WI Catholic Musings: Laugh Your Way--Mark Gungor and Msgr Jim Lisante

Today, I had a really tough, busy night at work, and ended up working overtime trying to get all of my charting done. NORMALLY, I am able to get MOST of it done mid-shift. Not tonight. Tonight, EVERY time I sat down to do any charting, I ended up having to help answer lights, or get a pain pill for someone, or... one of my pet peeves, spend a half hour LOOKING for a medication that is not where it is supposed to be.... literally. That happened twice last night for two different meds. ONE just had no cassette for her pain pills. It just was not there, and two of us were looking for it after I'd called the supervisor to ask if I could just take it out of contingency (normally they want two to do so... ). She said... go for it...and I did.

Guess what? HER DOSAGE is not in contingency (extra medications for emergencies and events like this) , and there was no way to make it happen by using the two doses that WERE there by combining two pills... Hydrocodone/APAP 5/325 or 5/500 just do NOT make 7.5/ 500 no matter how you try to break a tablet.... So, we ended up with the two of us calling or visiting all four units, asking the nurse on duty to search THEIR patients' p r n (as needed) medication cassettes for the correct dosage. Sigh... she finally found one.... ONE other person in the entire nursing home on the same dosage, and we 'borrowed it'. And I hit the notify pharmacy button to re-order MY patient's own cassette. That was just one... For the second missing medication, I spent the same amount of time searching through the med carts (two) for a BOTTLE of medication... RN supervisor also looked twice. One her second look, there it sat, with the other bottles that we had already looked at in all of our prior searches.

So, in addition to being short staffed, and busy, and running all night, after looking for those pills... I also had three individuals who were time-consuming....
One because she had a similar surgery to mine of last summer, and had one of the side effects that I had... EDEMA all the way to the knees... and is very discouraged about her recovery... I talked with her for nearly twenty min, assuring her that the edema would eventually go away, and the rest would work itself out as well.

The second one was a very frightened lady who had a heart attack in Feb, and is terrified of the night, very apprehensive, and develops chest pain nightly ... taking Nitro each night at nearly the same time. I really think (since she has no other symptoms, skin warm, dry, pink, no radiation, no back, arm, jaw, gastric upset, nausea...nada.... ) that she is really just very scared it will happen again. I sat with her, held her hand, patted her cheek, brushed her forehead, and finally asked her if she would like white soda or a cool cloth for her forehead (solves a LOT of things, miraculously, I have found!)... no to the white soda... but ooohh, the cool cloth sounds good... ok, so I took her vitals once more, and went and got two washcloths, made them nice and cold, wrung them out as much as possible, and placed them on her forehead, again patting her hands and reassuring her we'd be back to check on her again during the night... she went to sleep, no need for the next dose of Tylenol 500 mg tabs ii.... TLC does more than medicine sometimes.

The third was also a new surgical; a demanding, bossy, critical, whiny, blaming, not so very nice woman who kept all four of us running almost constantly for the first half of the shift, and did not want to see that little nurse again, because she is snippy...

( MOI???? SNIPPY??? I had told her that the Jackson Pratt was working quite well, and restored the suction after draining it... but there was a stringy clot in there, and she had never seen one before, and it HAD to mean something was wrong.... and I dared to tell her it was just fine, it happens, and it is working well....sigh... even smiled as I said it... but I was 'snippy'... )

Well, at 0445, she rang again, and wanted two pain pills... but send someone else besides that snippy nurse!!... Ahem... there is only one nurse, and it is MOI.... so I smiled at the RN charge nurse, and ambled my way down to her room with the cassette (the order is one OR two tabs, and I have to ask her how many she needs each time, based on 'the scale' of numbers that tell us how bad the pain is...) So I knocked, walked over to her bed and said how bad is the pain, and do you want one or two tabs... not in those words, but you get the point... and SHE says.. " 'THEY' always give me two."

Now, I know the other nurses, and I also know that they also ask "One or Two"... and I KNOW that at least ONE of them has explained the need to ask her, to know how bad the pain is, and that WE are not the one who decides... she is, because she knows the pain, and she will know when one will work, when two are needed, etc. I explained it all again, and she heaved a huge sigh and said... "TWO"... and then found three things for me to do that MUST be done NOW.... sigh...most of them she could have, and should have done herself. I spent nearly fifteen min in that room, at the busiest time of the shift. And smile nicely the whole time, instead of doing what I WANTED to do.... forgive me, Lord...

So finally, I get report taped, get all my pills/eye drops, Neb treatments done, and the remaining two treatments as well, and it is 0610...and I still have to chart nearly EVERYTHING! Worse, my shift ends at 0630. Not going to happen...sigh....

I left work after 0745, and by the time I got into my car, and on the road, it was 0800...and I had Relevant Radio on as I started my car.

Suddenly, I hear Msgr Jim Lisante interviewing Mark Gungor (whose name has always been familiar, and it just never registered until today. HE IS FROM GREEN BAY... duh... )

And I spent my next 35 min laughing, giggling, chuckling ... and it made the night from Hell all worth it! You see, if I had had a GOOD night, gotten out on TIME, I would not have heard this program! God knows... and he does make all things beautiful... and all things work out to be good...in His time...

I cannot begin to tell you how MUCH I want EVERYONE in the world to listen to this program right this very minute! Mark Gungor is on the first half of two interviews (the other interviewee is MIG, and it is also worth listening to). There is at least one other that he is listed as being the guest, but I have not listened to that one, and there, he is the second guest, so you'd have to search for his part.

PS Radio: Program 113
This Week's Features –

Mark Gungor, the author and marriage expert, shares insights for husbands and wives to build stronger relationships, and discusses how children change the dynamic of a marriage.
Mig, the popular singer, discusses his family's influence on his career, and how his mother's battle with caner impacted his life.

Mark Gungor mentions that he has put some videos on youtube.com, so of course, I had to go check it out. He is really a good speaker!

Watch this one (I did find one extended version that someone else put on that is WELL worth listening to... and I have included it below ... but if I only wanted to listen to ONE version, I would personally take the second, extended version --hint hint)