How I Spent My New Year

Not really ever being a person who felt the need to go out and party to ring in the New Year, I decided to work instead of sit at home by myself while my boyfriend worked. Here's how my night went.

On Wednesday night, I found out that I'd be the only nurse tech working on my floor on New Years Eve. Having an almost full floor on Wednesday night, I was a little worried about what the Eve would bring. Well, in anticipation of the madness that is New Years Eve drinking and stupidity, the doctors started discharging patients like crazy. We went from around 37 patients on the 30th to 19 on the 31st.

I was actually quite happy that a lot of patients got discharged because that meant that I would have a somewhat easy night. We started off with 19 patients and gained 2, for a grand total of 21. In all I had 10 of the 21 and was quite relieved that when I got there the techs from the previous shift had done my 8 o'clock vitals. That saved me some time and aggravation.

The night was going great, so I decided to start my midnight vitals and all a little early so I could try to catch the fireworks. I had everything done in time and was walking to go see the fireworks, when I pass this one room and out of the corner of my eye see one of my patients standing next to the bed naked.

I go in to get her back in bed and ask her what she's trying to do. She's a little disoriented because her sodium levels are really low and she tells me, "I don't know. I'm sick." No kidding. I get her back in bed and go to put her gown back on her when I notice that her IV is tangled in her gown and it's still infusing fluids. I call up her nurse and we get her back in bed and in her gown and all hooked up to her IV again.

While I was struggling to get her in the gown and waiting for her nurse to come in, I did get to see fireworks. Too bad I didn't get any pics, but I did see baby new year, bloody and naked and sick.