Nursing 101

Take care of yourself.  You can’t take care of patients if you’re sick, so neglecting your own health is as good as bailing on your patients. 

You know…that whole apply your own oxygen mask first analogy…

That’s what we learned in nursing school. 

But I have to be honest; I don’t know many nurses who follow that advice. 

And today, I fell victim as a result. 

Nursing fail.

It all started with a crappy night’s sleep.  I woke up 4 times drenched in sweat.  Those were the first red flags.  Ignored. 

I still got up at 4:30 am to attempt a pre-work workout.  I made it through 5 minutes and realized it was a bad idea.  I had a miserable headache, which I tried to shower away.  Sadly, the hot steam didn’t work it’s magic. 

Instead of starting the day with some fitness, I had tea and hippie-roons.  I didn’t feel like coffee.  Tea not coffee?  More red flags.  

Denial, party of one? 

And yet, I still forged ahead to work. 

I brought along the usual pre-packed goodies, including:

• hummus
• carrots
• Mary’s Gone crackers

• apples
• candied ginger
• leftover salad

And something new for breakfast #2 (aka work breakfast).  Yes, I have one breakfast before I leave for work (around 5:30), and then another after a few hours of work (around 10).

Raw overnight oats soaked with peanut flour, water, raisins, and a home-made pumpkin pie mix that I made following Angharad’s recipe. 

You can check out her site for the exact measurements, but it’s basically cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, cloves, and mace (only I didn’t have mace, so I nixed that ingred).  I also brought a banana which I mashed up and stirred into the oats. 

The morning was weird.  I felt like I was swamped with work.  In hindsight, I think I was just operating at a snail’s pace because I was so slow (read: sick), but at the time, it felt like my patient load was abnormally heavy and I couldn’t find a second to breathe, let alone eat breakfast.  Under normal circumstances, I’d be very aware of the passing hours.  My stomach is normally very talkative if 10 o’clock rolls around and I haven’t gotten some grub in my system.  Not today though.  Red flags all over the place!

I had packed these as I left for work because I suspected I was going to need lots of fluids.  I had one Emergen-C with my oatmeal breakfast.

At 11, I literally couldn’t function any more.  I was a pathetic excuse for a nurse and it was pretty apparent to the nurse manager that I wasn’t well. 

At noon, my head-in-a-fog/out-of-body feeling was undeniable and I finally decided to call Kyle to pick me up.

It wasn’t until 3 that I got home because I was waiting around for relief.  I considered going to the ED, but I just wanted to sleep.  I never really had an appetite for lunch, but then I ate the rest of my packed work food while lounging on the couch. 

Given that my “lunch” was at 4 pm, I didn’t think I’d be hungry again for a while.  Wrong.  I had dinner at 5:30.  Early bird gets the worm over a cold (?).  It may have taken me a while to hear what my body was trying to tell me, but I finally listened enough to nurse myself appropriately. 

I went with meatless meatballs and a huge plate ‘o veg.

Leftover roasted brussels, carrots, butternut squash, & sweet potatoes, raw baby carrots, and (more) leftover salad.

 

I really started feeling better after dinner, and then my headache returned.  🙁

Fluids.  Fluids.  Fluids. 

Tea, Kombucha, water, repeat.

Plus my beloved candied ginger. 

I think another day of nursing myself should help me get back on track.  After all, I’m not very useful to anyone if I’m sick in bed.