Today was one of the best volunteer experiences I have had in the ER so far. When I walked in, I was like "Oh great...there's no one here...I'm gonna spend the whole time walking laps." However, the first room I went into had an elderly lady with abdominal pain, and when I asked her how she was doing, I realized that she was dealing with a lot of anxiety being in the hospital (not only that, she didn't have any friends or family in the area). I decided to sit and hang out with her, and the doc came in soon after. He lifted up her johnny, and there was this huge hernia right beside her belly button. He started explaining to me what it was, why it was caused, and what he was doing to help it out. The best part was that he let me help reduce it! Just grabbed my hands so I could feel it gurgle back into place, and it was a pretty cool feeling.

Unfortunately for the patient though, she was dealing with so much anxiety they had to put her on morphine. It was the first time I had ever seen a patient on any strong narcotic like that and well..even though the nurse diluted it down, it had a big effect on her (in a good way! she just became so happy to be there in the hospital). I took her to get a chest x-ray done, and the technician invited me in to stay and watch, and explained to me what was going on with the x-rays we found. We took her back, and I helped her drink her "vanilla milkshake," as she was unable to hold the bottle. We talked until she nodded off...

...and then a ED tech came in and was like "Hey, we need your help." I went into a room where I was met by a very unruly patient. She was giving the nurses and docs a pretty hard time, kept trying to escape, etc, and they wanted me to be in there with her and try and get her to calm down (she was admitted to the wrong hospital in her opinion, and wouldn't even let them do any initial evaluations/procedures on her). Lo and behold, it only took five minutes of talking to her for her to be able to relax. I really do have the best job in there...I love talking to the patients, despite whatever walk of life they come from. It was great practice.

Plus I got to bond with a couple of the nurses, and they showed me some things. It was just really good timing, because lately I feel like I haven't been learning as much as I would like, but today was great in that regard.