(Relative) Success!

• Well, today I mostly had the favour of the god of bloodletting it seems. And the god of big-men-who-seem-tough-but-pass-out-for-anything-needle-related. You see, it is the big tough guys who have the reputation for passing out when they're getting a needle. But luckily, that didn't happen for me today. No one passed out, in fact. And while I did miss a few, I did manage to put in about 15 IVs or so. yippee!

• What I find equally as hard as putting in the IV is being set up properly with all your gear and then trying to maneuver it all with one hand (opening the IV tubing, taking the backing off the tegaderm sticky bandaid thing, getting the IV running, taping it in place) there's a fair bit to do when it's just you. And I'm infinitely aware that while I'm curious to see if I'm going to have any luck with each one, I need to give the impression that I've done it all before so many times (insert eye-rolling/hand-waving here) that I could do it in my sleep! Without actually saying that - since that would be lying because I've only done about 20 in the last 2 1/2 years, all of which were at a minimum 1 1/2 yrs ago since last year I didn't do anything that required such a skill. So, I just try to do distract them, put them at ease and appear confident while inside I am secretly saying "Please let me get this (and fast!) so the anesthetist isn't pissed off with my incompetence and the surgeon doesn't feel like I'm slowing him down!" And today, I had some pretty good luck. I only tried once on each person and if I didn't get it, then I gave up so that they didn't have to endure multiple pokes. I was glad to see that a couple of the people I found tricky were also tricky for the anesthetist who has several 1000 IV starts under his belt. :)

• But really, as usual, I think the trick to surviving and thriving in the OR is being helpful and not talking unless spoken to. By helping patients move quickly into the OR and getting them set up in position with a warm blanket, I was actually accused of speeding them up vs slowing them down. (a good thing) By the end of the day, when I thanked the surgeon for having me (since it's his room afterall, though he does nothing with me, it's actually the anesthetist that helped me), he offered to have me back anytime while I'm here. Nice. And the anesthetist seemed to like me ok too. Yay! Word travels like wildfire through hospitals and I have no doubt that the nurses in the day clinic downstairs will have heard about my escapades today via the hospital grapevine. Or at least, if I had totally sucked, they certainly would.

• Two patient stories, we had a retired anesthetist who was lovely and told me about using bowls of ether to put patients to sleep for surgery. Check out this neat short video about that. Then the last patient of the day was a military guy who, after complementing me on my "good looks" went on to critique my choice of arm & vein to put his IV into. It was pretty tiny but the only one I could see but I wasn't surprised when I didn't get it. Happily that gave me the chance to give up because I wasn't too fussy about this guy. When we brought him into the OR, for some reason he decided to tell us that what he did for a living, being in the army and all, is fix machines and kill people. He seemed kinda proud of this which made me think this guy had totally missed the point of whatever they teach you in military college or whatever military training he got. I think he needs a reminder that "killing" is not really the purpose of the military - at least not glorified like that. From what I understand, it's kind of a necessary evil. A last resort. But I think it's pretty unlikely that you'll impress anyone that's halfway decent by telling them you kill people for a living. Certainly not me.

• PS. I realize that you may be startled by the colourful new look but the brown was getting to me- too depressing. I like this one - lively & fun! I think it's a keeper.