Good (but long) week

Hello everyone! I probably should have posted while I was away but there is something about being away from home and everyone you love that just wears you out. Of course, I took my laptop with me to Jax and it served me well between blog-surfing and streaming some of my favorites from Netflix. So technically I could have posted but mostly I tried to just focus on work.

This week I was up early every morning and in the unit until late afternoon, at least. I learned a lot about the daytime routines and the software that is used to generate the patient progress notes and IV fluid orders. It was nice but I always feel a bit of unrest the first couple of weeks on a new job. I mean, I can't do much more than follow people around and watch them do their job and learn it so that I can do that job eventually. It can be very boring and, at times, unsatisfying. I did take a handful of patients every day but their were mostly feeder/growers (that's lingo in the NICU for mostly healthy babies that just need to learn to eat by mouth and gain weight before they can go home) so there wasn't much for me to do each day with them.

Friday, the ONE day I was hoping would be slow so that I could get on the road early and avoid the weather and rush hour, was actually pretty busy. The weather had turned bad outside and was threatening rain and we were joking all day that it was raining babies inside. I ended up at my first two deliveries Friday, one set of 29 week twins and a 27 weeker. I was "head of the bed" (meaning I led the resuscitation) for both deliveries and even got an intubation! I was worried I'd be pretty rusty so it was nice to get some procedures and admissions under my belt. I also attempted umbilical lines (central lines that we use to give the babies IV fluids and draw labs) on 2 of the 3 new babies and drew labs on the third. Unfortunately the arterial lines wouldn't advance on either baby and one of the venous lines was in the liver, one of the venous lives was good! Thank God for small miracles! Only 1 out of 4? Guess I'm a little rusty after all! :-)

Diabetes wise, it was a week FULL of lows. I took a fridge full of food but thought I'd be okay without my trusty supply of OJ and instead took some fruit leather and milk in case of lows. Well, one night I was there I'd eaten all of my fruit leather and finished off the milk to try to rid myself of a nasty low and was still in the 40's!! I couldn't go to bed until my sugar was decent but I'd been dealing with this stupid low for 2 hours and it wasn't budging! I had plenty of food but not a whole lot that was appropriate for a low. I improvised and then grabbed some milk boxes and OJ containers at the breakfast bar the next day to re-stock my fridge! Also I am going to have to re-think my basals during the day at work because I was getting low a lot in the mornings before lunch. I'm going to finish another week up there to see what my sugars do before I make any major changes to my pump.

That's all for now. I had a really good week and I'm so grateful for finding this job. I'm so happy and I think it's exactly where I'm supposed to be. But I did miss home while I was away and I'm glad to be back for a few days. I'll be up in Jax again this week Tuesday through Friday and then who knows? For now I'm enjoying my time at home.

~Layne