Expect the Unexpected

It would only make sense that my team lead day would not go as planned! The week of I had really bad neck and skull pain. I was ignoring it, while taking no medications of course. Late the night before my clinical, the pain became really severe. I couldn't even lay my head on my pillow. I fell asleep with an all around my head, hoping it would help. I woke up at 2am and though my head was going to either explode or fall off. So I decided to just get up for the day and went and watched tv. I ended up taking alot of meds that conked me out till I woke up for clinical a few hours later.

In a way it was a blessing that this happened when I was team lead so that I didn't have one patient who wouldn't receive the best care from me. However, on the day of I couldn't move my neck in any direction. Pain became so bad it made me sick....and I have a weirdly high pain tolerance. I never take meds and I just ignore headaches. My classmates were great at understanding and made sure to make fun of my robot form!

I had a schedule ready for the day with a flow sheet on each student and their patient's information from admitting dx to allergies, meds, and other pertinent info. The medication times were set for who would pass when and it totally failed! I was pretty bummed. Our teacher has us rattle off the med names, drug class, side effects, and what to monitor for, for each medication. Let's just say, it takes a loooong time. Plus, with students doing new forms of med passing such as IV push or IV piggyback, it's bound to go a little slower.

Overall though, the day went well. I managed to work through all the pain and was able to assist all of my classmates with whatever they needed from bed baths, to bouncing procedure steps off each others, to just be an extra set of hands. I don't have the personality of a leader but I tried my hardest to portray one that day!

I ended up leaving clinical to going straight to the ER. I wouldn't have gone if my pain hadn't been so bad I couldn't think and my neck had swelled up so much, my throat was closing and I couldn't swallow. Steroids, muscle relaxers, pain meds, antibiotics, and a CT scan later I was diagnosed with a bacterial infection that had hit everywhere from my sinuses down to my neck. Needless to say, a trip to Bass Lake the next day healed me completely! :-)

Here's to working on my leadership skills!