Battle Hymns of a Hot Mess Mom

Everyone starts somewhere, at whatever career down to learning how to walk and while everyone starts somewhere sometimes it’s scary to be the patient of a baby nurse. She first forgot to give me my meds so I was an hour late, and then she forgot to actually change my scop patch. She then told me my platelets threshold was 15 when I know it’s 10. It’s a white knuckle experience cause you know they are nervous, they have already identified to you that they are new and you have already seen/ experienced the errors. Now comes the anxiety that is simply please don’t kill me or adversely affect my care. And the second is omg I don’t want you as my nurse again. There is obviously a shift in the nursing industry- after Covid nurses were burnt out. You see it in the nursing strikes from Kaiser as well as nursing strikes in smaller hospitals. There are memes about their consistent shortage and the patient overload. I applaud this nurse for coming into a really rough industry but as a patient I’m also scared of her.

She will likely administer my platelets tomorrow morning and I told J to please be awake and watchful of what meds she pushes in and how fast she pushes platelets. At this point my premeds have been engrained in me. (Tylenol, 50mg IV Benadryl and hydrocortisone IV 25mg. I am to go no faster then 125ml/hr preferably slow to start at 75ml-100ml for the first 30 mins). I know throughout my journey I have continued the theme of self-advocacy in your own medical care. It’s not baby nurses that can forget; seasoned nurses also can forget as well. In fact I had to challenge my first nurse during premeds when she said 25mg of Benadryl. I asked her to please double check my records as my standard of care has been 50 mg IV of Benadryl.

I hit publish too early. Probably cause I’m all anxious. Baby Nurse needed to hang platelets for me since it was a 3. After I take the Tylenol and she had administered the hydrocortisone and Benadryl she tells me there is “precipitation in the line” ummmm what does that actually mean? Is it raining? She looks flustered, I’m flustered….she says that there is a back flow….ummmm what does that mean?

Jesus Take the Wheel
Take it from her hand
Don’t let the Baby Nurse kill me
Oh I’m letting go
Giving it to your hands
Don’t let me OD on Benadryl

It’s not funny, but I’m so anxious I have to use humor to do something. Did I sing this sh*t out-loud, I sure freaking did. J is holding back his laughter because we are BOTH wide awake at 6:00am. We are going to wait an hour to restarts platelets so that it’s Nurse J and not Baby Nurse. I don’t want Baby Nurse to touch me after this whole thing. Again, I know you gotta start somewhere, but please don’t kill me Baby Nurse.

The last few days have been my battle with the toilet. Will I make it or won’t I make it? Do we have the indignity of not making it to the bathroom. Do I poop on the floor? Do we have a clean up on aisle 9? There really certain things that I will give up when it comes to pride and dignity. I’m good to be clowned on. But … poop. that’s a hard pass. I’m not feeling that poop is how I want to go out with my dignity

I’ve had Nurse C for the last two days, we have really hit it off. Both our children are the same age and she’s only one year younger than me. She asked me if I was a Tiger Mom…and while I said no,I started to see some “Tiger” stripes in me. We both related to how we just messed up on the first kid and got it better with the second. She had the magic touch that after every platelet I hit 21. What that means is I don’t need to chase the platelets at that point. I’d be above 10 not 15.

Feeling tired again, going to wait for Nurse J.