And I hold a high note

2006-11-06 - 7:56 p.m.

I got my flu shot on October 24--two weeks ago tomorrow--and my shoulder still hurts. See? My paranoia about only getting shots and having my blood drawn in my left arm has finally payed off. It hurt when the nurse gave me the shot and it continued to hurt all that day to the extent that I had trouble sleeping that night. It stopped aching during the course of the following day, and it never really hurt to touch it, but it still hurts to move it. Isn't that crazy? I wonder if she hit a nerve or a tendon or something.

On Sunday I worked a CCU shift. Weekend CCU shifts actually cover all the patients in CCU and on tele and I usually don't leave the central pharmacy. I started working at 7, skipped lunch, and didn't finish until 5:30. Ugh. I kept being interrupted by problems. A patient with tumor lysis syndrome and SBO for whom we couldn't find a dose of rasburicase in the state of Washington so ended up giving IV allopurinol instead. A patient started on CRRT. A patient who is legally blind and has her meds filled in a mediset case by a caretaker and who comes in positive for tricyclics and barbiturates in her blood despite the fact she hasn't been prescribed any of those meds and denies taking anything not prescribed for her--is there something bad in her mediset? A patient with anaphylaxis to penicillin who needs meropenem. And myriad other minor emergencies and urgencies. All day, non-stop. It's amazingly tiring. On the bright side, Lolo was there working MS3 and is always good for moral support.

Today was a much easier day. I was scheduled for a project day--an entire day for which I had nothing to do besides work on writing the next technician schedule. I had it mostly written before, but one of our graveyard technicians quit and my manager hadn't decided who would be the replacement and was being all wishy-washy about making a decision. He finally decided today so I had to take that technician out of the day shift rotation and put the other technician that was temporarily covering the graveyard vacancy back into the evening shift rotation. It required a lot of shuffling. To make things worse, during the schedule that I was working on today, my interns (who are pharmacy students) will be taking finals so they aren't available.

My goal, really, though, is to make all the technicians happy with the schedule. I know this is probably impossible, but I'd sure like to try, you know? So I wrote a letter to the technicians that I plan to (but haven't yet) post on the bulletin board and send out as an e-mail that says, "In order to help me write a schedule that best fits your needs, I'd like to know a bit more about your preferences. I can't give you what you want if I don't know what that is, can I? Please keep in mind these are preferences only, the only promise I can make is to try my best for you." I followed this with some specific questions and an open-ended one. I showed this to my manager for permission and to Lolo for an opinion. My manager said I'm crazy but I can do it if I want to. Lolo agreed with the crazy assessment and added that I should emphasize more strongly the fact that I can't guarantee anything. It's true, I'm a least a full FTE understaffed and I don't have a whole lot of leeway with my scheduling so I won't be able to give everyone what they want. But I do have some leeway, so wouldn't it be better to give people what they want when I can? Or is it bad to get their hopes up when I can't really deliver?

The other thing of importance that happened today is that I went to the optometrist again. How convenient that my optometrist's office is in the same building in which I work. I got a prescription for new soft contacts and a new prescription for glasses too. At the appointment I had to take my contacts out and put them in one of those cheap little pop top cases they have. Afterwards I put my glasses on and then put my purse and the contacts case in my locker in the pharmacy break room. Then at lunch I forgot about the contacts and pulled my purse out of my locker to get my book...the contact case fell out and hit the floor, the lid came off, and one of my contacts ended up in a pile of dirt on the floor. Eww! I think I'm not going to wear that one again. So now I have to wear glasses until I get new contacts. Oh well.