Madonna's Hard Candy isn't doing it for me. Yes, there are a couple fun songs (thanks JT!), but otherwise it's not all that.

As long as I'm confessing, I might as well let it all out...

In the current battle of Pop Divas, there is a clear winner for me - Kylie. Her new album, X, is full of fun, upbeat, light music that is full of such joy. I can't stop listening to it. Literally. It's all I want to hear. At the gym it is my cardio workout. On the train to school, it keeps me awake. 



Oh, and then there are her videos. They put Madonna to shame. 
And finally, JT. Madonna may be using him to pump life into her career, but Kylie sampled his talents first...

Now if Kylie would only tour the US...I'd sell an organ and/or limb (or a family member) to go to that show. Madonna be damned (yes, I said it, so there!).

I realized, as I read this story:

Who should doctors let die in case of a pandemic?

my indoctrination as a nurse is pretty much complete. Not only did I react to the fact that rather than do the story from the angle of who should get care first rather than who they should just let be, but when I saw "To prepare, hospitals should designate a triage team with the Godlike task of deciding who will and who won't get lifesaving care.." my first thought was..

DUH!! THAT"S WHAT TRIAGE IS YOU FUCKING IDIOT REPORTER.

(see, I told you the indcotrination was nearly complete).

It's been awhile since I posted about classes. Only two more weeks until Finals - woohoo!!

Clinicals are going great - last Friday I spent the shift following a nurse in Pediatric Oncology. Once again, all the nurses there were amazing. She had me giving meds and eyedrops, and otherwise helping with her patients. One of the nurses offered to be my preceptor also :-)
And, as with my time in the PICU, I felt like I had found a place where I could easily work. Yes, it can be difficult, but the parents and kids I interacted with were all incredible - strong, funny, caring, and had developed strong relationships with the nurses. And I like that - I like the idea of getting to know a child and family and helping them over a course of time, seeing the progress (and setbacks). Just one more reason for me to get a job at CHO.

The Wednesday before I went on my first pre-natal visit with Ami, the midwife/classmate I'm apprenticing with this July. The couple were great, the husband was VERY happy to have another guy there. I'll be visiting them again and there when she gives birth. :-)

Otherwise school has been moving along. One of the things we had to do this part of the semester was participate in a Simulation Lab (with a robot baby hooked to a PC). At first we were all annoyed - but turned out that it was a decent experience. We got ot do a lot more hands-on stuff that we would never get to do in the hospital. And in one of the simulations (where I was the parent), the baby coded and then flatlined. Even though the baby was fake, it was still difficult. No one wants to experience a child dying while they give their best effort to keep them alive - but it happens, and I think it was great that they had us experience it in a safe setting. (The downside to the sim lab was the tech guy - he was beyond annoying...).

Now it's just two more weeks of classes and clinicals, then a week of Finals. My last Final is May 23rd. Then summer break starts - woohoo!! I can almost taste the freedom now. :-)

Oh, and on May 23rd, it will be exactly one year until I graduate....it won't get here soon enough.

I am way past due on a Nursing school update, I know.

But in the meantime, tonight I decided to do my catching up with Oprah - from Earth Day two weeks ago.

Without expecting to, I fell more in love with Julia Roberts AND Sandra Bullock watching this episode (who knew they were so fucking GREEN?!)

Yet the moment that really got me was Oprah introducing Oscar and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Former VP Al Gore. I literaly teared up - thinking for one brief, shining moment, what our country and planet would look like today if he had been (rightfully) in power these last 8 years. 

Then he talked about his new campaign, which includes a commercial with Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson. On a couch. Together. Laughing. And agreeing.

God, it still hurts thinking about all we have lost...   

:(

 This afternoon, I finished my second week of clinicals.

What a week.

Thursday night my patient was a very sweet 11-yr old girl who had an appendectomy earlier that morning. Her parents were great, she was great. I spent a lot of my time talking with her parents about what their daughter needed to do before they would let her go home - eat, drink, take oral painkillers, walk around. My favorite part of the night? Getting the questions from the parents and knowing what the answers were. It was another step in my feeling like a bonafide nurse.

Friday night was an entirely different story. When I arrived at the unit, I discovered my patient from the night before had already discharged during the day. So I had to pick a new patient on the spot. I opted to go with my previous patient's roommate, who I had met the night before briefly. If I had only known....

She was a 12-yr old who has been there for 3 months due to being traction after an auto accident. Her parents don't visit often. And she has been isolating herself. So I figured my night would involve just hanging out and keeping her company, trying to get her out of her room to socialize some. If it had only been that easy! This 12-yr old girl tried my patience all night - and she knew she was. She did everything in her power to get me to leave her alone. I knew she was testing me, seeing how much I would take before abandoning her. So I persevered. When we ended up playing cards for a couple hours before I went to dinner, I figured I'd won her over. But when I returned she was back to her behavior from the start of my night. (I now realize it may have been that I decided to leave her for dinner..but that's life). When I went to take her vitals and do an assessment at the end of my shift, she did all she could to avoid it, to interfere. I had to take her blood pressure twice (when she complained about a mark from the cuff, my response was. "Well, if you had let me do it right the first time instead of playing with it, that woudn't have happened"). I had to demand she place the temp probe under her tongue. When I asked her to put the prescribed lotion on her foot, and she refused, my response to her was, "It's ordered by your doctor for now. You can do it, or I can do it. But either way, it's going to get done. You decide".

Yes, my patience (which the mother of the girl in the bed next to my patient complemented me on) had worn out. And the inner parent I didn't know existed emerged. It was a great learning experience, if not a tad exhausting.

The highlight though was my day today. I got to follow a nurse (who is also an instructor) for the day in the Pediatric ICU. I was basically there for an entire shift - 7am to 3pm. And I got to do a lot more than just observe - I gave meds, changed diapers, took vitals, changed IV tubing and fluids, charted, and followed the head ICU doc and residents on their rounds around the unit. I LOVED IT!!! The nurses get only 1 or 2 patients. The kids all have differeing diagnoses (both of the ones I helped with were in for post-cardiac surgery issues). My favorite of the day was the 3-month old with Down's who had just had surgery to correct a coarctation of his aorta. He was adorable. Oh, and he loved me! Every time I approached him, he's turn to stare at me. My nurse and his mother both commented on it. At one point we were all trying to get him to stop crying,the mom rubbing is back, the nurse holding is hand, and me rubbing his head. The two of them stopped and I kept rubbing...and the kid stopped crying. :-)

It's days like today that prove to me that I have made the right choice in career. And, as I have done before, I came home declaring that I had found where I wanted to work. But today it was more obvious for me than other days. Not only did I have a great day on the unit, but I also got a chance to spend time talking with different nurses about their experiences on the unit and at the hospital. I chatted with a nurse who started in Pediatric Oncology (where I will be observing this coming Friday), and nurses who have been there for 3 years as well as 25 years. And I got along great with all of them. It just felt so comfortable being there. I also learned that the nurses at CHO all have to float among all the units (except the ED), no matter which one they work in.

Driving home today from the hospital, the sun shining on me, I thought to myself, "Hmmm. If I was working there, this is the drive home I'd be making each day." and then, "Wow. This is what it's like to find what you were meant to do. Lucky me!".

Now to make sure that for my preceptorship next Spring, I get PICU or NICU.

I just came across this clip of a young boy on Britain's Got Talent...

I know I'm prone to getting teary over Oprah and AT&T commercials...but this.

This boy had me a weeping mess.

Today was the first time I got to spend a second day with a client. It was a great experience.

It was nice to walk into the hospital and not only already know what was going on with my patient, but also already have started to build a relationship with her and her parents. It made going into her room and working with her so much easier.

I also learned today that sometimes success as a nurse is achieved in small steps, and the little things can totally make your day. My patient today hadn't been eating or drinking anything. I had tried most of the afternoon. At 4pm she barely took her oral pain meds. By 8pm she still had drank almost nothing. It was getting very frustrating that no matter how hard I tried, she just didn't want to. At 8pm we gave her another dose of Tylenol elixir, and when it went down easily she suddenly was excited to drink. I got her to drink more than she had all day for me - and to eat a small amount of chocolate ice cream. It made my night!!

Watching my instructor interact with my patient, and talking to her about how to work with a child to get them to take meds, I picked up so many tips and techniques. Listening to the RNs at the Nurses Station talk about patients and share info, I learned more new things.

At the end of the shift, I had to sit and wait for my ride/classmate as he talked with our instructor about a bad experience he had in the ED today. As I waited I sat at the Nurses Station, studying for the Peds test I have on Wed morning. At one point the Unit Coordinator asked if i was just hanging out because I like them so much. LOL I said I was wating for my ride, but I also like being there. Her response? Good! :-)

This was a great first week in the Peds unit. Hopefully it will continue next week. The one big challenge I see is not so much working with the kids, but also working with difficult/controlling/neurotic/anxious parents. That will definitely take me time to get used to. 

Just like in Maternity, I am feeling like I am where I'm supposed to be. If this feeling lasts throughout the rest of the semester, I'm going to have to make some decisions about where I really want to work...

There could be worse things to have to worry about.

Ok, so it wasn't that bad. Not at all actually.

Today was my first full day in the hospital for my Pediatric clinical rotation. Going over to the hospital, I was a bit nervous. I didn't have a patient yet (I went early to get one), and it being my first day, I really didn't know what to expect from the nurses and the patients and the instructor.

Well, they all proved to be pretty amazing. My patient had been admitted to the floor after surgery to remove her tonsils and adenoids. She was 6 (almost 7) and totally reminded me of my oldest niece. One of the first things I did was crouch down next to the bed so I was on eye level with her, and tell her I had my tonsils out at 5. Her eyes got big as disks. She was having a hard time talking (due to the swelling from the surgery), but I could imagine her surprise that anyone as old as me could ever have been as young as her. :-)

Most of my day was spent just checking in on her while she slept, and checking in on mom as well. The rest of my time was spent charting and doing a scavenger hunt, helping classmates, and having some great conversations with my clinical instructor. This instructor looks to have the potential to be the BEST INSTRUCTOR I have had yet in clinicals. She is always there, already has given us feedback on our charting, and is always there to answer questions and give us support when we need it. I let her know at the end of the night how much I appreciate it and how I've never had this level of involvement from a clinical instructor.

Then there was my nurse. She let me do my thing, taking care of all the vitals and assessment and charting on my patient. She also appreciated when I pointed out things in the charts I was questioning (missing info, incorrect info). And each time I did, it turned out that I was right to bring it up. :-)

Tomorrow I go back to the same patient (and the same nurse). Which is also a new thing for us - the same patient two days in a row. Which is great because it gives us a chance to build a bond with the patient as well as the family - just like we would if we were nurses on the floor.

The thought of only getting 4 weeks to do this now really points out how much we are going to miss....but at least I get to spend a day in Oncology and another in Pediatric Intensive Care (where she told me that since I'm following another instructor, I might actually get the chance to do more than just observe!!!)

Oh, one of the many conversations I had with my instructor today involved our final semester preceptorships. She basically told me that if I want to do Peds or PICU or NICU that I could do it - all I have to do is be assertive and let it be known that that's where I want to be placed (rather than MedSurg, which holds no appeal to me whatsoever). And she also said that most hospitals tend to hire the students who do their preceptorships there, especially if in a specialty area (and Peds is considered a specialty). YAY!!!

As this anniversary of the day of my birth comes to a close, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for their well wishes (except for a certain queen and her Photoshop skills...love ya!).

To finish this day off, I thought I'd post ecards from my favorite website that I figured my "friends" would have sent me...

















and finally...

Karma gave me an early birthday gift tonight...

Charlton Heston died



(Hey, I know it's not nice to take joy in one's passing...but the world is a better place without him. If he hadn't been such a vocal proponent of the NRA, I'm sure there would be hundreds (maybe thousands) of people alive today. So, yeah, his passing is a gift - not just for me, but for so many others)

 This week was supposed to mark the beginning of my second round of clinicals for this semester - Pediatrics. Which it did...sort of.

The Monday before Spring Break we had a meeting to prepare us for clinicals and to meet our instructors. At this meeting we had a small bomb dropped on us (it was dropped on the clinical instructors as well) - the school had to pull all clinical groups out of SFGH due to low census numbers (not enough patients for the 10 students) and therefore had to move them to all the other clinical groups. Which is fine..except that my clinical already had 10 people, and now had 13. And Children's Hospital Oakland (CHO) only allows 8 students at a time on the floor. So there was a problem.

And how did the School of Nursing address this problem? They decided to launch their Simulated Lab a semester early...which means I got to spend two days this week in a trailer with 9 other classmates running simulations with a computer and a robot baby. Which could be very cool except this is the SFSU School of Nursing we are talking about here...and they really weren't ready to do this, thus we are their guinea pigs as they develop this program. (Oh, and the husband and wife team are too much...and not in a good way. She's the nurse, he's the techie. And he is one big annoying fuck. Ugh!!)

Also this week was supposed to be two days of Orientation at the hospital itself. But thanks to this new Sim Lab thing, we missed the first day yesterday (we're actually not supposed to go to clinicals AT ALL the weeks we are doing the Sim Lab). But the 4 of us who missed yesterday went over this afternoon for the last day of Orientation.

OH MY GOD!! After 4 hours with the instructor, I am SOOOOOO excited about this clinical. Yes, I will get less time on the unit than I would like, but at the same time I can see that I am going to learn so much. Today she spent over an hour doing something no instructor yet has done - she showed us how to fill out the paperwork, how to properly do all the documentation we need to do. 

And then she handed out the schedule for the semester. Unlike many of my classmates in this clinical, I get to rotate off the unit to do two days of observation, in the two areas I wanted most - Pediatric Intensive Care (PICU) and Pediatric Oncology. Yeah, I know neither is going to be particularly easy, but I do know that after my time in the NICU earlier this semester I had to experience the PICU. And at the same time there is something about Pediatric Oncology that I'm drawn to...as hard as it may be at times, I also know that I will learn so much from the kids and their families. And in both cases, there is something about knowing these children (and their families) need excellent care and attention that appeals to me. Plus the fact that I HATE seeing any child suffer and would do all I could to help fix that.

Stay tuned...

This afternoon I got a message from someone I don't know on Daddyhunt to give me a heads up.

Turns out some guy in UK is using my pictures in his profile...lonelymicheal

Oy.

I sent him two messages to remove them, as well as messages to Customer Service.

The really sad thing? He has other pictures (which may or may not be him) that look nothing like me...at all!

I know imitation is a form of flattery...but this shizz is crazy!!

Incredible food.

Lots of drinking.

Hot, friendly men galore.

Good friends to share it with.

Who knew Dallas (let alone Texas) could be so much fun?!?!?

Thanks to Shannon and Rick for shedding new light on the big D.

Thanks to Henry for being part of a great weekend.

And thanks most of all to my hubby, the ever-adorable

smiley_kiley. You make every vacation one to remember baby!!

 

I'm officially on Spring Break! (ok, it doesn't really start until after my class tomorrow, but I'm skipping it so smiley_kileyand I can head to Dallas early tomorrow morning to visit daltxbear1and builtbyrick - yay!!)

Got through all my midterms fine - happy with how I did. 

My instructor for Maternity clinicals has already posted our grades - A! :-)

Pediatric clinicals is going to be a whole different story than any of my other clinicals, for several reasons. We had our orientation on Monday afternoon, and a small bomb was dropped on us. We already were aware that one of the clinical sessions (at SFGH) had been cancelled and those students spread out among the other clinicals. Which means my clinical went from 10 students to 13...far too many to be on the floor at one time (the hospital like only 8 at a time). So, what this means to us is that for 4 days, we will be in the new Simulation Lab here on campus instead of on the floor. Add in the off-unit rotations, and we will each be lucky to spend 6 to 8 days on the floor...not really enough to do much, in the opinion of most of us.

One good thing? I am likely going to be spending an entire day following a nurse in the Pediatric ICU. Yay!! :-)

In other good news, last weeked I met with my classmate, Ami, and her business partner about apprenticing this July with them. It's a go! There are already at least two couples who have said they would be happy to have me there - and two others who just want to meet me first. What will this look like for me? I'll go to at least one, if not more, pre-birth checkups with the parents, getting to know them and letting them get comfortable with me. Come July, I will be on call to go with Ami or Nancy to the births of the couples who have agreed to have me there. Once at the birth I will be assisting, in whatever capacity I am comfortable with - from taking basic vitals, to taking care of the baby once delivered (bathe, vitals, shots, etc). The two of them said that if I see something I would like to do, to take the initiative, and if it's not appropriate for me to do (as a student basically), then they will say so. Otherwise, there are no limitations. 

I'm excited and nervous at the same time about the apprenticeship - I really want to do this, but I also know that being in someone's home as they give birth is going to be a whole different experience than in the hospital - namely the fact that these will all be natural births, which I have yet to experience. July is going to be interesting, that's for sure!!