What are my favorite words to hear at the hospital? Four point restraints, and precedex! I got to sit by a patient and read for most of this weekend. (You have to be within arms reach of a patient in four point restraints at all times.) Hmm, after thinking, really my favorite words are “intubated and sedated”. (I love nursing most when it’s at its most scientific — when it’s just the sheer nursing parts, fluid resuscitation, all the medication administration, titrating pressors, calculating insulin rates — the parts where you’re actually keeping someone alive. Also, wound care. Love wound care.) But four points and precedex are in my top ten. Other contenders = “8 month old with no parent in the room” so I get paid to babysit all night, “3 yr old who wants to wait up for their mom to come back” which means we get to watch Disney cartoons together, and “Patient requests to not be woken up over night” which we allow in some rare cases.
I’ve made really good headway in Nightshifted — I have less than 100 pgs of editing (to my editorial note) to go, and it’s feeling strong. There’s only one last comment I’m not sure how to fix, the rest I’m in the process of fixing. It’s so strange, as I turn each page, to realize, this is it. This is the final pass of the book. This is really real. It’s happening.
I think I’ll be done by Weds, which’ll be good — it’ll give me two days to reread everything, turn it in, and then get back to Moonshifted. My brain’s already chomping at the bit to get back — I’m not sure if it’s a blessing or a curse that my brain’s always looking at the next project around the bend.
Bedtime now, to get back to a day schedule till next weekend.