The emergency department has 21 rooms. There are 6 more rooms in the Urgent Care center. When we went on shift last night at 7 p.m. every single room was full and there were about 4 gurneys in the holding area waiting to come in. The trauma ICU was full, the medical ICU was full and around 11 p.m. the medicine service said they were "capped" which means that the residents have so many patients each that they could no longer take any admissions. So, we had our work cut out for us. When the Day Shift came back on duty this morning, we had 3 patients on the board. Kudos to us.
Amongst the evening's highlights:
- my drunk who drank down a whole bottle of vodka and then started yelling from his front yard, he got beligerant with the cops who came to get him and had to be body tackled down, he started spitting at everyone in the ED and needed to be physically and medically restrained. blood alcohol level 0.42
- my teen drama queen whose roommate threw out all her insulin and syringes the night prior and who didn't bother to replace them. She came in with diabetic ketoacidosis (that's bad) with a blood sugar level of 402 (normal is less than about 120 unless you just ate.)
- my ex-chef who bled so much from a wound that he made himself light-headed. until then, he didn't think he needed to come to the ED. his hemoglobin (measurement of red blood cells in the blood, low if you're anemic) was 6.4. normal is about 15, low normal is about 11 so he needed to be given some blood... just a little
I also had a car crash victim with facial bone fractures, a guy who got assaulted, a lady with a lump in her neck, oh yeah and my nightmare of nightmares, having to do a pelvic on a 300-something pound woman. Ugh. Argh.
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Oh Veronica - a pelvic - aren't you a happy girl!!!!
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