DNR???

I went to the surgical floor to pick up my next patient this afternoon. Since Monday is President's Day, we don't have clinicals and i'll only have this patient for one day, so i took my instructor's advice and picked someone easy. (and from what i work i did, she is the epitome of easy). she was in for post-lap gastric ulcer, had two meds (protonix and morphine PCA). she does have two JP drains from her surgery and an NG (nasogastric) tube attached to LIS (low intermittent suction), which i haven't worked with yet, but i'll read up on those before i go in Tuesday morning.

so i come home after going to Starbuck's for my venti caramel machiatto, hoping that'll wake me up a little so i can get some studying done. i watch "gangland" (no wonder LAPD are so squirrely; look at what they're dealing with...) and fall asleep for like, 2 hours. i've always dreamed vividly, and i ended up dreaming about my patient. except in my dream she was a guy, and instead of him being in a hospital room, his patient room is located in my school. i'm getting ready for clinical, and everything seems to be going well. i leave to go to lunch,and i hear "code blue, [pt room #]". uh oh...i run back to the room and a doctor and some nurses announcing his time of death. because he was a DNR. in typical dream fashion his body is no longer there, and i'm picking my nursing books up off his bed, and feeling weird about the fact that he was there one minute, and gone the next, and dreading the idea of having to complete an entire new work-up overnight.

i wake up, disoriented, until i realize that my patient is actually female and that it was just a dream. but it got me to thinking about how much i don't understand DNRs, which is something i definitely need to brush up on...

btw, my paranoia of losing my clinical patient before clinicals are finished isn't completely unfounded...a girl in my class had her patient die right before her Rehab clinical, and she had to do another workup. overnight. ugh. Who dies on rehab? (it's not drug rehab, but physical and occupational therapy rehab).

i went in and talked to my nursing instructor about the whole situation with the young patient on rehab last week. i'm glad i waited to write about it and talk to my mom about the situation before talking about it in class. i don't think i would've said what i was feeling coherently and probably would've pissed some girls off in my class. my teacher was great. it helped talking about it, and she said she wanted to bring it up in next week's mental health class to see what the rest of the class thought of it...(blaming the pathological process, not the patient).

i did get a few hours of studying in (maternal-child nursing).

i never knew giving birth entailed giving up so much dignity.