Almost done

This is my second to last day of shadowing before I officially start staff relief on Friday. We just got a consult because a patient has been having really bad diarrhea for the past couple of days (although it's not charted in the electronic record, hmmm) and the nurse today has had to change his diarrhea 12 times. He's already on an elemental tube formula, so switching the formula's not really a solution, especially since he's been on the formula for a week and a half without problems. He's also already getting banana flakes. He only has a couple of new meds in the past couple days and none of them should cause diarrhea. The only other change is that one RD added some Beneprotein a couple of days ago. Has anyone ever heard of Beneprotein causing diarrhea? It seems unlikely but we went ahead and switched him to glutamine anyway. We'll see if that works-- I hope so, for the nurse's sake.

I have done a lot of diabetic diet eds recently-- 4 on Friday alone. The other RDs have been offering them to me for practice, and I actually don't mind because I do need the practice and sometimes end up having good conversations with the patients. Not the guy who was doped up the other day and could only mumble something about candy bars, but most of the other ones have been pretty good experiences. I also got to do a low-purine diet ed on Saturday for a man with gout. I had to break the news to him that he could not cook with Crown Royal and "let the alcohol burn off" because cooking doesn't get rid all of the alcohol, which is of course a big no-no on a low purine diet. His wife was glad that I backed up what she'd been saying all along.