Minnesota next weekend and trying to sell his condo. He moved in with us so that they could show his condo, etc. Anyways, he bought us tickets to Rascal Flatt's this Thursday night. Should be a good time!!

Hope everyone had a good weekend!