Adventures in Nursing, Part 5

WARNING! This story contains gross materials, squeamish readers beware!

Story 5: WHAT A WAY TO COME INTO THE WORLD!

I was on shift 3 of a 4 shift string. I was having a pretty lousy week. I had already had two "precips". For those of you who don't know, "precips" stands for a precipitous delivery, meaning there was no doctor and possibly no nurse there for delivery. I hate precips! I do not get paid enough money to do the doctor's job.

My first precip was just a normal baby and the mom was going natural and just didn't let me know that she felt like she needed to push. That happened at times at Parkland because patients rarely wanted epidurals. So, okay, one precip, that happens. With the second one, the Resident (ER, not OB) had been up doing his mandatory delivery duty so that if a lady came into the ER and we couldn't get down there in time, they didn't just all run around like chickens with their heads cut off. He had literally just checked the patient's cervix, said "She's like 6 cm" and walked out the door. I turned to the patient and I could see the baby's head crowning. I stuck my head into the hall and said, "You might want to step in here for a minute, the baby is crowning." That precip was kind of amusing except that the baby came out not breathing and I had to run to the delivery room with him and call NICU. There were a few tense minutes but he did fine. But suffice it to say, I was getting a little sick of delivering these babies by myself. Then came Day 3...

I had this patient that I had just gotten admitted and she didn't want anything for the pain but she was definitely in full blown labor. I was just going down the hall to get her husband from the waiting room when I passed the nurses station. A call light lit up and when the secretary answered it all I heard was a scream! I looked down the hall and the room I had just left was lit up. I ran back down the hall and threw open the door. The patient had projectile vomited and it had hit the wall, the floor, and the ceiling! It was like a scene from the Exorcist. I almost slipped in what smelled like egg curry vomit, it still grosses me out to think of it and I am not afraid or bothered by vomit normally. I came around the bed and pulled back the sheet, to see a baby's head, lying in diarrhea and urine! Yuck! I called for help and the residents came running. I finished delivering the baby as they ran into the room. The baby wasn't breathing, so I cut and clamped the cord quick, held the baby to me, half wrapped in my scrub top and ran down the hall to the delivery room! I hit the emergency button for NICU and they were there within a minute. By that time, the baby still wasn't breathing well but his heartbeat was strong. The NICU staff took over and ended up taking him to the NICU for observation. I guess his birth was just kind of shocking to him. I don't blame him. We got the patient all cleaned up and recovered, she was so embarrassed. I told her that kind of thing happened all the time, even though I could see the glares from the poor cleaning staff that had to clean up that room. I think that was, by far, my grossest delivery ever.

I hope my story didn't make anyone too queasy. I was so traumatized by the multiple precips that week that I refused to go to work the next night, the precips just seemed to be getting worse and I didn't want to borrow trouble.