Yesterday I was scheduled to spend the morning in the inpatient pharmacy which I have definitely enjoyed doing so far. Instead, I was told to go to Labor and Delivery and scrub up! I started out the morning by being introduced to the staff. They were really awesome and made me feel welcome in their unit. We worked on dosing iron sucrose for a pregnant woman with iron deficiency. Luckily, this question had come up on rounds the week before so I was able to contribute to the discussion and calculating of the dose.
Next, we had a couple women come in to be induced into labor, so I brushed up on my oxytocin knowledge in order to weigh in on the conversation. (Sidebar: I'm realizing how much I need a phone upgrade since Epocrates was removed from Palm phones. And Lexi-Comp for phones is a tad pricey. Okay, enough with my rant. Back to the good stuff.) After they were induced, we had an odd array of patients that had fallen or weren't feeling well come in to get checked out and stay a while for monitoring. Also, a couple moms-to-be came in for tours of the L&D unit.
One of the moms was to receive an epidural so the anesthesiologist walked me through each step describing everything in full. He then quizzed me on my ropivicaine, epinephrine, and lidocaine knowledge. Afterwards, he allowed me to ask him any questions I wanted to know the answers to. Overall, I learned a lot about epidural administration which I'm glad for.
After the epidural, we continued to monitor the baby's heart rate along with mom's contractions until it was time to push. So I gloved up and headed into the birthing suite with the OBGYN and supportive nursing staff. Instead of watching from the head of the bed, I took a place next to the doc for a up close viewing of the live birth. Everyone’s first question to me afterwards: “You still want to have children?”
That evening I went for a walk around the lake while making a couple phone calls. So the following occurred while on the phone with my mom. Between the trail and lake, there was a dog staring at a baby moose. The owner of the dog called for it to try and get it to move away, but the dog only crept closer to the moose. Advice: if you see a baby moose, mama is not far behind. When the dog began to bark, the mother moose flew out of the trees over the ridge. At this point, eight other people and myself were stuck in a stalemate with a baby moose and its mom. Mama was definitely upset that we were so close to her baby. Looking back, we probably did not have the best reaction, but we all decided to run away in different directions weaving in and out of trees. Everyone was able to make it away safely when the moose began to charge at us.
I didn't get much sleep as it was the Summer Solstice, so basically 24 hours of daylight. Though the sun did set behind the mountains, it still managed a nice twilight glow until it rose again a couple hours later. I'm still not really use to this daylight stuff, and I'm not sure I ever will.
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