Just Last Night..

I go into work each shift never knowing what awaits me. Am I working L&D, periop, high risk or circulate in the OR. And after about 6 more months I will be trained in Triage. And trained to scrub for the OR.

So last night I was scheduled for 11-7. I arrived at work and was assigned a patient who had delivered but was waiting to be discharged to the postpartum. floor. So there was little for me to do other than assess mom and baby and fill out various paperwork. Easy peasy. Gone by midnight. Then I had no patient until about 3am. The floor was unusually quiet..

We had a baby born with anacephalus. Long story short it means no brain. It was not my patient but I did go into the room to help the nurse assigned to them. Baby was preterm at 21 weeks. Parents were Incredibly strong! Nurse and doctor were incredibly shaken. What a tough thing to deal with. I can't even imagine. They are in my prayers tonight...

So about 3am the Charge nurse comes and asks me to circulate for the next CSection. Yes you heard right. The Next CSection. Apparently they had one after another all evening and thru the night.

Ok so I set up the OR and await the patient. She was a full term mommy who had reached 9cm's but stalled there for a few hours. The Doctor said she had waited long enough. "Failure to Progress" He was "cutting" her. Yeah cutting is the accepted and widely used term for CSection in the OB world. How sad huh? To dilate to 9cms and have to go thru a section. The baby was doing fine; tolerating the Pit well. No decels. No loss of variability. Hmm. So why the section? I don't know but I think he could of given her a little more time. She was not my patient until she hit OR#1...

The section went well. Mom delivered an 8lb plus baby boy and everyone was happy. So after I got her settled into her postop room everything looked fine. I assessed the baby and found his breathing to be very rapid. In the 90's! I called Peds, attached the pulsox and did a blood sugar. Baby looked fine. Just was breathing very fast. I got a phone call to say I could go home if I wanted...things were slow; so off I went. I think the baby probably went to OBS. Observation for 4 hrs. I gave report to the nurse taking over for me and headed for the time clock.

It was 5:30am. Nice to head out a little early =)
I got to see the sun rise as I drove over the bridge towards home.

So that was my night. September 5th, 2008. I'm off the weekend. But already wondering what Sunday night will bring my way..