Last Day of Clinicals Fall Semester

Yesterday was my last day of clinicals for this semester. Wow. Its weird just saying that. I do feel like I’ve come a long way from where I was to start the semester, even just in confidence. I still haven’t gotten to start an IV and now I really need to brush up and practice that.

I wasn’t on the floor, instead I visited Day Surgery. It was very interesting. I  walked in, was introduced to one of the nurses, she made a few phone calls and suddenly I found myself in the Operating Room watching a TOTAL HIP REPLACEMENT. It was pretty surreal. I carefully stood off to the side and tried not to touch anything as the orthopedic surgeons and scrub nurses sterilized everything in sight.

Then the surgery began and the surgeons were cutting carefully through the adipose layer and the muscle layer and pulling the incision wider with metal clamps til the bone was exposed. Having never witnessed a surgery before I wasn’t sure how my stomach would react and the nurse I was shadowing said that some people didn’t know how they would react and if I felt woozy to just step outside, but I never did. Instead I just felt excited and intrigued. It really was the one of the most interesting things I have ever seen. And then they were cutting the head of the femur off. The nurse showed it to me, pointing to where the cartilage had worn away. Then the surgeon used a long gun looking instrument with a rounded piece resembling a cheese grater to hollow away and round the bone so he could fit the replacement in.

They placed a small rough ball in the socket, which one of the surgeons explained to me would allow the bone to grow into it.

And then they were stitching up the wound. It was surprising to me to see the contrast of the surgeons brute force in getting the bone out compared with his intricate skill in stitching up the wound. And that was it. They were done, the wound neatly sutured and stitched up and the woman awakening from anesthesia.

It was amazing.

And that concludes my clinical experiences, fall semester, 2009.

Filed under: Life, Nursing school, Uncategorized , clinicals, Nursing, Nursing school, nursing student, surgery, total hip replacement

A little Sneak Peak

So here’s a sneak peak of (hopefully) my next book review. I loved this excerpt.

“Of the company , only Hamidullah had any comprehension of poetry.  The minds of the others were inferior and rough.  Yet they listened with pleasure, because literature had not been divorced from their civilization.  The police inspector, for instance, did not feel that Aziz had degraded himself by reciting, nor break into the cheery guffaw with which an Englishman averts the infection of beauty.  He just sat with his mind empty, and when his thoughts, which were mainly ignoble, flowed back into it they had a pleasant freshness.

(OK THIS IS THE REALLY GOOD PART, SO LISTEN UP)

The poem had done no “good” to anyone, but it was a passing reminder, a breath from the divine lips of beauty, a nitingale betwen two worlds of dust.”

-A Passage to India by E.M. Forster

This is just a sneak peak because I had to return it to the library–I’m leaving RIGHT now-or pay a fine…so hopefully I’ll check it out again soon and finish it, but for now that’s all I’ve got!

Filed under: Book Reviews, Poems, Uncategorized , A Passage to India, book list, Book Reviews, books, E.M. Forster, India, Poems

Happy

I realized the other day that happiness has become my idol. The deepest desire of my heart was to be happy rather than to praise my Lord and Savior. Still I haven’t been very happy lately. So what’s going on here? I don’t know but praise God that I can cry to Him for help without knowing what’s going on.

Filed under: Life, Moral/Spiritual, Uncategorized , desires, God, happiness, idols, praise, spiritual

A Few Quick Book Reviews

I haven’t read any books from my book list recently but here are some quick reviews of other books I have read recently:

The African Queen: A missionary’s sister and a steamboat mechanic make a treacherous voyage down a river in Africa. A good book, but a better movie (Katherine Hepburn and Humphery Bogart). The characters in the book come off a little different then those in the movie but otherwise the two are very similar.

Nickel Mountain: Follows the twists and turns of life for an overweight diner owner in the catskill mountains. Wonderfully written with unusual and lovable characters but confusing emotionally and spiritually. I definitely recommend reading it. I will probably have to read it again to understand it fully.

Julie: This is probably my favorite of the above three. Written by Catherine Marshall author of Christy. This is the story of a girl growing into womanhood in a small town in Pennsylvania. This story has it all, romance, adventure, suspense.

Filed under: Uncategorized