I see...DEAD people....or not.

So our story begins with moving into our new unit about 1 year ago.  The down fall to this new unit is the person that designed it wasn't nor ever has been someone that actually does patient care.  In our unit, three rooms are particularly close to the nurses station, rooms 4, 5, and 6.  Naturally, being able to see the patients is very important when the patients aren't doing the greatest. Usually we use these rooms for the the sicker patients so we can keep an eye on them.  Recently, things have gotten quite extreme with room 4.  Since i work in Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unite, or CVICU, most of are patients need heart surgery one way or another.  Usually most of the patients have issues prior and surgery is scheduled.  However, every once in a while we have those emergent patients that have a cardiac arrest at home and end up here.  A few of these patients have ended up in room 4 simply being the room was open and close to the nurses station.  Granted because of their condition, they didn't always make it.  Now since we opened the unit, the so called death toll in that room started to climb.  Granted this isn't the only room that somebody has passed away in.  In fact in looking back at the books, there has been only 2 more persons that passed away in that room compared to say room 6.  However, after the fourth person passed away in that room our staff started going crazy. 

Day shift nurses started it saying the room is haunted and there is a ghost in that room.  One of our surgeons totally fed off that and declared that room unsuitable for his patients.  As things started to escalate, the hospital chaplain was summoned to bless the room and pray over that room.  This all occurred on day shift.  Our night shift nurses were in complete awe regarding these whole entire shenanigans.  Night shift realized that half of all the patients that passed away in that room did so after being found unresponsive after cardiac arrest, who knows how long they had been down and miraculously were brought back to life never to fully awaken.  Never mind the fact it wasn't like these patients walked into this room and passed away.  These patients were totally critically ill prior to arriving in the room.  The final draw came when on the patients passed away in the OR and was supposed to come back to this room.  Never mind the fact the patient had never entered the room, but since their name was supposed to come to the room, Room 4 was closed.  No more patients to that room for the duration of the summer.  Since the chaplain's blessing obliviously didn't work, Day shift nurses and the surgeon decided to broaden their abilities.  Now they were turning to the Catholic church looking for a priest to do an exorcism of the room or in the room, or whatever they were trying to do.  I'm just sitting back watching all these people getting worked up over this room when nobody is looking at what type of patients are included.  Totally entertaining.

After the so called summer vacation and exorcism, Room 4 is back in business as usual.  Since then nothing weird has happened.  Haven't seen a staff member walk into the room and suddenly disappear or anything, but i keep looking and waiting. 

More to come soon....

And the Parenting Begins...

Wow, It's been a while since i've gotten a chance to post anything in almost like 4 months.  I'm blaming it on new parenting brain.  After all if my wife can use pregnancy brain, i'm going to use parenting brain.  So to begin, things have been quite interesting being a new parent.  And the fact my beautiful wife is almost like a new parent as well, it's been quite an experience raising our little fusspot.  She totally has a new nickname around our house as "McFussy."  It partially isn't her fault.  After all she developed a milk allergy, so we had to place her on the gold formula nutramagin.  And by gold, i mean it totally comes in a gold can that only lasts like 3 days and costs more than it does to fill up my car with gas for 2 weeks.  If that isn't the worst part, she totally developed colic.  So our first 2 months was nothing but sleepless nights and days, crying, and throwing up.  The only relief we got was when company came down.  For some magical reason, she was absolutely amazing whenever anybody else was here.  The second they left, McFussy returned with a vengence.  To make matters worse, i now had to return to work.  In a way i was the lucky one that got relief from all the crying by going to work.  Then again i would rather change a poopy baby diaper than a huge 300lb person that has stool dripping off the bed.  Or even worse, having to FLOAT to another unit.  The thought still makes me shudder.   As for McFussy, she as slowely gotten better throughtout the course of the last 3 months.  Some days are better than others and she still has days where she totally has bad days.  Thankfully i have a very awesome wife and mother who has gotten her on a schedule and has been attending to her needs night and day.  Working nights has a slight dissadvantage of requiring me to sleep during the day so i'm not much help, but has the advantage of allowing me to take care of McFussy at night when i'm not overly exhausted from working.  I have been picking up the slack by totally being the one that manages the food around the house.  Even this has been a little challenging because my wife has totally gone to the extreme to even change her diet so milk isn't crossing from her body into her breastmilk.  Just proves we will do anything for our children.  

It's been interesting adapting to life with a little one that can't feed themselves, walk, talk, or really do anything more than being a bump on the log.  Things definitely take much longer.  The simple trip to the grocery store now involves feed the baby, burp her, change the babies clothes that she just spit up on, set her down to change your shirt that she spit up on, pick her up to place in car seat "explosion heard."  Now change her diaper, change her clothes again from the massive blowout, put the dog in the crate, put the baby in the car seat, grab the diaper bag, load the car up with stroller, diaper bag, 5 sets of bottles, 10 pacifiers, 2 sets of clothes, 15 diapers, a box of wipes, car seat, run inside for keys left on kitchen counter, run outside, place pacifier in mouth, forgot wallet, run back inside, run outside, still crying change different pacifier, nope doesn't work still crying, say screw it maybe she'll stop crying when the car starts moving.  Start heading down the road, nope still crying now screaming.  Ten minutes later arrive at the grocery store.  Still crying, trying to remember what i came here for....oh yeah....milk.  Get the stroller out, load up the stroller, place another pacifier in her mouth,  YEAH this one works from the car to the entrance.  Screaming now, wondering why the milk is all the way in the back of the store?  Didn't they have parents in mind when they designed these stores? Grab the milk...left the wallet in the car, place the milk back, push the baby back out to the car, grab the wallet, head back in grab the milk pay.  Load up the car again and drive home screaming all the way home.  Pull into the driveway, the crying has stopped, the baby is finally asleep.  God totally has a sense of humor....

It does have quite a humbling affect when you remind yourself at one point and time you were just like this and now you have all this knowledge.  It really does prove that evolution doesn't exist.  First off if we totally evolved from monkeys as survival of the fittest, how come as humans we actually transgressed by being the only animal on this entire planet that can't do anything really for the first year?  Even monkeys have the strength to hold onto their mothers not long after being born. And even if it's suggested that well they age faster, why would the law of physics totally slow down the aging process for humans and make us develop slower and not anything else?  And the most important question if we developed from monkey why are there still monkeys?  Food for thought.

Anyways i'll try and update more often now that my life has become a little less crazy.