~an ordinary day~

The morning started out pretty routine, all patients still breathing with pulses. The thing about my unit is that things can go bad quickly, very quickly. A patient that seems completly healthy making you wonder what in the world are they in the hospital for can go flatline in two seconds flat. It just happens that fast on our unit. This is my world I come to expect it besides that is what they are on our floor for, they have the potential to go bad and some chose to do just that. Luckily since I have been working the patients who have decided to teiter on the edge haven't been officially my patients so I haven't been the one to discover such things I just help out in the emergency. That is up until two days ago. Once again all patients were perfically fine, one 5 days post open heart, one only one day post op, and one with just CHF. Now if I were to suspect one to go bad at any point I would pick the one day post op. That wasn't the case. I casually walk into CHF room to just peek around make sure everything was still fine low and behold the patient is blue...Im talking papa smurf blue. From what I'm told I handled the situation very well as I didn't freak the hell out and come screaming for everyone. I did get help from the other nurses, respiratory and a few others but I did it in a way to not scare the other patients to death at the same time which Im told doesn't happen too often. The one thing I love about my unit is the telemetry. I do have a fear of walking into a patients room and them be dead, but my little friend lets me know they do have a heartbeat so no surprizes well unless ofcourse the leads fall off but thats what alarms are for. So lesson learned a day that seems so ordinary can do a 180 all before your eyes, send your head spinning, and make you wonder what in the hell just happened and how it go that way in a matter of seconds.