It’s been so busy these past few weeks that I find myself falling asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow. I hate that. I like to lay in bed and unwind, read from my cooking magazines and watch some garbage on tv.
Monday the 23rd of October was my first clinical day on a med/surg unit. It was spectacularly dull, which is exactly what I needed for day 1. I got to do med pass with the nurse and sub-q injections.
Work has been good. We’re getting busier because the snow birds are coming back. I get to remove IVs on discharging patients now, so that’s an exciting new responsibility. Working the floor is kind of killing my body and kind of killing my spirit. I am going to try to transfer to the monitor room full time in the spring of next year. I’m going to wait until after I get a position as a nurse extern.
School has been good. We’re in med/surg now and this stuff kind of clicks with me. We’re doing the endocrine system, cardiovascular, immune system, etc.
The temperatures are finally dropping a bit so I can go with Miriam to swim before I go to work. I enjoy watching her.
This is my view from where I sit.
Miriam is in the white cap.
. . . Holding her hands up.
Miriam has been taking pictures from the telescope. It’s broken so she’s asking for one for Christmas. The pictures still come out great even though it’s broken!
I studied while watching the World Series game. They had a moving moment during the game that made me cry. Stand up to Cancer gave everyone cards to write names on of people they knew that had cancer. Then they had everyone stand for a few minutes and hold up their cards. It was really emotional. I thought of both Linda and my very good friend, Cecilia, who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer.
On Wednesday, Nov 1st, I had my first med/surg exam. I didn’t do too bad! I scored in the “upper quartile.” I’ll take it! It’s equivalent to an 86%. Fine by me!
Sometimes when I’m at work I like to look around at what jobs banner has available. I found my dream job. It’s in oncology. That’s an area I’m passionate about. It’s in the stem cell transplant unit. I went with Linda once to one of her infusion appointments. I loved the environment, I loved the process, I loved it all. It’s not an exciting area as it is outpatient and people are just hooking up to bags of stuff being infused through a port. But I still loved it! With my masters it could eventually lead to research in that area!
Yesterday, I had my third clinical day. It was great because I got to start an IV and do a straight cath. I did both with success, though my teacher had to do a lot of the “finding” work for the IV. So, I didn’t love it. . . I felt like I should have been excited, but I wasn’t. It also was very painful for me with my EDS to stand over the patient for a long time to find an IV site and to wait for their bladder to drain. I am still in a lot of pain today from it. I think that bed side nursing is physically not something I’m going to be able to do, unfortunately. That also throws out any thought of doing CRNA as well. I’ve spent most of the day kind of coming to grips with that and accepting that I am limited. Going back to the job I found , though, I think the job in the stem cell unit could definitely be realistic for me. It’s outpatient so the patients are mobile. I’m not going to be lifting people, turning people, transferring people, etc. So I am feeling more and more like an outpatient situation is going to be best for me.
On the more silly side of it all, when i did the straight cath I was so nervous that I was clumsy about everything. First I put on sterile gloves that were too small so my hands were all contracted looking. I took those off and went to put on another pair and I dropped them on the floor! Then all I had left were the ones that come in the straight cath kit and I pulled to hard on them getting them on and tore them! My teacher said, “You have to keep going, we’ve already started. Can’t leave the sterile field.” It was embarrassing. But I emptied the man’s bladder so the task was accomplished.
Today as I was still in pain from clinical and wildly depressed, I took the day to just catch up on some things. I went to the plasma center to find out why they are deferring me (low protein—I knew that, but whatever. I’m doing plasma so I can get extra $ for a family vacation. Garren’s biggest anxiety in life is our retirement money, so he doesn’t like to spend money on vacations. So I am doing what I can). Then I went to the dentists office to make our next appointments because I forgot to do that when we left the other day. Then I went to Costco, then Fry’s. Then I went to lunch with Garren. Then Got Miriam from school, then took a nap and now here I am! I just needed to sit with this new realization that I am limited and not going to be able to do all of the things I want to do in life.
Oh, and about clinical. I also left feeling really bad because my teacher was teaching EKG rhythms, but she said something that I could not let go. I’m writing it here so that anyone who might be reading this will please learn from this and please DON’T BE THAT NURSE THAT WE TALK ABOUT IN THE MONITOR ROOM! She said a monitor tech called her and asked her what a paced patient’s underlying rhythm was. And she told them there is no underlying rhythm, that’s why they have a pacemaker. But that is 100% wrong! They can have underlying AFib and heart blocks! The heart goes into AFib as a sort of desperate attempt to make a beat. So little impulses start firing in the atria and it quivers. It kind of has a little freak out. So when a pacemaker is put it, an artificial heart beat is created. But the atria doesn’t know that so it is still firing impulses. The pacemaker will make the rhythm regular, but it won’t stop the atria impulses from firing. That has to be corrected with medication or cardioversion. So you can have a regular paced rhythm with underlying Afib. Here is a picture of it.
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