Larie's Blog

Friday, May 25, 2007

ICU nights ambiance

I have had a lovely ICU nights experience thus far and only 3 more shifts to go... Feeling a bit contemplative since this is my last ICU nights block ever. We only do ICU night blocks as a second year so will just have some ICU day rotations next year. The obvious difference (or maybe not so obvious) is that on nights I am alone admitting everyone that comes into the ICU and cross-covering on all the other patients in the ICU. It can definitely get messy and busy...
This particular rotation has been all about codes... PEA, asystole, etc (basically, not good). Fortunately, or unfortunately, they were expected to have bad outcomes so it was no major trauma that neither patient survived all my valiant efforts, though still very sad.
This ICU nights rotation has had a certain ambiance all its own. I think I have finally gotten used to juggling 10,000 things at once (admissions, labs to followup, etc), getting interrupted by the nurses every five seconds (various cross cover issues)... the rotation has been nice, but the ambiance actually came from the small Gideon Bible (but with fairly large print and that stays open very nicely) that somehow appeared at the corner of my workstation halfway through my rotation... I normally don't even think about having time to read the Bible at work, especially in the ICU. But it was there... so I opened it... to Colossians "walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him..." and Phillipians "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God...", "not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content... (this one keeps appearing), "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me..."
In between the busyness, having a Bible open to glance at and meditate on brought a special peace...
Is someone out there praying for me? Who is responsible for the Bible's appearance? Or was it there the whole time and someone prayed it to my attention. Thank you to whoever is praying...

By the way, I'm coming to visit June 1-3. Will see you all at AdventHOPE on Sabbath, perhaps friday night, and maybe we can eat out Saturday night or Sunday. Looking forward to it!

2 Comments:

At 10:36 AM, Blogger Rachel and Eric Nelson said...

Larie! Again, let me say I'm sooooo sorry for waking you up p call. I'm very disappointed we'll miss you at LLU. I was just there last weekend and it was great! Enjoy it.

Eric

 
At 12:29 PM, Blogger Tim said...

Nice to see you during your visit here. Keep the faith in Portland!

 

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