TurboNurse

Had my first bad nurse day yesterday.  I had been taking care of a 400 gram (14 ouces) baby all week.  Yesterday the baby decided to have a huge episode where it drops its heartrate and stops breathing.  This is extremely common in premature babies becuase the CNS is still growing along with everything else so they "forget" to breathe and hence the heartrate drops.  What's not usual is to have to bag the baby.  Usually just some gentle stimulation will remind them that they are not in mom anymore and have to breathe on their own.

So my kiddo has this huge spell where it needed bagging.  I went in when the isolette and started stimulating him as soon as the monitors started going off.  I kept looking for the heart rate to come up and it didn't.  It was down way too long.

Then I froze.

I don't know how long I froze but I panicked.  I finally remember someone asking me if I want RT there and I said yes and I want the practitoner as well.  Then my pod partner came over and jumped in and totally saved me and started bagging the baby for me.

I feel like I'm a terrible nurse because I froze and could have killed this baby due to my lack of action.  It really makes me second guess what I do. 

Please don't mistake this for me giving up.  I LOVE what I do.  It was just a HUGE blow to my confidence that I need to recover from.  I also learned a lot of what not to do for next time.

Then it doesn't help that every time the charge comes around (this was not a permanent charge btw) she hounded me on how I need to ask for help.

Well yeah, I kinda figured that out and am already beating myself up over this, I don't need your help.

I'm very nervous about going back to work now.  I know I can do it though.  It was just a setback.

Today I got my braces on.  I was supposed to get the upper and lowers on but it was determined that there is not enough room for the braces to clear my overbite so they put the uppers on and are going to get them moving and then I will get my lowers on.

I got them on this morning and was thinking that it wasn't so bad.  Now it's 4:30 in the afternoon and I'm singing a totally different tune.

Ouch is all I can say!  I tried to eat some Triscuits with sour cream (don't knock it til you try it,  yum!) and it hurt so much when biting and trying to chew the Triscuits that I ate two and gave up and got a can of soup out because it was soft.  So far the can of soup is still sitting there.  I drank the juices off of it but am a little leery of trying to chew the veggies in there.

I took some ibuprophen before my appointment at the suggestion of my coworkers.  I just took another dose now.  I sure hope it helps.

If I don't touch my top and bottom teeth together I'm OK but if I accidently bump them, it's game over.

I'm going to see how I feel but I am planning on going to tae kwon do tonight.  I don't know if I will spar or not.  I got a mouthguard but I don't like the way it fits.  It doesn't do much at all in the area of shock absorption which is the big issue with being hit and not getting a concussion.  So now I am going to search the internet to see if I can find a good mouthguard for braces that I like.

Wish me luck.