Yesterday, you are not far enough away

Work yesterday was stressful, nausea inducing, and exhausting.  We were slammed.  I worked over until 3:00 a.m.  I did not get a lunch break.  That's 14 hours.  I'm thinking that I'm beginning to understand why people told me to pick up extra shifts while I still could because there would come a point where I wouldn't want to do that anymore.  My feet, legs, lower back, and hips hurt so badly when I finally laid down that I couldn't fall asleep right away. 

You know, it's a bad day when I come home and shower at 3:00 a.m. because I feel gross and contaminated.  I apologized to the baby all the way home.  I barely felt her move yesterday, but, of course, I was a little too busy to notice.

Without violating too much patient information, here's what made yesterday the best day ever (in opposite land):

• Had a patient fall out of bed while trying to get up.  It ended in a very, very bad break of an arm.  I'm talking send-a-chill-down-your-back-obviously-jacked-up broken.  I almost threw up, not from seeing it (please, I live for that stuff), but from it happening at all.  I've only ever had to fill out one incident report.  Make this one the second one.
• Constant influx of patients with no breaks, although I did eat quickly when I started to feel faint and then felt sick from eating in under 10 minutes.
• taking over patients from another nurse to find them soiled, in need of a lot of things, and very, very sick.  If I had been the patients' families, I would have raised some hell up in that ER for the care my loved one received.  Luckily they were nice and I helped fixed the situation by staying over to ensure that they both got safely, cleanly, and in better physical shape up to their hospital rooms. 
• turning that nurse into my charge nurse.  If something would have had happened when I took them over, it would have been on my head.  No way.  I was livid, not for everything I had to do, but for the care they had received.  It's our job to do better than that.  I am still so mad when I think about it.  I seriously think it was worthy of getting fired over or at least getting a written note in a file or something.
• I was told that I'm not the only one that applied for the 7a-7p job, which means, I'm probably low man on the totem pole again and won't get it.  She did tell me that no decision had been made final yet.  I wanted to cry.  They know how badly I want to it, so maybe it'll happen before I come back from maternity leave.

Things that made yesterday a little better:

• My day shift charge nurse, who was also my preceptor, asked me to come over to her for a second yesterday during the chaos.  She marched me over to my boss, put her arm around me and proceeded to say, "Do you know how hard this baby girl works?  She works her self to death and never complains.  I love her for it."  Then she kissed me on the head and hugged me.  Seriously.  That's a pretty good compliment.  My face turned five-shades of red.  My night-time charge nurse met with my boss this morning and I believe she may have said some nice things about me too.  See, they should pick me for the 7a-7p job. They won't be disappointed. 
• One of my patients told me that I was the best nurse he'd ever had in his whole (27 years) of life.  I think he may have been flirting, but I'll take it.  I guess I still don't look that pregnant. :)
• Two of the most adorable babies flashing huge smiles at me, even after I flu swabbed one of them.  How quickly they forget the discomfort.
• Working in the fast track area with one of my favorite PAs.
• Knowing that I had today off.