Spring Is HERE!

I'm so happy that Spring is here! Instead of driving to school between bare brown-gray trees, everything is green. My azaleas in the front yard are blooming.

My wisteria too!

Along with all that blooming comes bees though.....

But it also brings the butterflies!

Happy Spring!

Tests, Tubes and Care Plans

Our last GI test was Monday. I was happy to see GI go. I'm tired of hepatitis, PEG tubes and ulcerative colitis. I made a 92 on that test! Hooray! That is helping my grade a lot. I'm not sure if I will end the semester with an A, but it'll at least be a high B. I'm just glad to have those 76's behind me.
I have a really busy weekend. I'm taking our non-high school kids to Hattiesburg tomorrow to a Youth Extravaganza (sp?), then Sunday, I'm walking the March of Dimes walk in Laurel with our SNO group. Then I have a test Wednesday and then my care plan is due Thursday. We're leaving either late Wednesday night or early Thursday for Vicksburg (Leslie and me) for nursing convention.
I tell you what...the end of the semester is coming WAY faster than I want. I really want more clinical time! I finally feel like I'm getting a handle on things. Nursing school is flying by. Sometimes I think it is whizzing past me as I creep along.
I'll get another post up as soon as possible, but if you check here and see nothing new--just remember my week is really hectic.

Stay tuned...

They're dropping like flies!

I think instead of saying "dropping like flies" it should be "dropping like nursing students". We have lost four students this semester! I really thought that by the time we got through Nursing 1, most of the weeding out would be over--I was wrong! In our nursing building, the classrooms get progressively smaller (ie, NSG 1 has a very large classroom; NSG 2 is almost as big, but not quite; NSG 4 and NSG 5 classrooms are pretty small). Our NSG 2 class had to swap classrooms with NSG 4 because our class is smaller than theirs. One of the girls in my clinical group got swapped to another group to even out the numbers! My clinical group is down to 7 from 9.
NSG 2 has gotten a lot better than it was at the beginning of the semester, but it still is worse than NSG 1. I love (most of) my instructors, but this content is hard.

I've been sitting here for a while reading about kidney diseases. I long since glazed over. I have no idea what this book is talking about. I understand the UTI section, but the nephrotic syndrome and acute and chronic glomerulonephritis sent me for a loop. On top of this, Monday's class didn't lay a very good foundation. We had a student teacher try to teach the class and her powerpoint didn't work, so she pretty much read the slides to us. She needs to work on her transition statements. I never knew when she was changing topics and then got behind in my notes--it was a disaster. An instructor was in there the whole time and kept on interrupting her to try and elaborate on the subject matter. I finally quit taking notes and resolved to just read the sections to get the information.

So, off to school I go. I'm writing a care plan on my patient this week, so I don't know how much time I'll actually have to blog. Maybe some. Leslie is in Texas for a nursing convention, so I'm friendless for the week.

Stay tuned...

How do they get there?

Isn't it amazing how you can lose something and then find it in the refrigerator. My sister has found Optimus Prime in the freezer (her 4 year old wants to cryogenically freeze him) and then Leslie lost her cell phone the other day and then found it in the fridge.
How many of us have done the same thing before? I know I have. What were we thinking?

It has to get worse before it gets better!

Just an update on the purple color of my arm. It looked like this on Easter Sunday and didn't match my dress.

James McAvoy and nasogastric tubes

Today we had NG tube insertion and tube feeding/med checkoff. I spent the night at Leslie's last night so we could practice before our 10:50 checkoff time. I didn't even leave for her house until after church, so I didn't get there until probably 10:15 or after, then we stalled for a little while, then practiced our skills. We both checked off today, which is a relief (just 3 more checkoffs to go--catheters here we come!). This is a really bad picture of Leslie "checking the placement" of my tube, but hey, that's what you get with NG tubes in the middle of the night!

After we practiced our skills, we watched Atonement, the new James McAvoy movie. Leslie and I both really liked him from Becoming Jane (which is my new favorite movie), so yesterday, when Atonement came out on DVD, Leslie was there to get it. It is such a tragic love story--but James McAvoy is VERY easy on the eyes!

Battered and Bruised!

The school has had a blood drive this week, sponsored by the AD Nursing School and the Student Nurse Organization (of which I am the president). So I felt obligated to try and give blood. I normally am rejected due to my eczema or low iron, but I passed this time and they wanted me to give platelets. I agreed and they hooked me up to the apepharesis (sp?) machine. It pulls out whole blood, spins out the different elements and then "returns" the parts that it doesn't want. On the first return cycle, I felt my arm begin to bubble up and immediately told the phlebotomist that the needle had infiltrated and something needed to be done, but instead of pulling it, she put a heat pack on it and tried to force it on through the cycles. Each time, it got worse and worse. Finally, they gave up and pulled it. I did give enough platelets to save for a pediatric patient, but nowhere near the full amount. By the time they finally pulled the needle, I was hurting from my wrist to my shoulder. I went over to the nursing building and found one of my instructors and had her look at my arm and told her what happened. She told me that she had a similar experience, checked me out and told me to take it easy on that arm. I drove home and crashed once I got there--I was beat. Woke up and my arm hurt just as bad. During the night, we had a really bad storm and we lost power, therefore I lost water (I hate wells--I want city water again...oh the wonderful taste of chlorine!). Yesterday morning, it was storming, we had no power or water, and my arm still hurt, so I just went back to bed. Yesterday was the first time I've EVER skipped a nursing class. My arm looked bad yesterday, but looks worse today. See for yourself, although this picture doesn't do it justice...this is the reason that I won't give platelets anymore!

Midterms, Clinicals and Birthdays

I FINALLY MADE IT PAST MIDTERM!!! Sometimes I hit nursing milestones that make me want to sing the hallelujah chorus. I got past midterm. I even made an A on my midterm--a 92 to be exact. That sure did help my grade out a lot! I also got my first clinical paper back and made an A on it. I'm thrilled to be getting my grades back on track. Those first few test grades at the beginning of the semester really got me down. This next week, our clinical groups change. I'm sad to lose my clinical instructor--she's fabulous, but I'm going to another really good one. I also change floors in the hospital. I've been doing clinical on the same floor since Nursing I. I am kinda excited about it though because we spend some time on the cardiac floor. I haven't gotten to see many cardiac patients yet. I think the pace is a bit faster down there too.
The best part about changing clinical groups is that you change clinical times. Before I had clinical from 7am to 11:30am. That meant VERY early mornings. Now I have clinical from 10:00 to 2:30PM. I get a little more sleep this way. It also means that we get to do different stuff. The first group each morning does beds, baths and meds. We will give way fewer meds in the afternoon, plus, we have time to do all the other fun care. We'll have more time to put in catheters, do venipuncture labs and stuff.

Tomorrow is my birthday. But this is the least I've EVER cared about my birthday. Usually I celebrate my birthday for the week before and the week after my actual birthday, but this year, I haven't had time to even think about it. I've been so busy with nursing school that birthday has been the least of my concerns. I will be 28 tomorrow. Not very exciting. I don't think 28 is a milestone for anything. Oh well...

have a great week, Readers.
stay tuned....