Lost on the Floor

Yes folks, Lost on the Floor is moving. I went over the reasons in a previous post, did some thinking and realized I wanted to spend more time with my family and actually writing, rather than playing with HTML and code. I'm a nurse, not a programmer. Everything I read seemed to point my way over to WordPress. So I've set up shop over there for good.

So update your bookmarks, adjust the feed in your reader and come on down!

I have multiple problems that I am trying to wrap my head. I'm increasingly getting tired of Blogger, frequent outages, posts disappearing (or getting mangled), tedious template mods and the inability to quickly change a template/theme. I don't have to time I need to fool around the web trying to find a template I like and then taking the additional time to tweak the template and add back in all of the user modifications I've made. I'm a little bit of a design geek, but can't take the time I want to make my blog look like I really want it to, so I settle.

But on the other hand, I like Blogger as I have been using it for so long (not just here). I "trust" Google (about as far as I could throw them), but I realize that they're pretty stable (company-wise). I have my content here adn don't really want to have to shift it somewhere else (or lose it all together). And it's easy.

I want to spend more of my time writing rather than trying to cajole something into working order - I do enough of that at work. Anyone have any suggestions? Is Wordpress better than Blogger? Should I just leave well enough alone? Anyone have an idea how to fix my code so that the sidebar just doesn't run all the way down, but the central section is as long as the sidebar?

Thanks in advance.

I guess Al Gore's recent Nobel win sparked off a minor bit of furor in the medical blog-o-sphere (not to mention elsewhere) as shown by Scalpel and Shadowfax, I thought we all needed a little bit of lighthearted insanity. Zoobomb style. These guys are nuts. What better way to forget about the depressing issues of global warming, ER overcrowding and health care reform than flying down US 26 into downtown Portland on a mini-bike set to the music of AC/DC? Or having a blast barreling down Maryhill on longboards and mini-bikes? Enjoy.

The Hellway


Maryhill Jam

For what it's worth, I believe in global warming and that we should do something, even if it seems futile. I haven't driven to work more than twice in over 8 months, relying on bike and public transit. But that's me.

Update: Yes, I'm an idiot. For some reason I thought it was Tuesday, only to be corrected by my neighbor that it was Monday. The headline is now corrected...

If you listen closely you can hear several things...

You hear the charge nurse watching the monitor at the tele station go, "Oh shit!" Jump up, grab the code cart and go hauling ass down the hall. Then the nurse at the station right next to him calling the operator and the overhead announcing "Code 99 to XXX." Next you hear the page go live and pagers going off and nurses running down the hall with the COde Team hot on their heels.

He was down on the floor, half in, half out of the bathroom, all 300+lbs. of him. No time to move so they worked him on the floor, half in, half out of the bathroom. One nurse was standing on the toilet with their butt in the face of the one in the shower. The floor was covered in the miasma of body fluids and blood as the guy came to a little and started tearing out IVs. They shocked him once and got a rhythm back and like a bat out of hell, off to the unit. If memory serves, guy came back up to our floor about a week later, in pretty good shape all things considered.

Looking at the strip several things strike me. One is that this the last time I ever want to see a R-on-T phenomenon live and in person. Second, dude was damn lucky he was in the hospital, on a monitored unit with ACLS-certified nurses caring for him and a Code Team 30 seconds away. If he had been out in the regular world, things might not have turned up so rosy. I guess this could have been a case of Sudden Cardiac Death, but he was lucky. Third is that how quickly life can turn on you. One moment you're getting up to take a leak in the middle of the night and the next you're on the floor after having died for a couple of seconds. Kind of brings things into perspective. Finally, that tele tech who the charge nurse was covering for while they were away at the bathroom? Yeah, they don't get a bathroom break ever again. This was not the first time. No, this was the third or fourth time that they stepped away and something unfortunate goes down. It's just bad luck.

I wish I had saved my other favorite strip from a while ago. It was sinus with an 7 second pause. All you saw were these little P-waves, but you could call it asystole. Like above, they were dead, if only for about 7 seconds (isn't that the length of a champion bull ride?).

It's just too funny. Maybe it's all that sunlight going to my head.



What med student has that much free time on their hands?

Thanks to Suicidal Tendencies for the title...

Went shopping with my wife the other day (yes, besides work and sleep, I try to find time to do normal human things) and like always there are plenty of people on their Bluetooth headsets. You know the kind, talking to themselves and carrying on a loud conversation at the same time. You have to stop and wonder, "Are they altered? Schizo?" No, just inconsiderate.

I read this article ,via Digg the other day and was met with the news that now it is going to be even easier to link up Bluetooth devices. Yes, there are good things for this...maybe even some that apply to the health care environment. Like vital sign machines that transmit data directly to the computer chart without wires and without the interference of us worn out nurses, or that send the data that a lab has been collected instead of replying to the docs that, "Well, I saw phlebotomy here...they were in the room, so I have to assume they drew the AM Labs, they'll probably be up in a couple of minutes."

I try to remain positive, but I really know that what it means is more people on headsets, talking out loud to apparently no one in particular. I'm just going to have to try harder to not answer them so much...