Hello, goodbye!

Tomorrow Ali starts her gig as Alice in the Flagstaff Youth Theater production of Alice in Wonderland. Break a leg, kiddo!

I've been feeling a lot like that frazzled rabbit she chases when I'm at the hospital on Mondays and Tuesdays. For 6 hours each day I've had just ONE patient to help look after (along with the nurse, LVN, and nurse tech who are also assigned to that patient, plus the doctors, wound specialist, inhalation therapist, dietitian, volunteers, the list goes on...), but I still feel like I'm on the run and can't even stop to think the whole time.

Tuesday I had 2 patients to help look after for the first time. What did I do with those 6 hours?? I just tried to make a list:

> Wash or disinfect hands -- 20 times
> Put on/take off gloves -- 12 times
> Go in and out of patients' room -- 30 times
> Search the 5th floor for temp/blood pressure machine -- 4 times
> Take patients' vital signs -- 4 times
> Plug the temp/BP machine back into the wall out in the hallway -- 4 times
> Go to the supply room -- 10 times
> Find what I need in the supply room -- 8 times
> Talk to patients and their families -- 20 times
> Change beds -- 3 times
> Make sure Bed is down, Rails are up, Brakes are on, Call light is near -- 15 times
> Go to the patient pantry -- 5 times
> Do top-to-toe physical assessment of patients -- 2 times
> Go to the meds supply room -- 4 times
> Search 5th floor for a pulse Ox machine -- 4 times
> Look for Mrs Harmon -- 4 times
> Read and write in patient charts and make notes -- 12 times
> Hunt around the nurses station for patients' "big" charts -- 5 times
> Read big charts and make notes -- 2 times
> Go to the bathroom -- 0 times

I do hope it will all start to fall into place and make sense after a while, but for now it still feels like all I do is run around in circles, holding my head, madly searching for something and muttering "No time to stop! Hello! Goodbye! I'm late, I'm late, I'm late!"

Now I gotta know about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention?!

Got an email from one of my nursing teachers today about this new flu we've heard tell about (otherwise known as swine flu or H1N1 flu). All us students are supposed to go get shots, and check out the Centers for Disease Control's website and learn stuff.

What I think it said is that it's not so much that this flu is more serious than the old flu, it's just that it's spreading rapidly, so the WHO decided it's a pandemic. Eek!

But don't take my word for it. Go to the CDC's FluView (!) for WAY more info than anybody (well, me anyway) could ever hope to absorb about the H1N1 flu.

Drugged out

While absence makes the heart grow fonder
Foxglove makes the heart beat stronger

Studying drugs and their effects
Today, for upcoming test:

Digitalin is inotropic.
Now off to learn more facts pharmacopic

Singing again

After a brief hiatus of 28 years I went back to school the summer of 2007. My counselor (super-helpful lady named Carol) had explained that if I wanted to go to nursing school I'd need a few prerequisites, the prerequisitiest of which was Chemistry.

I was actually terrified to take Chemistry, having gotten a "D" in it during high school. Daunted by a decades-old D. But lo and behold, Chemistry was no longer the bugaboo I had feared; it was even interesting. And I passed (thanks, Mrs Oganian!). That class left me with a smattering of math and a soft spot for the Periodic Table.

After that I took a science class every semester, and I took some other stuff too. I was back into the swing of school, and it took up pretty much all my free time.

What was the connection to singing? Ah yes. No free time -- no hobbies. I hadn't gone to a Sacred Harp singing in So Cal since summer 2007. I was going to 2-3 singings a month before that, and was even chairman of the LA regional in May 2007. Then I evaporated from the local singing scene.

But last weekend I actually WENT to the monthly singing in Century City. It was great to be back! They were sort of wondering what had happened to me, and were glad I was in school all this time and not crushed by an asteroid.

...

Come to find out that was also the weekend of the New York State singing convention. Since I couldn't go to New York this year, it's kind of cool I was singing at the same time as all my singing friends out East.

Kicking back

Yay! NS 110 (Professional Nursing class) is over, and I do believe we are all going to pass.

So this morning I'm just knitting and being lazy.

Okay, I've never actually heard the song, but...

Total mood change. Yesterday I was oppressed by all the work done, doing, and to do. But now?

Sort of sums up my feeling

Why? Lots of little things. Finished and turned in my 2nd mini care plan -- whew. (Incidentally, care plans are Nursing Theory Exercises with not much connection to the real world, so they might more correctly be called Exercises in Futility -- sorry, Mrs Harmon, if you're reading this). Got my NS110 ethics paper back and I got a nice grade (thanks Mrs Beatty!).

And since my boss is out of town I don't work today, so I have time to study study study for our upcoming NS110 final and our upcoming math test and ... ok, enough said, don't want to break the mood.

Just a little bit crazy

Friday we had our 2nd test in NS111, 72 multiple-choice questions.

Monday and today at the hospital from 0700-1300 with one patient each again.

Right now working on a mini-care plan that's due in a few hours.

Feeling just a little bit crazy.

P.S. Oops, forgot to mention: NS110 final Friday! Crikey.

My own personal trainers

My good friend Cathy, who used to be a nurse, says every nurse should be issued a personal trainer. I'm impatient for mine to arrive, because I really want to start getting in shape.

Whilst waiting I've had some good talks with Cathy and my brother Dave -- who was a fireman -- about what trying to be a nurse, and this whole new world of patients and hospitals is going to do to me.

Maybe I can hack it, maybe not. It's too soon to tell. Meanwhile, I'm back to studying. Test tomorrow, more hospital time Monday.

SHELL SHOCK II

My nemesis du jour

Aackk! Forgot to put out the trash last night!

Why is my house ALWAYS at the very beginning of the trashmen's route at the b. crack of dawn? I have lived in about a dozen different houses, and in every single one it seems like my trash has been picked up at 6:00 a.m.

So this means if I forget to put the trash out the night before, I get woken out of a sound sleep at about 5:00 a.m. by the squeaky brakes of the trash trucks working on the next block over. You know the sound. And I break into a cold sweat, leap out of bed, fall over trying to pull on my pants, finally struggle into some semblance of garments and stumble outside still half asleep to drag the garbage cans down the driveway.

But not today. After another day at the hospital my brain feels like creamed corn and I can't seem to be proactive about anything. No studying. No planning. No trash cans. Today I'm going to let those trash trucks just squeak on by.

SHELL SHOCK

Still reeling from my first day at AVH. After a whirlwind tour of the 5th floor medical/surgical unit -- our hospital home for the foreseeable future -- Mrs Harmon sicced us on the patients, one per student.

Forgot everything I'd learned. Did I ever know how to do a bed bath? Changed my gloves about a dozen times, but I don't think it was often enough. Wasted time wandering the floor looking for the supply room (I know it was around here somewhere... ). So many new things, places, people, experiences, pieces of equipment.

So I was pumped when a visitor asked me where the Chaplain's Office was. Can't figure out how to work the temperature-taking machine, but I do know where the Chaplain's Office is.

It was a crazy 6 hours, but I actually feel pretty good. It's great to know I got through my first day as a student nurse. As my classmate Gary reminded me, there'll never be another First Day as a Student Nurse, so you better enjoy it.

Hospital tomorrow

My clinical class -- 10 wannabe nurses under the guidance of our long-suffering instructor Mrs Harmon -- starts rotations at AV Hospital tomorrow. We arrive at 6:50 am in our crisp new white and blue uniforms, official "Student Nurse" badges firmly attached, to start 6 hours of watching, learning, helping, and hopefully becoming versed in that all-important technique, the Nursing Process.

Watch out patients. The students are coming.