Saturday, August 23, 2014

ICU

It's nearing 11 and I'm completely exhausted. Today was my third day of working this week. The ICU is a very interesting place. Very. I'm still surprised at my having landed there. It seems as though the ICU seems very far away and out of reach in school. I remember no one seemed to think they'd land an ICU position except maybe those who were doing clinicals there. I'm very lucky!!

I rode my bike home from class (8 hours of it on Wednesdays), and then to and from my 12-hour shift yesterday. I drove today. It's about 6 miles and it was so hard to face getting up early enough to bike or take the bus. The route that takes the longest is the bus. It takes about 45 minutes. Biking is next, about 40 minutes. And the car, of course, is fastest. It takes about 15 minutes to get there. I've never encountered traffic. I think I could get a lot faster at the biking. It still is taxing. I think I will stick with a mix of bussing, biking, and driving. It's long, but relatively easy (and free, as a hospital employee) to take the bus, it's good exercise, but tiring, to take the bike, and if I take the car the family doesn't have a car for almost 14 hours.

We have the fans running because it got quite warm today and it's cool this evening and all I can hear are the ICU alarms going off repeatedly. It's as though the overtones of the fan match the alarms. It is getting to be quite a pain, however, because it is like a ringing in my ears. I don't know how, but they even seem to beep like the alarms, even though the fans are going at the same speed. And it bugs me because they're alarms!! The alarms I speak of are not necessarily for emergencies, but they could indicate a problem and definitely need quick attention.

This happened last night, too, and pretty much every night I've come home from work to the fans running.