Joke's On Me

Within moments of completing the last blog entry, my pager went off.

A few hours and one dialysis catheter later, I'm at long last in the hospital call room about to catch some zzz's before work tomorrow. It's 3 a.m. I have to say that I called this one. Might as well take care of my blogging duties while I'm up.

It always takes longer than you think to do something like this. First you have to talk to the doctors in the ICU to get the story. Then you have to call your Attending and give them the heads-up that somebody is going to start dialysis. Then you have to call the dialysis nurse and convince them to come in. Then you have to call the patient's husband/wife to get permission for the procedure you are about to do and give them a bare-bones tutorial on why it sucks when your kidneys stop working. Then you have to drive into work, gather supplies, and bring the ultrasound machine to the patient's room. Actually putting in the catheter doesn't take all that much time, but all this other stuff adds up.

That's it for now--I'm going to sleep for a few blessed hours.