oh dear

Don't you hate it when someone doesn't update their blog for, oh I don't know, three-and-a-half months and whenever you click on their blog you see the same picture over and over again? Yeah, me too. Oh wait....

Heaven help me, I've lost my blogging motivation!! Our lives are just your regular, everyday work and school lives and really not so interesting or blog worthy. And seriously, how in the world did April sneak up on us? This semester is almost over and hopefully December will be here soon! Not that I would ever wish for winter because, let's be honest, winter is basically the bane of my existence, but I'll be done with school!! I'll still have to take my licensing exam but at least school will be done!

So this semester hasn't really been that eventful as far as hands-on experience and I probably should have counted my blessings for that because you know when everything is ho-hum that something "eventful" is bound to happen. When you're in nursing school the experience you get really depends on the patient you get assigned, the nurse you're with, the place you're at, etc., so not everyone has the same experiences. We are in our pediatric clinical right now and along with working at the children's hospital, we get to go to a health department and a school and yesterday I got to go to a clinic that serves the uninsured, underinsured, etc (I have a professor that adds etcetera after every sentence and I think I've picked it up). Well, up until yesterday I had never given an intramuscular injection (most immunizations are intramuscular), so I was pretty excited to get the experience. Seriously, any experience while in school is jumped on 'cause you don't want to look like a complete idiot when you get out of school. Would you want a nurse who didn't know how to give a shot? Needless to say I got a lot more experience than I really wanted. To keep an already long story short, TWO of the children I gave immunizations to ended up having allergic reactions and had to be given epinephrine and benadryl (two more shots) and were sent to the ER. Thankfully, both the reactions were limited to a rash moving up the body and didn't involve the airway. Both were observed at the hospital and were sent home just fine. The nurse practitioner said the odds of that happening were slim to none and reassured me that there was nothing I could have done to cause the reactions. She also told me I might want to look into cleaning up my karma (I might just look into that). Hopefully yesterday's experience isn't an indicator of my nursing career.

My clinical in February was in the labor and delivery unit at the hospital and I got to spend a couple days in the NICU. I actually found the NICU fascinating, although definitely heart-wrenching. I also got to see the birth of twins (by C-section) which was neat. In March I was at the psychiatric hospital--for clinical, not as a patient (although at times I felt like I fit right in). I find psych interesting, but I think if I worked in that area I might just become one of the patients. I have already diagnosed myself with all sorts of different disorders.

Jeff is still putting up with me and is working hard as usual. And since no post is complete without pictures, here are a few.

We visited family in January. Jeff might not like that I put this picture on here, but I just think it's cute. He had a straw in his mouth and both of our nieces copied him.



Riley likes to ride shotgun on long car rides, except I'm usually the one in that spot, so she ends up on my lap instead.



Okay, that's really all I've got unless you want to see more pictures of Riley 'cause apparently she is all we take pictures of anymore. I think we need a vacation.

seasons greetings

Riley and I enjoying our present from Jeff's mom; actually, it was Jeff's present but if you snooze you lose.

Merry (late) Christmas and Happy New Year!

It was just the three of us this year for Christmas which was different but nice.
I've been enjoying my break from school and Jeff is working hard as usual.
We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas (holiday, Kwanzaa, Hanuka, etc.) and here's to new and exciting things to come in 2011 (holy cow, 2011??)!

O.R.

Last Monday I got to spend the day in the OR. I got all suited up in surgical garb and followed a nurse around for the day. I really wanted to take my camera and get a picture of myself with the sweet hair cover on (see example below of sweet hair cover), but they discouraged us from bringing valuables into the locker rooms. I guess after a hard day in the OR some nurses are more prone to pilfer.



At first they placed me with a surgeon who had evidently had a student nurse anesthetist sign off on the wrong blood type for a patient the previous Friday. Needless to say he didn't want anything to do with any sort of student, even though as a nursing student pretty much all I can do is watch. Anyway, so I switched rooms and ended up with a great nurse and a surgeon who was very accommodating. He explained things to me and let me get up close to see what he was doing (well, within one foot because that's as close as you can get to the sterile field if you aren't scrubbed in). I got to watch an AV fistula repair and a fem-pop (femoral artery-popliteal artery) bypass which were both really neat. You can youtube either one of those and watch for yourself. I was surprisingly fine with all the blood and cutting into flesh. I bet you thought I would get queezy and barf, but I didn't!

Here's the best part. Are you ready for this? I got to put in my first catheter! On a real person! He was anesthetized but it still counts. You might be grossed out, but it's a nursing student milestone, okay?

I had a good experience in the OR but I don't think it's where I would want to work. OR nurses do a lot more than I thought and they have an important job to do, but I think I'd like to do something more patient friendly.

p.s. Jeff got a promotion and is now going to be a manager! He's learning a lot and working hard. Sorry ladies, he's taken.

places to go, people to see

This is what I've been daydreaming about recently. Oh how I wish I could just travel. I also wish it didn't cost so much for airfare!

Italy

Ireland

Thailand

Denmark

Bora Bora (to my family: I wasn't kidding about hiding in the suitcases)

Bali, oh I love Bali

Peru

Kenya, my birthplace

Paris

It's quite eclectic I know, but when you live overseas and get a taste of a little bit of everything, you just can't stop wanting to see more and more, whether it's Paris or Mombasa. Trust me, the list could go on and on. I made a deal with Jeff that once I graduate and start working that we're going to go somewhere exciting. We'll see if I make it to next December!

dragon boats

A few weeks ago Jeff and I participated in the Dragon Boat Festival. The festival is a fundraiser for one of the hospital systems in our area, Mountain States Health Alliance (who is also Jeff's employer). East Tennessee is apparently the Mecca for hospitals. We have one on every corner.

The festival is basically a bunch a teams from local businesses, churches and organizations who raise money for Mountain States and then get together one Saturday to race paddle boats. This is harder than you might think, especially when you have 20 people on a boat and you're all trying to paddle at the same time. Okay, that still sounds like it should be simple, but surprisingly it's not. Anyway, Jeff's office got a team together. We definitely didn't win, but we had a fun time even though it was pouring down rain most of the time. Jeff's office did raise the most money though, so hooray for them. We also made the newspaper's website (which totally counts by the way) but I can't find the video anymore.

Parrot or dog? You decide.

things learned

Things I have learned in nursing school this month:

How to write a nursing diagnosis, care plan and how to chart.

How to do dosage calculations.

How to do a sterile dressing change. Is it a bad sign that I felt a little nauseous while watching the videos on wound care? Those wounds can be pretty disgusting (and that's without knowing how they smell).

How to put in a Foley catheter. I've heard some pretty gross stories about actually doing this in real life. Again, gross. Also, if your instructor, who is supposed to be watching you and correcting you while you practice, is talking with another instructor about their cats (no joke), how the heck are you supposed to know if you're doing things the right way? I blame her if I stick a tube where it's not supposed to go.

How to give intramuscular injections. Hold the syringe like a dart at a 90-degree angle and go for it (making sure you're aiming for the right landmark, of course). If you hit bone just pull back and act normal/don't freak out. Yikes.

Practicing on dummies is NOT going to be the same as doing these things on real people.

When you ask the same question to different instructors, expect to get a different answer from each one of them. Helpful, very helpful.

I believe enemas and ostomies are coming up in the near future. Sounds like fun. Hope I don't barf while watching the videos!

You might be questioning my choice of nursing by my usage of the words gross, nauseous and barf in this post. I'm hoping these things will get better with experience. I can handle it, but it doesn't mean I'm not a little grossed out at times. We'll see what happens when it comes to putting things in peoples' open wounds, needles in their veins and tubes in their who-has (that's a medical term, didn't you know?).

summer happenings

How is it almost September??? How did that happen? I guess time flies when you're sitting on your butt stressing out about school starting again.

After almost four weeks off, I'm headed back to school on Monday. Honestly, I've been enjoying doing whatever during the day and I'm dreading the stress and anxiety that comes with school. This is the semester we learn all the nitty gritty stuff and we start clinicals in the hospital in October, which by the way I'm freaked out about, probably because I don't feel prepared at all, but hopefully once that time comes I'll at least feel a little more prepared...but I'll probably still be freaked out.

This is what I have to look forward to:



I have a feeling I'm going to be like this:



Anyway, Jeff started a new job at the end of July. He is now a Charge Master Analyst. Don't ask me what all it entails, but it sounds cool right? He's working in the business office for Mountain States Health Alliance which is one of the big hospital systems in this area. So far he is enjoying it and learning a lot.

The day after I took my last final I drove out to Bethany Beach, Delaware to spend some time with my family at a beach house they had for the week. I wish we all lived closer together so we could see each other more than once or twice a year! Some of the pictures below are from Assateague Island where they have wild ponies roaming around.



A few weeks ago we decided to take advantage of Atlanta being only four hours away and we drove out for the weekend. We went to the Georgia Aquarium which has a ginormous tank holding 6.3 million gallons of water, four whale sharks and thousands of other fish (it's the world's largest aquarium exhibit).



And I betcha you can't guess what else we did in in Atlanta. Okay, okay, you guessed it. How could we go somewhere with a major league baseball team and not go to a game? We can't. You might be wondering why we have a picture of two strange men. Well, apparently they aren't strange at all (to baseball fans). The guy in the blue is Leo Mazzone who was a pitching coach for the Braves and apparently a well known pitching coach at that, and the guy holding the umbrella is Mark Lemke who used to play for the Braves. I wonder if these guys ever get tired of random people sneaking up on them and taking (or making) their picture. You might also be wondering what I'm holding in my hand in the picture below. They were giving out Moon Pies at the game. Yum.