Pallitive Care...interesting...

Well, as some of you may know, I am working at the hospital and I am working on 3BN the pallitive care unit, and in case you didn't know "that's where people go when they are really sick and dying".

I've learned a lot from just being there two weeks. And I'm happy I'm there. Well last week I got to experience two deaths. Both were during evening shifts. If you ask me how I felt about that, I have no idea. It's just weird. Doing mortuary care is weird, everything about taking care of someone who has died is weird, yet I understand it. You treat the body with the same dignity and care that you would if they were alive. Something I find really cute is the nurses while doing mortuary care will reminess about different things that the patient did while on the floor. Different things they said. It's cool, and being an outsider I notice this, but I bet none of the other nurses would, because they all do it. I think of it as their way of greiving for the patient.

so that's enough about dying let's move on to more interesting and funny things like POOP! Yes that is much more interesting. Well today I worked only from 7:30 to 3:30 but that's enough time to get "dirty".
Well I was in a patient's room with Heidi a nurse she's 24 graduated last year from the BN course and we were cleaning up a patient. You know bedbath, mosturizing, pericare. The fun stuff. Well this patient has an ostomy. For those of you who don't know what that is "Look it up" Or I have a definition. He had a colostomy to be exact so:

Colostomy
The surgically created opening of the colon (large intestine) which results in a stoma. A colostomy is created when a portion of the colon or the rectum is removed and the remaining colon is brought to the abdominal wall. It may further be defined by the portion of the colon involved and/or its permanence.

In other words your poop goes into a bag that's on your abdomen. Well these bags need to be clean. Thank Goodness my training hasn't taught me how to do that...YET! Well Heidi decides to change the bag. (Just so you are aware there are TWO openings to an ostomy bag. She takes the bag off holds both ends and starts looking for the garbage. she's on the left side of the bed I'm on the right side of the bed. The Garbage is on my side behind me. So she walks around and TOSSES the bag into the garbage with ONE hand. she suddenly forgot that it had two openings. The bag literally crosses behind me into the garbage and the poop goes all over the floor. IT misses me by cm's. If I stepped back at all I would be stepping in it. And than the smell, it reeked. IT smelt so bad we could hardly breathe. So Heidi and I start laughing because it was such a close call. we finally get it all cleaned up, get the patient all cleaned up and than we left the room laughing histerically because we could have gotten poop all over us.

Ok there is one of my many nursing stories. Trust me there will be more in the next four years and than some!!