ICU Cookies Aug 2004

Working in a busy ICU, thats often understaffed, there
are days where I feel like I'm putting out fires right
and left. But this month, I'm on night shift.
Typically no fires. The pace is often slower. Slow
enough to bring in cookie dough to bake in the toaster
oven in the staff lounge.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

The toaster oven, while used, seems to have been in
decent shape. We set the temp to the recommended 350
degrees and discovered with our first batch that in
less than 5 min, the top cooked much faster than the
middle and got a bit dark. Still tasty, just a bit
doughy in the middle. The second batch, we decided to
flatten and cook at a lower temp and watch closely.
These came out great! Only six more to go and it's
time to serve hot chocolate chip cookies to all my
co-workers at 5 am. Who wouldn't love that? With the
last batch in the toaster oven, I asked another nurse
Sarah (yeah there's 2 of us here) to watch them while
I take care of my patient.

Next thing I know Sarah and Jamie are yelling from the
lounge "Oh my god there's a fire! I'm not even
kidding you Sara!" I ran, grabbed a towel and soaked
it ran in to the lounge to find flames leaping out of
the toaster oven and licking the shelf above. I start
batting it with the wet towel with one hand while
removing items next to it with my left and yelling at
the other two (who are totally freaking out) to get
the extinguisher. But they only run around saying "I
don't know where it is! Arn't we supposed to call
someone? Who do we call?!!"

Take in to perspective that these are ICU nurses here.
We're used to high stress situations with patients
who drop their heart rate and blood pressure with in
seconds. This requires a personality who can hold it
together in times of crisis. We've been trained for
such. Except in cases of fire. Drills we've had.
Inservices on who to call and how to use and
extinguisher. All the info is even printed on the
back of our badges. But the situation has really
never come up.

So my two cohorts are running circles around each
other while I'm battling flames and trying to figure
out how I'm going to reach around the flames quick
enough to unplug the toaster. Finally someone got our
charge nurse from her break and she came in and
immediately closed the door of the toaster. Fire was
out. (Now why didn't I think of that?) But the smoke
thereafter was really incredible! The charge nurse and
I soaked the burnt cookies and threw all the
incriminating evidence in the trash. By now alarms
went off and several service men showed up to
investigate, followed by the sound of fire trucks
outside. As the front of our ICU was filled with
Firemen in full gear, my cohorts and I stood by,
giggling from embarrassment and competing for reddest
face (Tough competition! They're both redheads and
really good at such shades!)

So the toaster is, well, toast. The electrician
checked out the scene and came back to tell us the
good news: that the coffee maker was on a separate
circuit, so everything will be ok.

My throat feels like I just had a cigarette. My scrubs
and hair really stink. And my charge nurse has
nicknamed me "Pyro"

I think I'll leave the baking to conventional ovens
from now on.