Circle Circle Dot Dot

In life there are certainties. Things like Ben and Jerry's Phish Food is the best ice cream in the world. EA Sports NCAA Football is the best video game series ever. And I quite possibly rock the most awesome high and tight ever seen in the ICU. Since reliving the epic basketball career of my junior high school for the last two nights, I've also returned to another classic pass time I used to do during junior high. Dotting faces.

For the uninitiated, getting dotted in basketball terms means that someone shoots a jumper over a defender's outstretched arms, said defender just got "dotted." And since you are a loyal reader, you obviously immediately recall that my J is wetter than Billy Madison on a field trip, and have dotted more people than a herpes outbreak.

But since:
1. I'm working nights and have a whole new set of people to annoy/antagonize/terrorize.
2. I have a limited attention span and require almost constant supervision.
3. I have more free time than is legally allowable in a critical care setting.
I've decided to re institute the "dotting" aspect of junior high and bring it up to speed. Since I can't enthrall the rest of the hospital with my silk smooth J, I can in fact regale them with my mad IV skills.

Now, ICU generally has the more critical patients, requiring constant care, observation and attention. Since I work in an ICU that can be paralleled to a Nickelodeon show, this usually isn't the case, but we are requested on a regular basis to go to another ward to attempt an IV stick on "a difficult patient." Since this means I get some fresh air and am allowed to roam unsupervised until tracked down, I usually volunteer. This is where "dotting" comes into play. To "dot" someone means that they failed to get an IV, called the bullpen (my sport reference to ICU), and I successfully start the IV. And since I'm rocking a 117% success rate (wrap your mind around that), it's starting to look like a measles farm around here.

To add insult to injury (and who doesn't like to do that?), I instituted some rules to make it an official dotting.
1) The previous nurse has to have made an attempt to start the IV.
2) The "dot" must occur in front of that nurse, or staff of that ward.
3) I must let the nurse know after he/she gets "dotted" that I only practice nursing for maybe 30 seconds a day. Maybe.

So far I've dotted 4 out of 5 wards in a two night span, with 4West being dotted a ridiculous 4 times. The last time I started an IV up there was for the same nurse I dotted the night before. I dotted him so hard that the guy no longer knew how to use the Euler Method to approximate curvatures in a line segment when he got back up.

If you don't see our favorite ward on there (I'm looking at you 5 East) it's because they're a psyche ward and frown on IV usage there. So I'm looking at a 100% success rate with an asterisk. Not too shabby.