Bittersweet Moments in Life

I have officially completed my first round of clinicals.




Without killing a single soul.



It's a bit nervewracking to have to be responsible for a very sick person all by yourself for an entire eight hour shift but by golly I did it. For six weeks. Go me. And it wasn't always pretty. I've never seen so much stool and urine in my entire life. I'm officially a pro at cleaning feces and urine in under 5 minutes. Bring it onnnnnn.

Enemas? Totally not my cup of tea.

Anyways, today was our last day of clinicals and we had a little celebration with donuts and cookies and banana bread (Major yum) and we got our clinical instructor a group gift for putting up with our incompetent asses.

Observe.

Our patient and ever loving mother bird. Shelia.

Mother hen and her brood.

Plus me... lookin' like I'm straight off a Robinson Crusoe raft.

It was pretty exhausting but I think we all got the hang of things towards the end and I've definitely gotten a lot more comfortable in the hospital setting.

Which takes me to my next set of news......




I GOT THE JOB IN THE PULMONARY STEP DOWN UNIT!!!!!!

I am super stoked! It was my first choice unit and I've been trying to get a student nurse extern position for quite some time now. As an added bonus, I don't have to start until September 1st, which lets me enjoy the entire summer! (Oh happy day! Oh happy day! Oh happy dayyyyy!) This is pretty major because it will not only get some much needed experience onto my resume but also will significantly boost my chances of getting an RN job in intensive care and thus pave my way to grad school! Thank you Hay-zeus! Brian is pretty happy for me and he's been so encouraging and supportive during my interviews and application processes.... Couldn't have done it without cha babe! :)

Countdown to Vancouver -- 6 days!

Goooooooddd Morninggggggg Neverlandddddd!

Holy cow, internet world.

It's 9:30 pm and I have just risen from a 4 hour afternoon hibernation sesh. Talk about feeling like you're in the twilight zone.

But in my lazy bear defense, it's not just me. These early morning clinicals are seriously draining even though they really aren't too high stress. My girl Ashley who is in clinicals with me just texted me saying that she fell asleep at the pool. Anneliese who NEVER takes naps took two naps last week. I think all of our bodies are just in shock from waking up at 5AM.

For those unfamiliar with what "clinicals" are, they're semesters of in-hospital training days where you get assigned one or two actual patients on the floor and you are their sole care-provider for the day. Here's a snippet of what my day was like today:

- Haul ass to my unit because I am officially 7 minutes late at 6:37 am.
- Dash in to my patient's room to get her vital signs (Blood pressure, oxygenation levels, pulse, breaths per minute, etc).
- Patient needs more crackers, ginger ale, extra maple syrup
- Chart chart chart.
- Get nurse's report
- Review patient's history, consultations, allergies, etc, etc, etc. Nothing too unusual: history of depression, drinks a pint of alcohol a day, smokes a pack of cigarettes a day, schizophrenia, going through a messy divorce, lawyer found patient sitting in a pile of her own feces and called 911.
- Time to prep medications. My patient has 12.
- Time to give patient her bed bath and change her linens. She is not compliant and puts up a fight. I call for backup.
- My instructor goes in with me and pretty much says, "You're getting a bath whether you want it or not." You'd think the patient would enjoy the bed bath. It's pretty much a free sponge bath. You just have to lay there.
- I have a difficult time bathing this woman. She keeps falling asleep on me and I have to manually turn her 250 pound body. I'm sweating up a storm under my isolation gear and face mask (The patient is under isolation precautions because she has a bacterial infection that spreads rapidly and causes seriously loose stools).
- I change her out of her stool stained gown and realize she has a diaper-rash like irritation all over her lower flank and buttocks. Turns out she has a fungal infection.
- I cream up her affected area with some topical antifungals and change her sheets.
- Chart chart chart.
- Another round of medication administration
- Lunch time!
- After lunch, things aren't as busy and the day is pretty much over. I empty the patient's foley catheter, empty her nephrostomy bag (she had a kidney obstruction) and clear her IV lines.
- The patient complained of her pain being a 6 on a scale of 1-10 and so I gave her some percocets and it knocks her right out.
- I give my report to the nurse who is taking over after me.
- End of the day meeting with my clinical group and instructor to recap on how our shifts went, turn in our assignments.
- FREEDOM!!!

Never a dull moment in nursing. And tomorrow I get to do it all over again. Lucky for me, my weekends start on Thursdays so I'll be back to summertime shenanigans after tomorrow!