Stop and get off of the roller coaster

So what is the deal! I have been going to school for 3 months and I can't stop thinking about even though I am done with the semester. I swear it feel a little anxious. I worry and think about things I should be doing, even though I have no homework or books to read. Its like I just CAN'T sit still. My mind is a buzz about about care plans, patients and medical terminology. When I do sit for a moment, it just doesn't feel right. I am paranoid that I missing something, something that I forgot to do like oh crap, was I supposed to watch a technique video or whatnot. It is super annoying.

FemPop Day

My mind is still buzzing thinking about the awesome day that I had yesterday! Our nursing instructors arranged for us to go down to the OR and see what is going on. I got to witness a Femoral Popliteal Bypass Surgery standing a foot from the table! It was so cool.
For all of you that are not familiar with the human body, I've included a diagram of the leg. The femoral artery starts around your hip and the popliteal starts by your knee. We were sent down to the OR at 7:30 for some orientation and met a wonderful lady named Sharon! She was the best, it was clear that she loves what she does and loves to teach. She was a great help to all of us.
The 1st order of business...change into Surgical Scrubs...the green one like seen on TV and we had to put on one of those bonnet caps. We looked so professional!
2nd order of business...a tour of the place. We saw the in and out of the OR. I was amazed at the size difference in a regular OR room compared to that of a Cardiac OR room. Not only was there a huge size and equipment difference, but a huge difference in temperature as well. Brrr....they keep the Cardiac rooms chilly.
3rd order of business...what kind of surgeries were we all going to see? Out of the group of 6 students, I was the only one that was not hankering to see an Open Heart Surgery (I'd love to see one, but as my 1st experience, I didn't think I could handle that just yet). The other 5 students drew numbers and 2 of them got to get in on the open heart. I got the Fem-Pop.
Before entering the room in my fancy surgical scrubs, I had to wear a mask. There was no need to be gloved, since I was just in there for observation. I started out about 2 foot from the table and couldn't see much of what was going on. So after about 10 minutes, I grabbed a platform and scooted in closer so I could get a look a what was going on.
My eyes got all wide watching the 1st cut on the leg (which was right above the knee), it cut just like butter. Then he (the surgeon) used a large clamp like thingy and spread open the skin and boom he was inside the leg, look for the popliteal artery. I thought he wasn't ever going to get there, it looked as if his whole hand was inside of her leg digging around. There wasn't as much blood as I thought there would be.
After he found the artery, he snipped it and clamped it off. He did some repairs to it to try and free the blockage. He decided that he would need an artificial graft to re-route the artery.
Then he move up the leg to the groin and made an incision there as well. After snipping and clipping away, he made it to the artery. This artery I could actually see because the surgical students/interns heads weren't in my way...I must say it looked nothing like I had imagined it. It kind of looked like a rubber tube. When he snipped that one, blood was gushing out of it like a squirt gun...with every pulse it spurted up about 3 to 4 inches...then they clamped that off too. He went to work on clearing that artery as well. Once he was finished he went back down to the knee.
He attached a graft to the artery, which to me looked like a bendy straw...except the whole thing was like a the bendy part. It had like ridges in it, almost resembling a telephone cord too. He stitched it to the artery and then went back up to the groin with a long metal wand. The wand looked like those really long knife sharpening tools that chefs use in restaurants. He went in her groin and "tunneled" all of the way down to her knee (that was the only part that made my heart skip a beat). He then attached the already attached graft to the rod and pulled it up under the skin (actually under the adipose tissue and the muscle I believe) and then attached it to the other artery with stitches as well.
The nurse then brought over a Doppler and we listened for blood flow. It sounded like the whoosh whoosh of baby heart beat ultrasound, but WAY louder. Then the surgeon left, he left the student/intern close her up. She had 3 layers of inner stitches and then staples. At that point I had been standing on my little stool for 2.5 hours and I had to go to lunch...they were just starting to stitch up the upper leg when I left. I wish I could have seen the patient after recovery.
It was such a cool day! I am so glad I had to opportunity to see such a thing.

Turkey Smurky

AH Thanksgiving....
This year it will be at our house for the 1st time ever. I am so afraid, I've never cooked a Turkey. Good thing, this was Chris' idea and he's gonna cook the turkey. I'll handle the simple stuff like yams (gross) and green bean casserole.

Looks like we might have a few orphans this year at our house. I can't imagine not having a family around to go to. Not that I mind in the least having people over, I just think it'd be sad to not have any family nearby. The more the merrier I say. Come hang out with the crazy Polacks!

Chris decided that after dinner we will watch some Christmas movies. I hope Elf makes the cut, it is one of my favorites of all time. It will be SO weird to not have to go ANYWHERE on a holiday...i just don't know what I am gonna do with myself.

I am an addict

Ok, maybe it is time for me to admit that somewhere down there, I have an addictive personality. I've been denying it for years, but I am an addict.
My latest addiction, which is turning into an ugly monster is fafarazzi. Its like fantasy football with celebrities. You draft them and trade them when they aren't scoring you many points. I had read about it on a news blurb a while back and decided to check it out. Man oh man, is it addicting. The desire to win my league is what motivates me, if I am not in at keast 4th place, I keep messing with my team to get a higher score. Now before all of this fafarazzi business, I wasn't very interested at all in the lives of celebrities. But now I can tell you who's in jail, who's got a DUI, who's having a baby and who is getting together. And whether I want to admit it or not, I can tell you all about the ups and down of brittney spears. She is such a train wreck. Sadly, i can't manage my time well enough to do household chores, but I can park my hiney in front of my computer to check my fafa teams everyday....how sad is that!

Stressed out to the max...

So I would consider myself a pretty tough cookie. I generally roll well with the punches and shrug things off. But I am super duper frustrated with school.

Last week we started our Acute Care Clinical rotation and it was tough. So tough that on my 2nd day, I cried all of the way home and wanted to quit. I know, that's so not like me. Which is exactly why it is so hard. I feel so unprepared to even be in the hospital. I feel like I haven't learned any skills and that I am just plain old lost.

So here is how my crappy ass day went. Our 1st day at the hospital was Thursday. We got oriented to the hospital, out instructors and to the floor that we'd be working on. It was all talk talk talk so it was pretty tiring. After lunch, were assigned our patients for the next "2" days. Awesome. Right away I began the work that I needed to complete. I looked through my patients chart and gathered all of the info that I needed to get familiar with him. I had even begun to think about what I was going to go for a care plan. I went in to meet him and it was all good. He couldn't speak, so I couldn't get any info from him. It was going to be strictly me and the charts, no problem, I could had that. We only had about an hour or so to look at the charts and gather the information. I got the bulk of what I needed, I could get the rest the next day.

Well surprise, surprise....I am the only person out of our group of 6 that's patient left the floor. On Friday morning, I was assigned a new patient, I had to start all over from scratch.

Ok cool, I can handle that. Starting over from scratch, no big deal. Deep breath, dive into the chart. New patient, not as many issues as the last one I had, so its looking good. Strike 2...my new patient has already received AM Care (bed bath, changing the sheets, oral care), my instructor gives me another patient to do that for. I am supposed to gather my supplies and meet her in the room. I feebly attempt to get some info on this patient...I don't even know his name or why he's there. Well she's rushing me because we are on a tight schedule and I go in pretty much blindly. Lucky me (and lucky her I might add), I get paired up to do this AM care with another girl who has absolutely no experience (just like me). Mind you, there are 4 other people in our group who all work in a patient care settings, but that's cool pair up the two "green" girls who have absolutely no idea what they are doing, we will do the best we can. We gather up our stuff and we start our care. Surprise patient is roughly 300 lbs, short of breath, has an NPO (no food) tag on his door. NPO?, I think, why does he have a breakfast tray? I ask the nurse and she says its OK for him to have food.

We do the bath to the best of our abilities. He can't lift his leg for us to soak his feet, he can turn for us to wash his back, he's breathing so heavily I was starting to get nervous. Surprise, we roll him, he has a fecal back and it is leaking all over the place. Argh...now what do we do. We get our instructor and he helps turn him so I can clean him up (now its not pleasant to clean up a person, but it really doesn't bother me). Well i was expecting a bed bath, not to have to use 20 wash clothes to quite literally clean up all of that poop. I definitely wasn't prepared. When the instructor came in she was all disappointed with us. We weren't doing the bath properly, we didn't have the soiled linen bag prepared, we didn't have all of the answers she wanted. Now it was time to change his bed which became another task. I didn't have the bed high enough to use proper body mechanics (but I did, my instructor is like a foot taller than me) , I didn't use proper asepsis (clean technique) and I didn't know how to change a gown with an IV. I KNOW how to change a gown with an IV, but not an IV that is running through an infusion pump. Finally we got out of that guys room. The PCA comes by and reminds me that I need to get rid of the soiled linen. Ooops! I put it in the wrong room. I put it out for the garbage, not for the soiled linen. No biggie, I go garbage picking and put it where it needs to go.

Huge SIGH!!!

Now I can get to MY own patient. I go in to see her, she's totally zonked out. I try to wake her, but she's not responding. I tell her that I need to get get vitals (like she can hear me) and I proceed with getting them. Not too bad. I had to get her temperature under her arm, because she was not awake/alert enough for me to get it orally. While she's sleeping I do my baseline assessment to the best of my ability. I get about 80% of it done, I can get the rest when she's awake. I report to my instructor the vitals and she has me contact the nurse for my patient because she has a fever. I find him and we go in the room. She's still zonked out, but we (actually, he the RN) needed to do a neurological check on her. She shook her arm, poked her in the chest to get her to awake up. After a few very "rough" tries, she was wearily awake. So response to any questions except her name...which was VERY hard to understand. I watch him do the neurocheck and then get pulled away from my patient to go help another student do her AM care on her patient. I reported my vitals to my instructor and got grilled on why I didn't take the temp orally. Duh...I can't get my patient to open her mouth!

Good news, he's not 300 lbs, but he only has one leg, can't talk and can't move his right side. We can handle this. We get our supplies ready and in walks the RN and she needs to do the IV change...do do do do, we wait 15 minutes for then to get all of their stuff done and we can finally begin. It going well, no issues. We are doing a bath like we learned in the lab. But of course, there is a problem...of course there is a problem. He has a brief and its full. I never learned how to change a brief so I have no idea how is the best way to do it. Poor guy has 2 amateurs that have no clue working on him. We undo the brief and we can't get it off, the tape is sticking to his skin. So now we are all concerned about his skin because that one of the biggest issues we've learned about in class. We don't want to pull too hard and tear his skin, but we can't get this sucker off. We HAVE to find SOMEONE that can help us. Hooray, we find a nurse to come to our rescue and help is out. But alas, our troubles aren't over, we start making his bed and we can't get the sheets to go on. Now the patient is getting irritated and we are feeling defeated. We both want to cry. And surprise...here comes our instructor its time for lunch and we need to hurry. I make light of the situation with the patient and tell him that he'll have a story to tell about the two dumb blonde's that can't even make his bed. He smiles and it makes me feel better.

Finally with a lot of muscle, we tug and pull the sheets on and get the bed made. We thank the patient for being so agreeable and we promise not to bug him anymore for a few hours.

Hallelujah....its lunchtime. HUGE SIGH!!!

After lunch its back at it. I need to get vitals again. I go in and my patient is now awake. Poor thing is so confused. I smile at her and ask her if I can get her temperature. She nods her head yes...but I can't get her to open her mouth. I try for 10 minutes asking her and demonstrating what I want her to do, but she's not responding. So I go for the underarm again. I report my finding to my instructor and again I get grilled about the axillary temp reading. Do you think if I could have gotten the temp orally, I would have? Then I could save myself the BS, from you that I am going to have to listen to. She then asks me if I've moved my patient. No...I say, she's been just about comatose all day and you didn't want us to do a transfer without you there. She gives me that disappointed look again, GRRR. So we go into to move her and the patient just keeps saying, Ms., Ms, that hurts, like 50 times. I swear that was the only time I heard her talk all day and clearly for that matter. So as my instructor is pushing and pulling her, she keeps saying how badly it hurts. We roll her so I can see the ulcers she has on her back and she has a full brief. Hallelujah we were in a time crunch, so I just had to tell the PCA. But we didn't end up even turning the patient at all because it hurt her. It was about time for the day to be over and all we had left was post conference.

I cried all the way home, I felt so defeated. I hope it gets better and easier.

Gays doing Karoke

So I got off work early on Friday night and called up my friend Juston. He usually bowls on Friday night in a Gay league, so I figured that I'd likely be able to catch him hanging out up there. He texted me and said that his league was almost over and that he'd be hanging out there for a while for Karaoke. He was like you can totally sing Karaoke with me...and I was like Um no...I can make fun of you singing Karaoke!
Well after the league ended the bar was filled with a myriad of lesbo mullets, manly chicks, a cross dresser and some very flaming gays. Well who knew gay Karaoke would be such a big hit. Many of the singers even got back-up dancers for their songs. It looked like Gladys Knight and the Gays. Everyone was very supportive of everyone else and there was lots of hooting and hollering. One guy even changed the words to Darling Nikki, to Darling Jason, lol.
After a while Juston and I decided to play Erotic Photo Hunt on the Megatouch machine (we of course were using pictures of dudes!). We never did cover the top 1st place spot, but we were close. It was fun.

Who knew I'd have so much fun!!!

So today was my 2nd day at the nursing home for clinical rotation. I HAD A BLAST!!! I never thought in a million years that I'd ever actually say I enjoyed myself while I was there, but I did.
The day started off kind of slow. I went to check on my assigned client for the day and she was a sleepy and not very responsive. We had met yesterday breify and I told her that I would be coming by today to work with her. As I went in I brought her, her breakfast tray and asked her if she needed any helo with anything and she said "no", kinda of sternly, but not offensive. So I let her eat breakfast in peace and let her get dressed. Well while I was waiting for her to get ready, I offered to help deliver breakfast trays to other rooms. Well I only got to deliver one tray. I went into a room and brought Mr. "D" his breakfast. He was awake, but not quite ready to get up. He didn't want his breakfast, he wanted to talk. So I stayed with him and talked with him for a while. He gave me the abridged version of his life and then asked me a bunch a question about myself and why I wanted to become a nurse. He seemed happy, but lonely. He said that he has no appetite and all they feed him in this place is "old people food", which made me chuckle. I slid him his bowl of raisin bran and said..."you can't go wrong with raisin bran, how is that old people food"? We laughed and he said he liked cereal alright, but he was not gonna eat thos gross eggs! I found him to be very enjoyable to talk with, I wished I had more time to talk with him. I hope he is there when I go back next week. I just made myself my 1st new friend for the day and it was only 8 am.
I checked back in my patient for the day and she was up and ready to go. I offered to make her bed and accepted graciously. After that was done, she had a question about how to use her cell phone and I helped her program the numbers in it that she needed. Then we were down to business. She wanted to know what the plan for today was. So I explained to her what I wanted to do with her and asked her if it was OK. She was totally cool with it all. I looked over her chart yesterday and just had some holes in some of my paperwork that I needed to get answered. She answered all of my questions with great detail and was very friendly. THen she let the whole class and my instructor come in and watch "me" do her vital signs and baseline assessment. As we were wrapping up the OT gal came in to take her to therapy.
We were just wrapping up with taking Blood pressure and she had all kinds of wonderful tips for us and explained everything is great detail about what we should and shouldn't do. She went over the skin assessment with us told us things we might have missed.
I went with her down to the PT/OT room and it was jammed packed!! I'd say most of the residents in the place were going in there for some sort of rehab. It was very cool. They made her lift weights, stand and rotate a hula hoop through her hands and then made her manipulate a bunch of silly putty to get all kind of "hidden" items out of it. The therpist was awesome and explained to me why she was having JC (my lady) do all of those things. JC was in this place because she had just had a left hip replacement about 10 days ago. She's 78. This is her 2nd hip replacement, she had the other one done about 8 years ago. While she was doing her exercised we chatted about her life and I asked her all kinds of questions. We talked about travel and all of the places we've been. She told me that if she was confident enough that she could get back in the boat, she wanted to go white water rafting again! I thought it was very cool.
She has made some friends in the home and I was chatting with them as well. I learned about their ages, why they were there and I even got to speak some German with one of them. By the time I left PT (JC was still working out), I had made myself 3 more friends that day.
After lunch, we basically focused on paperwork, which was fairly easy to complete. A couple of the other students didn't get a chance to perform a baseline assessment on their clients because they either refused, or they had other appointments for the day. My instructor thought that it was pretty important for the others to have an opportunity to do a baseline, so I went into the rooms of each of my new "friends" and asked them for permission to let another student do their baseline assessment. They happily agreed.
It was a great day, I almost wish I was going back tomorrow .