A Tiring Monday

about 3 years ago

Good Day Guys

Today was such a busy day. When I woke up I got ready for work and continued writing an article. I didn't notice the time and it was already 7:35 so I was rushing to drive myself to work. As soon as I was able to park I walked fast going to my workplace. I was able to time in at around 7:57.

I went to our department and it was still locked so I was the one who opened it. We were only a few because some of my other colleagues went for their leaves this Holy Week. While waiting for the endorsement of our doctor, I checked our potential patients. I thought over the weekend someone would be discharged but there was none. I was writing all their names and we were expecting to treat only 5 patients. When our Doctor was endorsing to us the patients we had 2 more new patients. And we were shocked. The funny thing was, yesterday I was with my girlfriend and I was scrolling through Facebook. One of my friends shared a post about a person who is currently admitted and they were asking for donations. It was really detailed and when I saw his condition, I was jokingly saying that this person might be our patient tomorrow and it really happened.

We went up at around 9:30 and we were overwhelmed with all the patients. So me and my colleague went our separate ways. I went to patient 1 and she went to patient 2, these are the new referrals. When I was about to start patient 1 my colleague told me that patient 2 was still eating so we delayed their treatment first and went to patient 3 because we had to work together to treat that patient. We had to make patient 3 walk for the first time after getting a stroke so we had to help each other do this. When we tried making him walk he really had a difficult time because his leg on his weak side keeps on buckling and he still couldn't control it so we had to help him move it. We were only able to let him do around 8 steps. We then continued treating patients 1 and 2 separately. After I was done treating patient 1 I had to go back to our department to get our equipment. We didn't bring it because it was for the other building. What really sucks about going to our department is that the elevator doesn't work. We usually treat at the highest floor and our department is located in the basement. You have to climb 8 flights of stairs going up and down. I had to get the wheelchair and had to pass through the ramps. Pass by for some ice for one of our patients.

When I reached the other building I went to patient 4 but when I entered the room he was still eating so I asked if I could leave the ice inside their freezer and they said yes. I told them that I'll be back. I went to patient 5 and as soon as I entered, I saw him having an episode of tachypnea which is an abnormal rapid breathing speed. The wife told me that he was having fevers. I checked his temperature and it was 38.1 celsius. When our patients have a fever we usually don't treat so I deferred the patient and explained it to the wife. I checked the chart and our patient was going to get re swabbed for COVID-19. I hope and pray that he's negative because we are exposed to him every day. When I went out of the room, I saw my colleague walking. I called her and said that let's treat the 3rd new referral patient 6 while we were treating him he seemed really strong but he gets tired easily so when we were doing our exercises, we just gave him rest periods. After our treatment, we decided to go back to patient 4. For some reason, he looks like he's getting weaker and weaker every time that we visit him. We usually make him short sit dangle but this time, he couldn't do it because of the pain in his knees. So we iced it and did some exercises. When we were finished it was around 11:50 already so we couldn't treat patient 7. We left the wheelchair inside patient 7's room and told them that we will come back after lunch.

We then went to our department disinfected and ate lunch. We were able to drag one of our colleagues who was the secretary. We were joking that the patient was petite but tall which was the other way around. Our patient was really huge that we needed help. We had to do wheelchair rides because it was the doctor's orders, in my opinion, that wasn't needed already because the day we tried wheelchair rides the patient was able to tolerate it for 25 minutes. I would rather make her sit dangle on the bed and make her look for her balance until she becomes independent. But we can't do anything but follow. We went up at around 1:30 and the husband wasn't there so we asked for help from the nurses but they refused. So we just did the modalities while waiting for him. The husband finally came back to the room so we were getting ready to transfer her to the wheelchair. We put her at the side of the bed first. We were using a drawsheet. When we lifted her going to the wheelchair, the wheelchair folded so we couldn't shoot her, and we were left hanging, she was really heavy and we were having an adrenaline rush. On my side, the draw sheet was already slipping so we decided to put her back on the bed and fixed it. In my mind, I was really scared because I didn't want to drop my patient. We were finally able to put her in the wheelchair on the second attempt. I was really sweating my ass off from that. Our wheelchair rides were only done for around 20 minutes. Here comes the most difficult part again putting her back in the bed. We couldn't use the draw sheet already so we just carried her to the bed. We were 4 who was carrying her. It was also difficult to do bed mobilizations when fixing her underpads. Finally, we were able to finish treating. When we went back down we disinfected, did notes, and updated the doctor. I noticed that the back of my shirt and my armpits were really sweaty.

I was really exhausted during that time and was just staring at the walls blankly. I'm glad that we pulled through. When we were waiting for it to hit 5 we messaged the agency regarding the requirements of the DHA exam. When I sent my COE they said that there should be the contact number and address of the facility which sucked because we have to go back to the HR department and have the document fixed which was kinda disappointing because I wanted to process my papers already. It was really gloomy when it hit 5. I'm glad the driving home was smooth and it didn't rain.

When I got home, I disinfected, and just to remove my stress I was playing with Yoda. After that, I took a quick nap then ate dinner, and continued using my computer. I hope that you had a great Monday!