Straight up EXHAUSTED

Let me try to describe this stage of life Im in and why Im so incredibly exhausted... and I should start by saying I bring this upon myself. So right now as you know I work - all day long. I come home most days barely being able to keep my eyes open. I go to sleep early and wake up early the next day to start it all over again. When Im not working I am doing school work. Which I am in the thick of a lot of assignments right now (I brought this upon myself by scheduling trips these upcoming weeks so Im getting a ton of extra homework done right now). And then I find time to run my errands, exercise and go for runs to get fresh air, attend the temple, clean my house and so forth. Im honestly good with all this - but then Im also supposed to like socialize??? thats the part I struggle with right now honestly. BUT I pushed myself this week and went to FHE this past monday. 

I invited drew and his buddies as well so this was the crew. Got to hang with my bro and meet some new people in my ward AND I didnt even fall on my butt ice skating. 

The rest of the week looked like this...

Or this... spent working hard. I had an LVAD patient all week. I had a COVID guy one day and the top picture shows me in my one to one patients room. I had Marc all week as well - he is my brain tumor aggressive patient who only has a few more months to live. I spent a lot of time with him and his wife this week. Not gonna lie, its been a heavy week. Its really hard to watch the deterioration of someone and I have found it even harder to watch the wife go through it all. I cant imagine what she is going through watching her sweet husband become aggressive, confused with hallucinations. paranoia and uncooperative unless he is highly medicated. Breaks my dang heart. This week I also took part in my first code. As a new nurse there is this fear, of actually a lot of things, but mostly your first code. Yes, you can practice mock codes, you can do compressions on a dummy, but its not the same. I think thats why its so scary - the only way to "practice" it is by being thrown into the fire. So Thursday morning I had a fairly busy day and a student following me. Around 9am the code blue alarm went off and it said the intercom said it was room 5 of the ICU. I looked at my student and told her she should go watch. That's all Ive ever done and it is good learning so I badged her into the ICU and figured I had my own patients to take care of. Well Charley, one of the nurses on my unit told me to come with her to ICU. She got in line to do compressions and I found my student and stood back from the chaos. I then see charley looking me dead in the eye motioning me to come in the room. "Oh crap" "they don't want ME in there" "I don't even know what to do" were a few things going through my mind before I entered the room and my mind went blank. The adrenaline is so high. People are yelling things like "pulse check" "stand back" "I need an RT" "one of epi" "charging" and I had no clue what to do. Luckily charley is a pro at this stuff - she was a nurse on the cardiac floor at IMC for years and ran codes every day. She told me what to do and when it was my turn she quite literally threw me up on the bed and told me to go. You are taught in school a special rate and a certain amount of inches deep in the chest to go - ya right. You just go ham thats all I can say. Arms locked, using your whole body to pound this dead mans chest. Thank goodness for adrenaline because without it I don't think I could've done it. You go until they check a pulse or need to shock. I honestly don't know how long I compressed, but I was exhausted, sweating and my body felt like it was going to collapse. At some point when I was feeling like I couldn't go anymore someone told me to compress deeper and I realized I had no time to be tired. This poor man needed quality compressions and being tired was a very poor excuse. They finally yelled out pulse check and Charley pulled me off the bed. I don't even know how to describe the feeling afterwards. This may seem dramatic, but I think this huge rush of adrenaline mixed with something you fear for so long and now its over with... I don't know. I felt in a weird limbo all day. Very glad I did it, yet in disbelief that it happened. I am very grateful for Charley and the awesome nurse she is. Im so grateful for her willingness to teach me and be patient with me. I will say - its not something I want to do every day (I think you are messed up if you want to run codes every day) but I do feel a bit more confident and lot less terrified for if and when it happens to one of my patients. Mr. Guilliam (the man in the ICU) ended up coding three times that day. His family decided to call it after the third and at least since last night when I left work he has not coded since and is still alive. Not sure his state, but I know he is still chilling in room 5. What a week. 

And now this is me currently - worked till late last night and had earlier church this morning with stake conference. Which is bad because Im so tired, but good because I have so much to do so it forced me to wake up at a decent hour. Conference was good, talked a lot about identity and being children of God, children of the covenant and disciples of christ. Then I had some bean and bacon soup, finished my final project for my capstone class and now finishing up blogging. I have my laundry going and then I have a lot of packing to do for this upcoming week. Exciting stuff, but just bad timing with school and everything. Life is great and I have much to be grateful for. Thanks for reading about my life every week you guys haha. Love you.