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Last week was probably one of the hardest weeks of my life. I don't think it would have been so bad, but it was just one damn thing after another. It was my first week out of training and nothing, I mean NOTHING, went right. Not one damn thing.

Monday was ok, but I slipped on some dialysate that had leaked out of the hanson and strained my right ankle. I also got some news that night that upset me. I cried.

Tuesday, I had off, but Doug and I had some issues that had me crying. We got it worked out, but I was pretty upset.

Wednesday, I worked with one other CHHT and a float nurse. The other CHHT moves at a snail's pace and the float nurse is worthless. She gets all of her patients on late and doesn't help anyone or do anything. It means that we ran behind all day, especially since the other tech only has one speed. Slow. So I cried that day out of sheer frustration.

Thursday, I'm working with that same nurse and my preceptor. Things still didn't go well. The nurse got all of her patients on at least an hour late. Plus she was trying to kill people, I swear. She had to hook up my two catheter patients because I am not trained on how to work with catheters just yet. She was doing her damnedest to kill the first catheter patient. She didn't follow procedure when priming the system with saline. She hadn't run the blood pump up to 400 to work all the air out of the dialyzer. So when she ran him up to his prescribed blood flow rate, she got air in the system, which shuts down the machine. When you do that, you have to work all the air out of the venous chamber so you can continue treatment. She was trying to reverse the man's lines, swapping the venous line and the arterial, which would have run air straight into his heart. Talk about scary. >.< Then, at the end of the day, she almost killed another one. Our last patient on T/R/S shift has issues getting his standing blood pressure over 100. We still haven't figured out why that is. Anyway, I had returned his blood to him and still had him hooked up to the lines in case he needed saline, we're not allowed to unhook the lines until they are over 100 with their blood pressure. He stood up and had a blood pressure of 68/48. I go off to get some other stuff done and, when I come back, she's done packed his catheter with heparin. I look at the machine and see the last blood pressure I had taken, in big red warning numbers, at the top. I ask her if she had taken his blood pressure again and she looks at me like I'm an idiot. I had him stand up for another blood pressure reading and he falls back into the chair in the middle and it comes up with 49/32 and he's gray as a ghost. 49/32 is just to the left of dead. Me and Kathy got him into the Trendelenburg position and Nicole had to run out and unpack his venous line and hook him up to a saline line so we could get him up and running again. Just an all around bad day. I cried.

Friday, I worked the morning for another gal who had a daughter with a concert that morning. I come in and start my usual morning routine in the water room, making bicarb. Something struck me as odd while I was topping off the tank, I check the log and bicarb has been made already. I had just diluted it with fresh RO water. ******** me sideways. I had to dump the tank and make new bicarb. We had a patient coming in early and I made him late. blah. I cried. We also had a 4 hour staff meeting that night. Fun.

Saturday was a ******** nightmare. I was working with a different float nurse and the same slowpoke twit from Wednesday. It was just a disaster. I'm running around, red in the face, sweating, out of breath.....and those two are just doodling around, doing the goddamn hokey pokey, cool as cucumbers like we're not late at all. I cried. Sheer rage and frustration and disbelief. People were getting on an hour, hour and half late. These folks don't show up because dialysis is fun. They show up because they have to have dialysis to live. They are living on borrowed time and we're what's keeping them going. We can't ******** around like that when people need their treatment. >.< On top of all that, I'm having to do the other lady's job, making up treatment packs and cleaning and restocking. Because if I didn't do it, it wouldn't get done.

I slept 11 hours Saturday night and I was a complete zombie on Sunday, Mother's Day. I cried that day, too, because I was so tired and worn to the bone and emotionally frazzled.

Monday wasn't a terrible day. Turn, where we take the patients off the machine, clean the chair and machine, restring the machine and set up for the next patient, was a little hairy, but everyone was pretty much on time. I did ok. I did cry, however. I got called into Nicole's office, our clinical manager, along with Tina, to explain why Saturday was so ******** up. I didn't say much until Tina left. Then I told her what happened from my point of view. I cried....I was so angry and embarrassed and discouraged that I cried. So, I'm pretty sure Tina is pissed at me. She got called back into the office for a little one on one time with Nicole. She can just be pissed off at me. She's got a rude awakening coming. If she needs someone to boss her around when Kathy isn't there, she need look no further than me. I have been bossing people around for a long time. I was in management at CVS for years. Once I get my feet under me, I'll be more than happy to show her who's boss. If she's not willing to step up and do her job like we all know she can do, then I'll direct her like a ******** NAZI general. mad

Tuesday went well, all in all. I didn't cry. ^.^ We did have two people s**t all over the place, one of them was also puking all over the place, and there was an incident involving a lot of blood. Tessa had gotten air into the system on a patient and was using a 10cc syringe to pull the air out of the venous chamber. The plunger of the syringe popped out and blood went spraying everywhere. xd She got the pigtail clamped, but it was a mess. But it was ok. I can deal with the stress like that. We were all working hard and working together and we got things done, we kept things moving. Our latest put on was 15 minutes late. That's not too shabby with the kind of oddball day we were having. We only got out about 15 minutes late, too. Not bad. I could smile and I felt proud for the first time since I came out of training.

It's going to get better. Like I told the girls at work, I could have handled it better if it had just been one bad day or a couple of accidents. Having a whole week of the s**t hitting the fan, it was just too much. It was like I was strapped down in front of the fan and someone was behind the fan just feeding manure into the bad boy. I couldn't move, I couldn't get away, the only thing I could do was just get sprayed and wait for it to end. xD

On the bright side, I raked in about 15 hours of overtime. mrgreen