Wow, that was a day..

[midnightsjane]

Fridays in CCU are known as "Perc Valve Fridays" because that's the day the Interventional Cardiologists do the percutaneous aortic valves. This is a new way of doing a heart valve replacement, done percutaneously (via a catheter inserted into the large vessel in the groin and fed up to the heart). Generally it's used for people who are high risk for surgery, like the elderly. Mostly it goes smoothly, the patients recover well and go home in the next few days. When it goes bad, it can really go bad. Today was one of those days when a lot of things went rather badly, so we got jammed up very quickly. There was a great deal of to-ing and fro-ing from the unit to the Cath Lab. Everyone was busy busy, to the point that the Charge Nurse was about to pull out her hair. I was so glad I didn't have her responsibilities, just had to focus on my two lovely gentlemen, get them up for their respective procedures, and recover them afterwards, as well as help out where I could. Most of us missed our dinner breaks completely; I had about 5 minutes, just time to gobble down a piece of pizza. The last two hours flew by in a complete whirlwind of activity. I didn't get out until 7:30, half an hour after the official end of shift.

On the up side, we had pizza for lunch, courtesy of one of the attending doctors, and cupcakes, a thank you gift from a patient and his family. So we had carbs, cheesy goodness, and lots of sugar. Got us through the shift!

I was very tired when I got home, so the message on my machine asking if I wanted to work tomorrow made me snort in derision. No way, Jose. This nurse is sleeping in.

It was payday today, hurray. My favourite work day.