Bad Mojo

NewFNP has had one hell of a week and, if she is not mistaken, it is merely Wednesday.

Not that newFNP is overly superstitious, but she finds that the first patient of the day can sometimes set the tone for the rest of the day. And are stars aligned - or misaligned or crossed or something - because newFNP's first patients have been outliers, each and every one of them.

Monday's first patient was a run of the mill IUD insertion and things were sailing along as smoothly as ever. The tenaculum was at 10-&-2 and the Mirena's arms were released when the speculum went AWOL. It settled on the still intact tenaculum while newFNP's MA nearly infarcted. NewFNP should damned well know better but this tends to happen with overweight ladies and this patient was only slightly overweight. NewFNP removed the IUD and blindly attempted to remove the engaged tenaculum. If you have never tried this before, it's a task not as easily completed as one might like. Fortunately, the repeat placement went much more smoothly than the initial in no small part thanks to newFNP's MA keeping the speculum in its desired location.

At least Monday's patient was in the clinic when the situation went down. It is important to have a little background on newFNP prior to hearing about Tuesday. NewFNP is chronically early and is therefore in clinic thirty minutes prior to any other provider. So when a patient who had been standing outside waiting to be seen began seizing in line, newFNP was the only provider on the scene. The ambulance and firetruck had come and gone before the clinic was actually even open for business. And thirty-one patients later, newFNP went home.

And finally, this morning our clinic nurse brought a slurring patient to newFNP's attention. According to the patient, her methadone dose was increased yesterday. It took longer than necessary to elicit this information as the patient was nodding off during the subjective component of the interaction. She denied all drug use which may be the case but people may overdose on methadone and a good place to OD is in the hospital where there are doses of Narcan and ER physicians and IVs. Furthermore, her asthma was uncontrolled. Further-furthermore, she was six months pregnant. NewFNP put her on oxygen and a nebulizer and again invited the paramedics to the clinic.

Please. Please. Tomorrow. Let tomorrow be easy. Super frigging easy.