Voice

Having a sore throat sucks. Being a nurse, especially one that caters to children. my voice serves as a tool to establish my bonds with my patients, and I feel bad for having abused it too much today. This is the third consecutive day I haven’t eaten or drank anything during my eight hours duty because of so many things to do. Imagine handling 10-14 patients all by yourself, being the nurse in charge plus the medications nurse! It also feels bad when the people before your shift didn’t do things properly… it feels so unfair.

I tried my best to uplift my spirits for my patients’ sake but one mother managed to ruin it for me. She was totally being demanding about her son, who was incidentally put in a room with another child who was suspected of foot and mouth disease (late detection). I have been reiterating that the said disease isn’t contagious through air, rather it is being disseminated through contaminated food or body excreta only. She wasn’t fully convinced, and if that isn’t enough, she even had the nerve to rant about it loudly on me and the resident doctor on the nurses’ station. It was really plain annoying to have her there. The attending physicians have already pacified her doubts over the phone but she remained super skeptical and angry about it. It was simply awful to work with her around. Thank goodness the explanations sank to her around half an hour later and she became much calmer. We could only sigh deeply in relief after the incident.  Each of us are given with the voice to express ourselves, but today I realized that not everyone uses that voice of reason properly.

Then there was this patient who had been super febrile the entire shift, and it caused the delay of her blood transfusion. The blood was already available, and I raced against time in order to give it to her before it passes its expiration date. After so many phone calls and some irritated remarks from the patient’s attending physicians, I managed to give it accordingly. Hence… right now, my legs are sore. I am ultimately hungry and I feel so sleepy. I just had to let things out in this blog before serving myself a bowl of rice and sardines, YUM! Good night.