And then there's the tiny little good things...

So I go to hook up my periotoneal dialysis patient last night, right, and his wife is present. She usually does this for him at home. I got my mask and gloves and jazz on, and he doesn't have a dressing on his access. His skin's a little red, too. (Red = infection = possibly leading to peritonitis = earthshakingly and life-changingly BAD for PD patients.)

So I say, "Where's your dressing?" The wife blurts out: "YOU ARE THE FIRST NURSE TO ASK THAT IN DAYS! THAT'S EXACTLY RIGHT! HE NEEDS THAT DRESSING ON OR HE'LL GET PERITONITIS!"

Er. Yeah. ? She gives me her own stash of gentamycin ointment and I do a dressing that takes me 5 seconds. But she's very very excited that I'm a "good nurse" who "pays attention" to "the important things." She asks for my boss's name and her phone number, as well as my last name, because she wants to call my boss to tell her what a good job I've done.

Weird.

I mean, that's nice, if she does that. It's really nice.

It's just curious to me because my brain flashes on much, much harder things I've done for people in my nursing career. (The precordial thump that actually worked comes to mind....giving narcan to the woman with stage IV breast cancer....on rehab, the other woman with stage IV breast CA who also had a MASSIVE PE...the man we put in the 360degree turning bed, his wife and the evil surgeon.) I can think of bedside surgical procedures I've assisted with, like the day I held the fully conscious SDH patient's head while the neurosurgeon used a hand drill on his skull....or "Mary", the mother of two with fulminant liver failure and the good GOD Herculean efforts by the entire ICU team.

It's a good list for a four-year-out RN, and every nurse has their own.

A five second completely nothing dressing gets a thank you call to my boss.

Huh.

That's really nice. Nice things happen where you really don't expect them, don't they?