Don't get me wrong

I do love/like/hate my job aka career at times.  Mostly if I really had days on end of great hate or a nasty taste left in my mouth

 I wouldn't keep going back to it.  This is really not about the pay check for me.

Believe me, I could make more money being the trash girl for the

county/city than I do at nursing, but hey, it's what I do. 

Is it irritating?  Hell yes!  Is it aggravating.  Definitely HELL YES?  Tho there are times when you make that difference for your patient and/or their family and everything comes together for you as a nurse.  Unfortunately those days can be far and few inbetween, but I have to believe that I'm making some type of difference every time I walk through the hospital doors into the ICU.

I walked away from a higher level trauma ICU (the sister hospital of the one I hang out at more often now) a few years back.  I do miss some trauma cases.  They are very interesting, and when they come in usually they are constant work and vigilance, due to the fact the patients themselves can go south very quickly, and we ain't talking a short va-kay to Mexico either.

I've had my share of trauma cases.  Some good, some not so good.  One case I will always remember is a guy who actually fell off of his golf cart (I'm sure he and fellow buds were a little drunk) and he had some major head trauma.  I was one of the primary nurses on his case, so every time I came to work he was 1 of my 2 patients for the shift.  I took care of him for months, then I dunno if I took vacation or had a week or two when I wasn't his primary.  I came back, and the guy was extubated, talking and acting like normal.  Let me tell ya, that was a helluva a shock and a good one at that. 

Another patient I was a primary on was this very young teen, who had a motorcycle accident.  We really didn't think she was going to make it.  There were several times when I took care of her, that she was so critical we almost called a Code Blue. Her leg was a complete mangled mess, with probably MRSA in the wound, etc.  The plastics guy ended up being right, stating that she needed to lose the limb to survive.  Eventually that happened once they took her to surgery, after lets say, a month or more after her admit ICU, since she would've died on the table more or less due to instability.   She recovered after several months.  

Back to the reason I walked away........ I had a patient, young male, about my oldest son's age at the time.  Motorcycle accident.  Freak accident occurred.  He was helmeted up, leathers, the entire nine yards of safety.  Hit some gravel in the road, went down, hit his head just right and was pretty much brain dead at the scene.  We took care of him for about 2-3 days.  I had him one of his last days when I had to support the family, and do all the stuff that was needed for organ donation.  This case hit me way too close to home.  I cried with the family, cried and hugged my kids when I got home, and told my husband I was done with ICU nursing.  I was at that time. 

I found a job in home health, that served to mend me, let me be able to reach out to my patients more on a nursing level outside the hospital setting.  Believe me, there were times I would have rather not gotten to know some of them or visited their homes.   

Even tho at times I was worried that my Xterra would not be parked outside once I got out of some of their homes, I survived and so did the X and it wasn't all that bad of a nursing experience all in all.

Now I'm back in the unit.  Not a high trauma unit, but I can float to the other hospital pretty much anytime they need xtra nurses if I want.  Will I stay in the ICU?  Not sure.  That's what I love about this career, it affords me the ability to move around and learn new things if I want.   

Sooo, if I bitch and moan about my job....just read or don't read.  I don't give a flying rat's ass, but it is my way to cope with a career that demands me to be on my toes physically and mentally every single shift.