Road Trip!
Traveling with the critically ill is an art. I am a master at few things; but I will say that parallel parking, and moving the sick and intubated patient are amongst my top skills. Some of this is from instinct and most of it is from practice. I also am a perfectionist, and I try to be prepared for any situation. As I write this, I am acutely aware that the art of preparation is an exercise in both instinct and practice. Whichever came first is unimportant, as they all are intimately intertwined.Patients need to move through the hospital for different types of procedures and scans, and the patient's nurse is usually solely responsible for their care as they are pushed through th

Don't Love Me Too Much
Advanced directives are a basic form that people fill out sometimes about what they would want in case they are not able to make their own medical decisions. Usually. everyone says the same thing: "I don't want to be a vegetable". Well, I am here to say no one want to be a vegetable, but that rarely helps families and m

To My Friend
We weren't together long, but I came to care for you. You came in with respiratory distress, and you got worse by the day. I helped you out the other week, and six days later, when I was your actual nurse, you remembered my name. You joked and flirted. Told me Viagra was more than just for pulmonary hypertension. You told me stories from Kentucky, your short career in the Air Force. How you were screwed by those good ol' boy bastards. You told me your wife of 24 years was also named Lisa, and how she had died 14 years before. She was the love of your life. Now you had a new Russian girlfriend 20 years your junior, but Lisa was always going to be the one. I sat on your bed with you an