Bad Karma Friday

Most of the time, my life goes swimmingly. Lately, I seem to be suffering from a tsunami of bad juju, but the fates seem to have deemed it prudent to space my mishaps over weeks and months. Until this Friday. And, really, now that I think of it, the ball started rolling on Thursday. I had been suckered...erm...asked during an extremely weak moment, to teach at the skills lab. I was to teach the Neopuff resuscitator which no one had seen hide nor hair of for about a year. Wednesday afternoon I was retrained on the Neopuff and Thursday morning I was ateachin' it! That's the medical motto in action: "See one, do one, teach one." Let me just say I would rather work 8 hours with no chance to drink, pee, or sit down and have four deliveries in that time than teach the same damn thing over and over for the eight hours that I did. It would have been infinitely less tiring! (The answer to your question, one more time, is because that is the way it is designed!!! No, you just can't use the ambu-bag. Because they said so, that's why!) My point here, with all this whining, is that I was wasted before Friday ever started, so when that alarm went off at 0400, I considered suicide as a reasonable alternative to getting out of bed. But, out I got. Did my freaking HOUR of Plyometrics (damn you Tony Horton you freak of nature!), got kids ready for school, animals fed, watered and kicked outside as needed, and entered into what can only be called my own personal form of hell. We had people coming in by 2s and 3s; inductions that were called in before the shit hit the fan, arriving with no beds available for them; scheduled C-sections; three preterm transport calls in 5 minutes; crazy people, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria! I had a 34 week induction for PIH and a postdates induction. Both primips. Both on pitocin. In between running around, being second pair of hands at deliveries, triaging phone calls, and running back to the OR for instruments, I was trying to manage these two. The docs decided to put a Cook Balloon in the 34 weeker. And yes it is as comfortable as it looks. Then they decided that she needed her labs redrawn. Unfortunately, she didn't have a vein to be found (believe me, I tried) so I had to shut down her IV for 10 minutes, draw a discard, draw some blood, fill my tubes and send them off. 20 minutes later, the lab calls and says that I didn't fill one of the tubes all the way up. Now, having had this particular problem before, I had looked extremely carefully to make sure that I had it filled to the magical line. And I had. So I know those bastards dropped it. But since I can't prove it , time for a redraw. I was venting about just knowing that they had dropped my tube when the executive secretary, who, she informed us, was looking for a fight (debate team in high school and college) called the lab and asked them point blank if they had dropped it. Obviously, not something they were wont to admit. "It was barely short." Yeah, once the blood was all over the floor it was short! Back to the room I go, where this little missy is not pleased with me anyway because I was party to the whole cervical ripening balloon extravaganza and here I was to siphon more blood out of her. Once again, IV off for 10 minutes, attach syringe, find out blood doesn't want to come out, take about 10 minutes to get 5 mls of blood, fill tube up to very top, restart IV, take to desk and have 3 nurses and 2 secretaries verify there is enough freakin' blood and send it off.

My other chickie was on her second day of induction. Please keep this in mind. She had had cytotec and a Cook Balloon and was now 4 cm. So she was on pitocin. She stated that she felt her contractions in her back. Okay, so, she's OP, not unusual. I looked at her tummy and thought, that's a big kid. We pressed on with the pitocin until I got to 14 milliunits and she was sleeping through these contractions. Hmm. I informed the doc of this little scenario and she said, "Well, let's go fix that." The doc goes to break her water, mentions the kid is high, breaks her bag and we see thick mec. Crap. Then the doc says, "Uhh, this feels kind of squishy." Double crap. We bring in an ultrasound and confirm....breech. Motherfucker! Do you think we could have figured this out before her second day of induction? My brain refused to see that tummy as breech because, "hey, we're inducing her for the second day" and I had never checked her because she wasn't uncomfortable. That is the last damn time I trust the residents on any thing! I work adjacent to retards! After the c-section (Still no eating and have only peed once; go kidney stones!) I find out that I had forgotten to hook the pitocin back to the port I had drawn the blood from on my other patient and I had been pitting the floor. Go me. I hadn't charted a thing since 0700 on either patient, so I had to stay after school, as it were, and get things done while popping mini candy bars into my mouth as the only form of sustenance I had had during the shift. Tony Horton can kiss my ass.

On the way home I stopped by the AT&T store so I could trade in my POS Crackberry with the malfunctioning click wheel for a handy-dandy, too cool for words iPhone. Never make a major purchase when you are so tired you don't know your own name. "Would you like this expensive and not really needed accessory?" "Sure, whatever will make you shut up and let me get out of here."

I got home and, since November finally ended, fired up the lawnmower. I had been able to mow the front yard last week during the 17 rain-free seconds we had, but the backyard hadn't been touched in two weeks. Two weeks of nearly uninterrupted rain. Amazon rain forest type rain. The grass was up to my shins. We nearly had to send out a search party for the dog. Now, my lawnmower is 10 years old and has some issues. A wonky back wheel. The cotter pins on both sides of the handle fell out. I had used zip ties to hold it together, but since those kept breaking, I bought some new bolts and nuts and fixed it. My point is, ugly it may be, but it gets the job done. However, when you are looking at a job that should require a machete...I had to walk slower than the sentinels at the Tomb of the Unknown to keep the mower from binding up and choking off. I went through two tanks of gas in the backyard alone. The engine was smoking like a 3 pack a day chain smoker and I had to shut it off for awhile because I thought it was going to catch fire. It took me an hour and a half to do the backyard when it usually takes 45 minutes for both front and back. At one point I noticed that the handle was getting lower and lower. I examined said handle and noticed that the metal was starting to crack at near the wheel. I began to pray mightily! I did not have the wherewithal to not beat this thing with a baseball bat if the mower busted before I finished the everlovin' yard. When I had a 5x5 foot section left, the inevitable happened. The sucker snapped like Joe Theisman's femur. Dammit! Not to be deterred, I am tenacious when I need to be, I propped the broken end on it's former joint to keep me semi straight and narrow and muscled this now nearly useless POS through the rest of the yard. I wonder if Home Depot sells lawn mower handles? I really don't want to buy a new lawnmower.

The parasites are growing out of their clothes daily, so we went on a spending spree today, then picked up Mrs. Hardy and walked around the new fountain parks in Navy City. Very nice. Built by the guy who did the fountain at the Bellagio in Lost Wages. Mrs Hardy was shocked when I told her what a hole that place used to be.


One last note: I was downloading the "Zombieville" app onto the handy-dandy iPhone when FB climbed into my bed after brushing his teeth. He sat beside me and pulled a device of a *ahem* personal nature out from under him and asked "What's this?" I just took it away and threw it in the drawer. I'd wondered where that was...luckily it isn't one of the "anatomically correct" kinds. Cuz, then I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have asked what it was, but I would have been paying for therapy for YEARS!! (Personal aside....yes, I know you warned me, you were right, don't be smug!)