so i started my period this morning, and had cramps and thought about not going to clinical, but decided to go anyways. my cramps started to get pretty bad within the first hour on the floor, but i tried to be a big girl and stick it out. while discussing my patient with my instructor, i told her i felt lightheaded and sat down in the chartroom. by the time she checked up on me like 5 minutes later, i was like sweating and was really feeling the lightheadedness, so she told me i better go home, but i told her i didn't think i should be driving.
so she walked me over to a nurse's lounge, and while walking there, my vision started to get really blurry & dark and i got super weak and somewhat collapsed in my instructors arms. it was all a blur in the nurse's lounge, since i couldn't even hold my eyes open by this time and my arms were getting numb & tingly (scary!). i know someone was trying to get me to drink diet coke lol, and they took my blood pressure which was 80something/40something which, if you don't know, is pretty low. lol. so then i remember being helped into a wheelchair and being brought to the ER, where i was alert enough to give my info and my mom's phone number to the admitting girl.
then all i remember after this is being transferred to the bed and being changed into a gown, and my 2 young male nurses (!) telling me they were cypress grads (great, thank you) and i got an IV in my left hand (OUCH) and a nasal cannula, blood drawn + EKG. and by this time, i was really freaking out because the numbness/tingliness had spread to my legs and also the lower part of my face, & i could hear myself lisping and not talking right.. so i don't know what that was but it really freaked me out, because the patient i had been working on had had a stroke so that's all that was in my head, haha. but they were telling me it was coz i was breathing too fast, so i needed to slow my breathing down.
and then i woke up sometime later (like 30mins) and felt like 90% back to normal! hahaha. my mom & bro came, and my instructor came back in time to hear the nurse tell me that all my tests came back normal, except for my potassium level which was really low. so they gave me 2 huge ass pills, and let me go! and that was it. so i got a firsthand patient experience today in clinical, that is all.
moral of the story? eat bananas.
oh, ps. i DID eat breakfast! i ate mamon from goldilocks.. lacking in potassium, i guess! and i also did get sufficient sleep (6 hours) the night before. and also, i am totally back to normal, so don't worry about me :)
