back in the hospital

so, we're back in the hospital. this time for a scheduled "tune-up." my dad is actually in the ICU, which is strange - he hasn't been in the ICU for 12 years, since this whole story began. thankfully, this is a controlled setting. it was a scheduled admission. his cardiologist has a month of in-hospital rotations and is currently my dad's attending; she admitted him so that she could be in control of his inpatient experience too. i love other medical professionals who are control freaks; i totally understand their desire to be in charge.

anyway, my dad is breathing on his own. he can talk to us. he can get out of bed independently. he has only 15 or so wires attached to him instead of 40. and good god, he is ornery as ever. he might be the "healthiest" ICU patient i've ever seen! the reason he is in the ICU is because he has a catheter inserted into his neck that goes all the way to his heart. it enters the right atria, travels to the right ventricle, and even enters the pulmonary arteries to measure pressures and volumes in the heart. the idea of his stay here is to make him pee a ton, lessen the fluid volume in his circulatory system, and thus make his kidneys happy with increased perfusion (i realize that's a mixture of lay person talk and medical jargon). bottom line: we want my dad's congestive heart failure symptoms to improve and since it hasn't been accomplished in the outpatient setting on oral medications, might as well try inpatient with intravenous drugs!

sigh...

being a control freak myself, it's hard for me to sit here with my dad. i am not an ICU nurse. i do not understand all of this heart stuff, all of these precise measurements. once upon a time, five years ago to be exact, i was actually doing my nursing school clinicals on this unit. i spent 10 weeks here, working 36 hours a week. strangely, i got hired here too. i thought i wanted to do this - to take care of patients during acutely critical times in their life, to care for intubated, vulnerable people. then, while in india on my post-nursing school travels and celebration, i had an epiphony (at the time, i called it a nervous breakdown). i did not want to be a cardiac ICU nurse. i did not feel proud to return home and to keep mostly dead people alive on machines.

so, here i am. an oncology nurse. watching my dad in the cardiac ICU that i was supposed to work on. most of me is still uninterested in working in an ICU setting. all of me knows i never want to return with my dad (or anyone i remotely care about for that matter).