A little tinnitus never hurt anybody. Part 2 of 2

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Part two of my auditory clinicals. On the IV front, last night was better. Some successes and a few direct blood draws, (I’m happy to report I’m no longer afraid of butterfly needles). Something new was when my nurse and I took bloods from one guy by him sticking a butterfly into his radial artery…that was interesting.

That same patient had a tracheostomy and needed a vent to help him breathe. Unfortunately, something was wrong with the vent and it kept making this God awful noise. Imagine the most annoying noise you ever heard…then double it in annoyingness and intensity. Now play it in you head every five minutes or so for about two minutes...for about an hour. Pleasant, no? That’s what the vent was doing and it was making me crazy, I heard it all the way home. I was sitting at the nurses station while this was going on and a random voice from one of the nearby rooms yells “Turn that effing thing OFF!!” (you can imagine he did not say ‘effing’) but, my sentiment exactly.

One of the residents said we should just unplug it. “Unplug the vent?” I repeated quietly, “We’re going to have right to life people protesting here if you keep talking like that!…I’d rather hit it with a baseball bat.” Ironically enough, the patient was doing better without it. Luckily, my shift was about over, and I got to leave.

Other than this, my shifts this weekend were…uh…....oh, sorry, I fell asleep writing this sentence. Let’s just say it’s mercifully over until, um, Saturday, how great.

Now I’m going to study while enjoying the smell of spring rain out my window…Zen.

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