3 for 3

My last three IV insertion attempts have all been successful! This is a real feat for me as my track record up until these past few weeks has been about 30%. Hooray!

Hands off the catheter, my friend

I had a patient remove his own foley catheter the other day and it was not a pretty site. It's unclear whether said extraction was intentional or not but the result was a positively bloody mess. As you'll see from the diagram below, the catheter is maintained in place in the bladder via an inflated balloon, so just imagine the damage that can be done when that balloon passes through the urethra and out of the penis without FIRST being deflated.

yowee!

Spleen in the Spotlight

So I've only been on the floor now for a month or so and there's a huge learning curve, people! ...But sometimes I forget or just don't know things that I might be expected to. I am supposedly a NURSE after all which I guess means I should come complete with encyclopedic knowledge of the human body upon graduation (not really). Anyway, over maybe the past week and a half we've had not one but two patients involved in similar freak tripping accidents in which they have fallen onto a chair, stool, box or some other object landing directly onto their spleens and causing a splenic laceration (or splenic "lac" if you're cool). This got me thinking... where the hell is the spleen again and, uh, what does it do exactly?

The spleen is part of your immune system and is located on your left side. Old red blood cells are filtered out in the spleen, and platelet and white blood cell storage also occurs there. Extra blood is stored in the spleen and its removal can make a person more susceptible to infection.
I read in wikipedia that "spleen" is a Greek word and that the Greeks considered kind and considerate people "good spleened."

First (almost) Successful IV Insertion

I attempted my first IV insertion yesterday and actually got it in on the first try but then the vein blew out! We tried twice on the same patient and both times the same thing happened, we got flashback, but after advancing the catheter and checking placement it wasn't in the right spot.

IV insertion is really tricky --I feel like I need about four hands to do it! Not only do you have to find a good vein and get the needle into it correctly, but then you have to slide the plastic catheter off the needle once it's in the vein, retract the needle, and connect the hub to a saline flush -all while trying not to make a bloody mess.

phlebotomy! phlebotomy!!

I've had this song stuck in my head all day -except I sing "phlebotomy" where they sing "lobotomy" in the opening lines :)

I spent the whole today at a lab drawing blood. No more Shakey Hand McGee over here! Next hurdle: IV insertion!!