Clinical Update

I had my first day of clinicals today. I am on a small med-surg floor with fifteen beds. We arrived at the hospital this morning at 0645 (that’s 6:45 AM for all you none military types) and I discovered that, strangely enough I rather like getting up in the wee smalls of the morning.

There was something very adventurous in the air as I climbed the hill from my car to the walk-up emergency entrance of the hospital in the gray morning light.

I soon met my patient and my nurses and both were WONDERFUL.

My patient was a study in enduring and just as content and uncomplaining as could be. I had two nurses working with me, because one of them was getting oriented to the hospital having just graduated from college herself.

It was great to have a nurse who had recently gone through nursing school as well as an older and more experienced nurse b/c they were both sympathetic and both loved students.

I got to give two bed baths as well as change two occupied beds, take out an IV, take vital signs for about 3 different patients,

and… most exciting, give two shots (one IM and one SubQ).

So between that and feeding and repositioning I pretty much was moving all day and the day went by in a flash.

The most difficult things I had to do all day were actually NOT giving the shots, but rather doing a diaper change and pulling medication from an ampule.

The diaper change was rough, because my patient, along with being a real trooper was also, unfortunately, morbidly obese. So in order to change her diaper and her sheets we had to roll her from side to side and tuck her blankets and diaper underneath her.  Then, when we rolled her the other way, we could find the blankets but the diaper had disappeared and in attempting to pull the diaper into position I tore it. So we had to go through the process all over again.

Finally, we got the patient settled and she asked to be scooted up in bed at which point we reached down for the blanket that goes beneath patient’s bottom and allows you to move the patient (called a draw sheet) and realized we had not put one under her, so that involved

more rolling and tugging and finally, finally, we had her all situated.

Withdrawing the medication from the ampule (small glass vial with a breakable top, usually only holds one dose of meds) was difficult because of the filter needle (5 in long plastic needle that filters out any glass fragments when medication is being withdrawn.) The filtration needle kept getting air bubbles in it. I would flick them to the top but when I pushed them out I lost some medicine too… anyway, it was a long and difficult process and I only ended up giving 9 mL instead of the prescribed 10 mL.

Oddly enough, the bed baths and the diaper changes and all were not awkward in the least, even though they involved TOTAL care (if you know what I mean.)

I felt like I was constantly rubbing my hands with antiseptic because you are supposed to put it on when you enter or leave any room! Also, something kind of unexpected but that happened to a few of us today was that after doing bed baths, diaper changes and perineal care all morning

we could barely bring ourselves to eat lunch!

Even though we were starving, and we weren’t really grossed out the food just looked…un-appetizing. And that, combined with the fragrant whif of antiseptic you got every time you brought your hand to your mouth just made it hard to eat.   Despite the difficulties though,

I can’t wait to go back…but unfortunately I have to wait two more weeks to be in the hospital again…ah well, one day, I’m sure I’ll be there all the time!

Filed under: Life, Nursing school , administering shots, ampules, bed baths, clinicals, filtration needles, hospitals, IM, Nurses, Nursing school, shots, SubQ, total care

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Filed under: Life, Moral/Spiritual, Uncategorized , desperate, finding love, love, trust, trusting God

Love What You Do and Do What You Love

I’ve been thinking a lot about the future and specifically my future career as a nurse.

I wonder if I’ve made the right choice or if I will look back, jaded, and shake my head at young idealistic me. What do I hope for this career? What do I hope to be as a nurse?

We had a “Professionalism Forum” on Friday which was really more about patients and caring then professionalism, or at least that’s the way it seemed to me. Then again, maybe caring is really what professionalism is about.

A man got up and spoke about his daughter’s stay in the hospital and eventual death from cancer. As he talked about what the hospital workers meant to his daughter his voice was cracking and he was on the verge of tears and it reminded me, once again, why I wanted to be a nurse in the first place.

Another thing that made me think about my future and how I want to work was a lecture I heard at a campus fellowship meeting. It was by a christian physician in the area and

she asked us if we wanted to bring our christianity into our practice as healthcare professionals.

She mentioned that she has heard of many doctors who are christians but not necessarily good doctors and she has heard of many doctors who are not christians but are excellent professionals.

I also caught the tail end of a sermon by Chip Ingram on the radio and he was talking about work and how you don’t want to waste that part of your life. Think about how much time of your day you spend working-that’s not a time you want to wish away.

So the question is how do you reclaim that time? How do you work so that you can GLORIFY GOD and ENJOY IT?

In Ecclesiastes Solomon says, “Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions and enables him to enjoy them,

to accept his lot and BE HAPPY IN HIS WORK–this is a gift of God.”

In Ephesians and Colossians Paul tells slaves

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.”

Chip Ingram also mentioned in his sermon that we would work in heaven. That’s right, there will be WORK in HEAVEN because you know what,

WE WERE CREATED TO ENJOY WORK and I bet if you think about it you will realize that you do. I know I do.

I pray that God will grant me the gift of enjoying being a nurse and continue to remind me that the reason I got into nursing was not necessarily to be the PERFECT nurse but to love and serve the patients.

Filed under: Life, Moral/Spiritual, Nursing school, Uncategorized , Caring, Chip Ingram, Colossians, Ecclesiastes, enjoying work, Ephesians, heaven, Nurses, Nursing, Professionalism, work

Clinics and Blood and VAMPIRES…(jk about the vampires)

Today I had hospital orientations because I am starting clinicals NEXT WEEK. I am going to be working on the med-surg floor of a privately run hospital in Augusta. There are 8 other girls working at that hospital with me and we all showed up looking like smurfs in our bright blue and white scrubs, fresh faced and eager at 8:00 am (or 0800 in hospital speak).

We didn’t really do much today except look at the computer system and learn a little bit about the hospital protocol.  It didn’t matter though, my heart was still going like a race horse half the time. I don’t know why, but just the thought of dealing with a real live patient still freaks me out. It doesn’t matter that we will only be doing the most elementary stuff like bathing them and taking vitals, I just get really nervous.

Oh and yesterday we took blood.  The official name for it is Venipuncture, in case you ever wanted to know. I practiced once on the plastic hand they had lying on the table and then just decided to go for it. So I tentatively tied the turnaquette (or however you spell that)…swabbed the site…sung happy birthday (to let the alcohol dry, you know)…and stabbed…

AND

no blood. shucks.

I tried again later, same girl, same arm still no blood. Finally I tried on another girl whose vein was just jumping out at me…and I got blood. pshew, I was beginning to question my career choice!

Also learned how to start an IV. Boy, there’s a lot to remember there. Our instructor warned that it would take about five times of actually doing it before we could ACTUALLy do it correctly.

That’s all for now.

Filed under: Life, Nursing school, Uncategorized , clinicals, drawing blood, hospitals, Nursing, nursing students, venipuncture

No, No, That’s Just the Perspective

Losing perspective is a terrible thing and that is exactly what I did yesterday. Well, actually, it started the night before when I saw blue lights in my rearview mirror. It was a dark and rainy night and apparently I was going 21 mph over the speed limit. Yeah, yikes.

The next day I started nursing classes for the fall and I reached a new level of panic as the teachers laid out their plans for this semester. For the first time in my academic career I thought that maybe I was in over my head and I began to picture my life as a bag lady, no degree, no job and no where to go.

Then I tried to order my $300+ worth of books on ebay and received a nonchalant email about the fact that one of the people I purchased a book from was apparently a fraud so I would have to dispute the charge with paypal as well as with my credit card company. This combined with a multitude of other money issues to completely unravel my sanity.

The long and the short of it was that I reached mega-ultra-freaking out levels and completely lost all perspective on my life. I called my mother in tears in the Wal-Mart parking lot and she and my father, bless their hearts, talked my down from the ledge.

So I have spent today struggling, and it has been a struggle, to regain my normal equilibrium and begin to see my life, once again as God sees it.

I feel that there were two main things that I lost sight of in all of this. They are (not necessarily in order of importance):

1. That I am incredibly lucky and blessed to be where I am and to have the family, friends and, yes, material possessions that I have.

2. That the reason that I am alive to begin with is not about my own comforts and needs but that I can glorify God and love the people around me like God does. (This goes along with my newly developed life philosophy which is to see people like God sees people and to love people like God loves people.)

Anyway after reading in Ephesians and contrasting the futility of the “old life” with the renewing of the “new life” I feel that I have been wallowing in old life. I forgot why I was here and what life is all about and I lost all sense of perspective but I thank God for my friends and family and for reminding me through them that HE is what life is about.

“Get rid of bitterness, rage, and anger, slander and CLAMOR, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another…Be imitators of God therefore, as dearly loved children and LIVE A LIFE OF LOVE just as CHRIST LOVED US AND GAVE HIMSELF UP for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” Eph 4:31-5:2

Filed under: Life, Moral/Spiritual, Uncategorized , ebay scams, Ephesians 4, nursing classes, perspective, speeding, tickets

Falling “In Friendship”

I just want to start this out by saying that I have the best friends, possibly, in the history of the world.

I was just trying to think of literary friendships to compare them to in order to explain the magnitude of their friendship but Frodo and Sam or Han and Chewie are the only ones I can think of at  the moment and they don’t even begin to cover it. (However, the fact that they are still friends with me when I whip out such nerd-ish analogies might begin to shed light on the quality of their friendship.)

Anyway, after just finishing a four day trip to Orlando together I have just fallen “in friendship” with them all over again.

Most of my friends have been friends since high school (~10th grade) and when we headed off to college our parents assumed we would grow apart. However that has not been the case. I bless the technological advancements of our time for some of this ability to stay close but I also believe it is because these friends are true quality and our friendship is a gift from God.

This summer scared me a little bit. {Ok, a lot bit.} All of my friends disappeared to far off lands, be it Yemen, a summer camp in Texas, an internship in Florida, film school, EMT training, or hopping between Spain and Mexico. I was forced to move to a new city as well in order to begin nursing school. Much of our communication was cut off because of unreliable cell phones and Internet and I knew that things would change. They would change, I would change and our group dynamic would change.

How could I hope to stay in their lives as they sprinted to adventure with new pals who they would be seeing every day?

I vacillated between fear and bitterness/jealousy.

With much trepidation I said goodbye and wished them oh so well in their new lives…and then…they came back! {or are ALMOST back}

And guess what?

They are more wonderful than ever. It was scary to let them go but their trips and adventures this summer have grown them and changed them in ways they could never have grown here.

They do have new friends, which the selfish side of me resents, but how can I resent what they love and those who have stretched them further toward the loving arms of our God and Father?

Each of my friends have changed but OH what a joy to meet and rediscover the new friendship and the new person welling up in each of them.

Although it was scary and desolate to see them go I am so glad that they have had these “summer-lives” that promise to reshape their “forever-lives.”

So my friends have come back, and I know that NOW is the hard part for them. Its like they have been in a greenhouse of growth and communities and change and new experiences over the summer and now they have been returned to hard dry ground.

“For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen {them} with power through his Spirit in {their} inner being so that…{they} may have the power together with all the saints to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge–that {they} may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God {even though they’re all back home!}” EPH 3:10-19

So I have learned that the best thing about my friends, in a multitude of great things, is that

I can trust them.

I can trust them to love me even after meeting tons of world class, tremendous people. I can trust them to pursue God and His will for us, our friendship and their own paths in life. I can trust them, even when I’m not sure of ANYTHING else.

And most of all, I can trust them TO GOD because he loves them and he loves our friendships and he knows what is the best for each of us, as cliche as that all sounds.

So I thank God, once again, for my friends and for “falling in friendship” all over again.

Filed under: Life, Moral/Spiritual, Uncategorized , change, fears, friends, friendship, Frodo and Sam, Han and Chewie, literary friendships, summer