Code Bleah

Been sick for the last 24 hours with some sort of stomach virus that has been going around.  I think that I am finally over the worst of it.  The staff here have been really great about taking care of me, although mostly they come into my room to try to talk me into eating food that I can not digest.  I am going to head out in a bit and try to find a store that sells ramen.  Instant ramen is a pretty universal food, I am hoping.  I keep trying to explain to the housekeepers that I would rather be punched repeatedly in the stomach then try to digest the oil-laden hummus, flatbread, and yogurt that they keep bringing me.

My one (and only) patient, Farah, went down a few days ago to have a gasto tube placed as tube feedings unfortunatly seem to be a part of her permenent future.  While she was down there, I got to wondering what would happen if a patient coded while on the unit.  I had not been shown a crash cart, paddles, or anything like that.  And I came pretty close to finding out.  About an hour later, one of the nurses got a call to pick her up.  I was behind the nursing station when the doors opened and Nabila called out that we needed O2.  I wasn't able to figure out what happened exactly, but Farah was grey as stone and her mother was in tears.  We took her into the room and I used a nasal cannula that was there to give her O2 until someone brought a vent.  We got an O2 monitor at her and she was running at 76% O2 (normal is 95-100).  We manged to get to O2 stats up, but she kept on stopping breathing on me and I had to shake her awake.  It took 20 minutes to get her color back, and I insisted that the doctor be called when the poor little girl wouldn't stop gasping for breath.  Normally, I would have called a rapid responce the second that she had gotten off the elevator, and reamed surgery for sending what obviously was an unstable patient on an elevator without supplimental O2.  On that note, I don't think that I have seen any portable O2 anywhere in the hospital.  We do the best that we can with the little amount of equiptment that we have.
Anyway, she is doing a lot better now.