Nilknarf News

Natterings, Notions
and
Notes

Saturday, 06 July, 2002 18:57

It's still Saturday, and I've had maybe two hours of sleep since getting up yesterday morning. 37 hours now.

The repair guys started working on the scanner at 07:00 this morning, but the new x-ray tube was damaged, so they had to send for another one from Chicago. When I left the hospital the last time they had just installed the newest one and were getting ready to calibrate it... about three hours for the calibration.

And the night tech comes on at 21:00... so maybe I will get some sleep tonight, she's pretty good about not calling me, this one is.

Looking at the times that I've been called in today on the machine: 03:35; 06:37; 10:10; 11:08; 11:15; 11:49; 13:59; 14:59; 16:34.

Not all of those have been call-backs, some of them have been questions. One of the questions was when could we do a patient from out of town who had a pulsating abdominal mass... the only answer that I had was to send her to the other hospital, the single-slice scanner isn't capable of doing angiography.

Anyways, tard, more so than usual, even. Plus I've had about ten trips back and forth, and it's really hot (heat index over 100F), and I have no AC in my truck.

And I'm afraid to try to go to sleep... it just gets going good and then I get woke up. More importantly, I might just sleep through the phone ringing, I've done that before. I need to wait until Karen gets home from KC, where she and Kim and Lacee spent the last two days....

22:22...
Home, probably finally for the night. This has been quite a campaign, but the end is in sight. The x-ray tube is in and calibrated and there is a tech on who can do CTs now. I feel somewhat safe in going to sleep... I hope that I don't regret saying that.

One of the pateints that I had this morning was an ICU patient, and I had to call a code blue on him. Most people didn't knwo where the "CT in the Radiotherapy Suite" is, but they do now. The code was short, just had to put a tube in for respiration, but it did cause quite a hub-bub.

You know how sometimes two people can kinda feed upon one another and escalate a situation? Well, I know a nurse who talks to herself and does that....

I was sitting here at home on one of my short breaks and Tyler comes in finally... he's stone cold sober and in a good mood. He took a shower and we talked a bit before I got called in again, and he was gone when I got back. He'll be here until about 20:00 tomorrow, he says... he wants to drive back and then go right to work, so I guess that he's planning on sleeping most of the day tomorrow.

Me too! In fact, I'm starting right now... well, after I put this up.

O'yeah... I've worked 22 hours since 16:30 Friday night. That's at time-and-a-half.


Thanx for being here!

All Material © 2002 by Douglas C. Franklin

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