Introducing....

The 4th Floor Clinical Pharmacy Specialist!!! I found out a week and a half ago that I was selected for the clinical pharmacy position on the acute medicine floor that the VA. I'm pretty excited. Acute care has always been my love - now I finally get to flourish in my love. :) I don't have an official start date yet. They have to hire a pharmacist to take my place (apparently they haven't realized that I'm irreplacable! HA!). I'm hoping to start the new position in August - but I won't hold my breath. As part of my new position, I will now be responding with the Code Team. Yea - I'm still a little nervous about that. Honestly, when the code pager drops, my heart races. So - I'm hoping that becomes less with time. I did respond to my first code ever last week. I got to work at 10:30 and the code pager dropped at 10:35. I decided that it was now or never. I took off running out the door. I passed my supervisor in the basement hallway. I told him that there was a code on the 5th floor and I wanted to go. His reponse was - "Well, keep runnin' girl!" So I did. I ran my little ass all the way up the stairs to the third floor. I realized that I was taking 2 stairs at a time. Then I realized that I was a bit winded and still had 2 flights of stairs to go. I walked to the 4th floor and crawled to the 5th floor. My legs felt like iron barrels when I got to the door to the ward. I tried to compose myself and walked into the room. The RN turned to me and said, "Oh honey, did you run all the way up here from the basement?" I replied "Uh-huh" (actually forming words would've taken too much oxygen). She smiled and said, "I hate to tell you but he's ok." I smiled and mumbled something about that being great news. She then offered me the oxygen mask. I must've looked like hell. I tried to walk back down the stairs, but my legs had turned from iron to rubber. I wasn't able to make them go down the stairs. I crawled back over to the elevator and rode down to the basement. Note to self - you can't do chest compressions if you can't breath on your own. Perhaps next time I'll take the elevator to the 5th floor. I learned that my adrenaline rush lasts for 3 flights of stairs and then it dies. The pain of sucking air lasts for 3 hours. Code team here I come! :)