You spin me right round, baby, right round

…like a record, baby, right round round round.

What odd lyrics…I never thought of that until I just typed them out!  Anyway, they totally describe me this morning.  I woke up and just felt…off*.  I was quite thirsty of the world was spinning just a tad bit.  Being a stubborn runner, I still had hopes of getting in my nine miles (with four at LT!), so I consumed a breakfast of an English muffin + PB + banana.  And loooooots of water.  Of course, I did circles down the stairs, but nevermind that.  Still feeling a little queasy after breakfast, I figured dehydration might be the culprit, so I grabbed some gatorade and laid back down in bed.  I ended up sleeping for another hour and a half (oops?), but the world isn’t doing flip flops anymore, so victory is mine.

My past two runs have been in the crazy heat…about 88 degrees on both days, and even though I took water with me, I probably wasn’t drinking enough.  Sometimes I don’t drink AT ALL during work, so a combo of all these factors probably led to the turntable effect this morning.  I need to make a conscious effort to drink more water and gatorade (electrolytes…11 miles in the heat/sun definitely requires some replacing!) in these final weeks of summer.

Lo and behold, no nine miles for me.  By the time I felt better, it was 88 degrees, and I’m not THAT stubborn.  I have the day off tomorrow so I’ll just do some shifting of my runs.  Hopefully I can pull myself out of bed before the heat hits…this evening schedule will be much nicer in the cooler temps, at least running-wise!

HLS Recap coming tomorrow…I promise.  It’s my day off…no excuses!

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Awesome night at work last night…I started off with four patients, one who was getting on the elevator to go home as I was arriving, and another patient who was discharged before I even got report!  Another patient was off the floor for tests for almost four hours, and my last patient was basically independent and just in the hospital for monitoring and IV antibiotics.  AWESOME.  I needed a day like this.  I ended up getting an admission later in the day, but I still couldn’t have asked for much better.

Another nurse poked her head into the room that I was in and said that someone was outside looking for me.  That normally makes me nervous because I thought it was a family member with crazy questions or something.  It ended up being a patient that I had last week, and he wanted to thank me specifically for all the care I gave him when he was here.  He brought me (and the other nurses!) a huge plate of assorted chocolates…so good!  This was the same patient that bought me a Diet Coke last week.  This job can be soooo hard sometimes most of the time, but the little recognitions every now and then really remind me that I do something right from time to time!

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* I love when patients tell me “something just doesn’t feel right.”  While that can be a good indication of something, it also doesn’t help much. 

“Do you have a headache?”  No.
”Are you nauseated?”  No.
”Are you in pain?”  No.
”Can you tell me what feels wrong?”  No, but something isn’t right.

Hmmmmm.  Doctors don’t like that description much.  At least it’s better than “Can’t you just switch my pain medication?”  Yessss, I obviously have the prescription authority to switch your dilaudid to morphine.  Hmmmm.  Gotta love it.