Hectic Days, Too Short Nights

It’s been for-EVA!

So level 2 kinda kicked my butt like mad! I was not expecting it to be so difficult because my level 1 had been over the abbreviated summer semester. I thought I was totally on top of it with a full 16 weeks instead of just 12. I was WRONG.

Not even sure exactly what all made it so hard, probably mostly because I was with a different cohort than my entering class and so I had lost all my good buddies. And maybe a semester off threw me more than I thought it would.

Anywhoo, last Wednesday was the final and I passed and today, class grades were released and I passed and now I have two weeks of vacation that don’t really exist because I’ve already gotten a few emails from the level 3 staff telling us about how we need to get on top of it, our first test is 14 days after the beginning of the semester. 

Big sigh.

Super excited for the mother baby rotation though! I’ll be back soon with some stories about clinicals this semester, there was some interesting stuff going on at the hospital!

Right now, I am taking my last few hours of freedom before jumping back on the study thing and I am BAKING BREAD. And it will be delicious. Perhaps there will even be pictures.

Thanks for sticking around to those of you who read my stuff! I really appreciate your internet presence. :-)

I LOVE COFFEE

TRULY, THERE IS NO OTHER WORD FOR IT.

I keep trying to post, but I keep being too tired to figure out how to write coherently. Been busy, but loving it! Lots ‘o poo jokes!

Comfort on the Job

So far, everything I’ve done in clinical has been stuff that any tech can do, no special certifications needed.

But! Today! I got to dc an IV! (And hey, it rhymes!) It’s like I’m ACTUALLY BECOMING A NURSE!

Of course, this follows two days in a row of dumping tea all down the front of my white scrub top while trying to drink it. Note to self: That stuff is supposed to make it into my stomach.

Who on earth thought that, in a career mostly populated by women, it makes sense to give white, see-through scrub to students as uniforms? 

Seriously, it doesn’t matter what you wear under them, everyone can see it. Right down to the individual stitches.

We (read: The MET Nurse) Stopped a Heart!

My clinical group FINALLY, FINALLY made it onto the unit and got to interact with patients. It’s my first experience in a real hospital, not LTC or skilled nursing rehab and I gotta say, I’m HOOKED. This is totally my place.

Not that I feel super comfortable there yet, but I will.

Oh, how comfortable I will be.

There was a patient on the unit whose heart rate was 174 while lying in bed. The MD called in the MET team (‘team’ turned out to mean a single cardiac nurse who was lugging all her equipment around without even a cart) and they administered adenosine to reset the patients heart.

The doctor, knowing that there were a bunch of nursing students on the unit, asked us if we wanted to watch. We did.

The MET nurse was on board and just as encouraging as the doctor for us to come in and observe, so it was on!

The patient got hooked up to the heart monitor and while their heart was going super fast, pretty much the upper limit for a safe heart rate at their age, it was completely regular. Very weird.

So, the IV line was flushed, the meds were administered and the nurse flushed one more time and we all stood around, waiting and watching with bated breath, to see what would happen. For a few more seconds, everything on the monitor was completely normal and then… There was nothing. For like 12 seconds. And the patient was still sitting up and breathing. VERY WEIRD.

We (the students) were all prepped to bolt out the door if something went wrong and the crash cart needed to be brought in. But after about 12 seconds or so, just as the patient started to feel woozy, their heart came back. Normal and regular. And slowed down by about 50 bpm. So it was still on the high side, but ~115 is better than 174. 

We were on a GMU, so the patient got transferred to a cardiac unit with telemetry pretty quickly. I have no idea what other interventions may have been done after that, but wow. Just, WOW. 

I’m hooked.

Just a Morning

My bike chain broke this morning. Yay.

So I was late to class. Cancer lecture. Yay.

Man, what a cheerful way to start a Tuesday.

At least I have cookies. Yay.

Down With the Sickness!

I guess I picked up something on my one day of clinical rotations that I’ve had this semester. I didn’t even touch any patients and I obsessively washed and alcoholed my hands because it was the first time I’d been in a hospital in months.

Despite the precautions, I was all fevery and mucusy and lame two days ago. I went to lecture the day after my fever was gone (yesterday), but it was rough biking in with my lungs full of all that stuff. I kept coughing in class and though I was being very careful to cover my mouth with my elbow and not touch other people’s gear, I was still kind of torn over whether or not I should have been there.

Today it snowed (Snow! In the sunny southwest lands!) and despite classes not being cancelled, I took the excuse to not go in and try to get better. It’s also dangerous to bike in the snow and it was below freezing after weeks of being above freezing, so the roads were pretty icy that early in the morning.

It got me thinking though. I do have a pretty hefty immune system. My husband works at an elementary school and kids are seriously gross, he brings stuff home all the time and I rarely get more than a little sniffle. My dad is an MD at the VA here in town and my step-mother is also an elementary school teacher. I have three significantly younger siblings, one in elementary school and two in high school and we all spend a LOT of time together. Plus, I spend a significant amount of time on two different college campuses and have (in theory anyway…) a few days a week in clinical settings at LTC and hospital facilities. My other brother is also in college, as well as most of my friends and a lot of them are spending time in hospitals for rotations as well. I’m surrounded by quite the germ exchange.

Even with all this exposure, it’s pretty clear that I am going to get sick, maybe even as often as once a month, when I first begin working, especially if I am in a hospital or an urgent care, as I’d like to be. So how to deal? When is how sick I am feeling supposed to outweigh my obligation to provide care? Or, to put it another way, when will the danger of me shedding bacteria or viruses all over the place become greater than the value of the care I will be giving?

People get pissed when co-workers call in sick, it’s a fact of life, but so is illness. And sometimes you just need to take care of yourself. How have other people dealt with this?

How Important is Having Fun?

I went dancing last night and it was AWESOME!

I haven’t gone out for so long, I had pretty much convinced myself that I just don’t do that stuff anymore. I was so sure that I’d have no fun, partly because there are no really good clubs in this town and partly because I thought that if I did go, I’d be the grumpy DD while my friends flailed around making drunk asses of themselves.

Oh me of little faith.

Yesterday I got up at 4 am and we had out of town stranger-friends coming in and I was feeling all high on sleepless adrenaline. 

So to the club we went! And there was good music to dance to. That happens so rarely in this town, it’s usually just some bumpin’ gangsta crap that is heavy on bass, but nothing much going on with dance beats. And there was pretty much zero drinking. It was all about the music and the movement.

We danced for 4 hours. Going out with everyone made it so that I was up for 23 hours and there were a few couple-mile bike rides to go along with the dancing, but I feel so great today. 

I can’t believe I almost convinced myself to stop having this fun.

I keep harping at my friends that they need to take better care of themselves, but I’m totally ignoring my own advice. I exercise and eat pretty well, but I put almost no emphasis on having fun for myself. Turns out that part is awfully important too. 

For the past few weeks, I’ve been stuck in a rut, feeling like I need a vacation away from all the things that I feel responsible for and it was awesome to realize that I could get my vacation in 4 hours of hard dancing to fun music. Way less expensive too! I hope I can remember this next time friends talk about going out.