Urine and Shoo Shoo

Last week was full of excitement. Thursday and Friday we went to the hospital. It was really funny being there as part of a different team. It is truly amazing how much nutrition and nursing interact. It's funny to be on the other side. While I was at the hospital on Friday there was a dietitian on the floor with 2 interns. This time last year I had 2 interns following me around. And now I'm less than an intern. Hadn't really thought about that before hand; funny how things turn around.

Thursday was fun. I had a middle aged female who was 1 day post op gastric bypass surgery (nutrition stuff again). She was super nice and let us poke and prod and look and inspect. She was very gracious to my partner and I. She was a true pleasure. She had a 10" incision in her abdomen - it was very pretty. There were 28 staples. Good times. Although she was a perfect pt, she was a little boring to take care of since she was so independent. But then some excitement came about. Another pt down the hall needed a catheter. Her catheter had been dc'd the day before and she had not urinated since, so she needed an in and out cath. An in and out cath goes in, gets all the urine out, then comes out. So they told my partner and I that we could put it in. I was extremely excited. Put a catheter in a real pt and not just a mannequin with a huge pee hole!!! So I was nonchalant with my nurse partner for the day.

"you can do it if you want" I said thinking she doesn't want to.

"are you sure?" she said, "don't you want to do it?"

"yeah" I said, "I'll flip you for it. do you have a coin?"

"no" she said, "lets rock, paper, scissor it."

"okay" I say - I have to win this!!

1-2-3 both scissors. do over

1-2-3 she's scissors. I'm rock. I win. I get to do the catheter!!!

The pt is a young woman who was in a car accident and broke her pelvis. We go to her room and find her walking to the bathroom trying to urinate so we won't have to cath her, but she got nothing. so in we go. Now when you cath a woman you prefer for her legs to be as far apart as possible so that you can clearly see the urethra (also known as the pee hole). Unfortunately, when your pelvis is broken it is difficult to spread your legs. So I got about a 3" spread (this is very small). So her legs are very large and she is African American and I can't see anything. My partner is holding the flashlight and I'm looking and thinking maybe I should have chosen paper. Oh yeah, and the pt keep screaming in shear pain due to having her legs slightly spread with a broken pelvis. So I go in, only it was the wrong hole. I tried to cath her vagina. Just so you know I didn't get any urine. So I pulled out resterilized my field and went in again. I still saw nothing. It was like a wall and then all of a sudden this little window came open and a hole appeared. I threaded the catheter in. Poof, we made contact. A flood of urine field my bag. I got 400 mL. It was very dark. I pulled the catheter out. We covered her back up, she screamed some more. We were gone. I charted. Task completed. Urine retrieved.

Friday wasn't nearly as exciting. We started our morning evaluating our patients and taking vital signs. We had some down time and one group had a job to do, so the rest of us joined them. So all 6 of us went in to take care of an older man. He has 2 broken arms and a broken leg(that's what happens when you are walking down the street drunk). Oh yeah, and he's delirious. So as he said he had a shoo shoo. So we all go in to bathe him and change his sheets and he's laughing and doesn't have a clue that 6 girls are in there who don't have a clue what there doing and we're laughing and he's laughing and the whole thing was really funny. The rest of that day was super boring. I mean when the highlight of the day is cleaning up a delirious man's shoo shoo....well, you get the idea.

This week I have three tests, a paper due, and two more exciting days at the hospital. Can't wait.