swollen knee

Today was a long day at work. A ton of staff called in sick. I had a bunch of patients in clinic who had fevers and i was like STAY AWAY FROM ME SWINE FLU KILLAHS! Well, I didn't shout that at them. I just shoved masks onto their faces and left the room. Poor patients. But let me remind you, I do CHF clinic. Not fever clinic. CHF does not involve fevers. Ever. At all. Which is why I work with CHF patients.

That is probably why we have a lot of staff out, actually. Everyone is being told to stay home if they are sick, even the slightest sniffle and people jump ten feet away from you. Yup, swine flu has hit our county hard the past couple of weeks. And I still don't care. At. All.

Anyhoo, I don't work in infectious disease, I work in cardiology, so I ignored most of the clinic patients and worked on a lot of admissions for CHF or PTCAs. Although I did have one random head trauma admission that I stumbled upon. Like, literally, collapsed on the sidewalk and banged his head open and I was the lucky first nurse on the scene. It's happened before a few times that I've been a first responder like, wherever, and it always amazes me the lack of response and/or common sense amongst the common people standing around the victim. It usually goes as follows:

"Nurse! We need a nurse!"
"He fell!"
"We just found him like this!"

Meanwhile, the poor person is lying on the concrete with blood gushing out of his head. It looked like a frickin CSI scene or some Tarentino aftermath and I am immediately annoyed that no one is holding pressure to it and god knows HOW LONG his head has been gushing blood.

"How long as he been bleeding?" (as i use my lab coat to smoosh his head blood gushing gash)
"Uhhh... since he fell."
"Which was..."
"Uhhh.. " "uuh?" "Uuuh! A few minutes ago!"

The patient ended up being somewhat OK. At first he was not even oriented to anything, I mean he was on a spaceship and his name was Sally for all he knew.

SO annoyed with the ignorant dopes right now. AHEM.

A lot of admission orders, H&Ps and IV lasix pushes later it was the end of my shift. My knee is complaining and aches a ton, my back hurts from manhandling \/LOC patients around and my head is woozy from lack of blood sugar. I go to my desk. There is a 18 inch stack of pharmacy and clinic papers in the inbox. I punch in my 1234 code to the phone. Robot voice lady tells me "You have, TWEN-tee, NEW, voicemahils."

I bang my head on the desk.

I wake up and I hear "Uhhh, we just found her like this!"