La-de-da

I am proud of myself. This past Wednesday I braved the dreaded treadmill for the first time in six months (too long, I know)!! I didn't even PLAN to do it, I was about to get in the shower and decided to hop on the treadmill for a few minutes beforehand. That turned into 30 minutes and almost 2 miles (because Scrubs was on TV, hehe). :-) I know, 2 miles in 30 minutes is not particularly great, but at least I did something. Yay me!

Hmmm, what to write about.... *shrugs* I guess it's school again...I mean, it does kinda consume my life right now....

After spending the day in the Emergency Department last Saturday, I now know I have no desire at all to be an ED nurse. That is not to say that I didn't have a good day, I liked it and I got to start a couple of IV's, but the ED is just not for me. Why? I don't like the idea of having a two year old patient one minute and 92 year old the next. Two, ninety-two, male, female, just a cough, or a full blown code...you never know what you're gonna get and I don't like that!! I don't like suprises!

This weekend at clinical was rather interesting. Yesterday was only so-so. I was on the Med-Surg floor taking care of a sweet old lady who is going to be transferred to hospice care fairly soon here (she has cancer that has spread pretty much everywhere). She doesn't know it yet (her son has asked that no one tell her until the Dr. has had a chance to discuss it with them both). She also has several DVTs--the only place I could take her BP was on her right thigh--every other limb had confirmed DVTs....and she is a full code patient....yikes!! Luckily nothing happened during my two days of caring for her. *phew!* (I did NOT want to do CPR!! Then again, who does??) She was my only patient yesterday, but today my instructor made all of us take two patients each. Which was GREAT and I had a MUCH better day today (I think because I was totally occupied all day and didn't have free time to worry about why I didn't have anything to do and what I could possibly be missing...). On the downside, I didn't get nearly enough paperwork done today--the hospital charting I finished, but the "charting" we're supposed to complete on each patient to turn in to our instructor I did not finish. She is very understaning, though, and as long as we show progress each week she is happy. So hopefully next week I'll be a bit more proficient at caring for two patients AND completing all my paperwork. :-) I was SO excited at the end of our day because of all the stuff I got to do! And they were mostly new skills that I had never done on a real patient before! :-)

First, my instructor told me I was okay to give IV push and piggy-back medications with the RN. This was new because yesterday I had to page her each time one of those medications came up so that she could come and watch me. I was very excited about my "promotion". :-) She may still want to watch me again next weekend or the time after that, but the fact that she's letting me do newly learned skills without her right there must mean that I did it right while she WAS watching me and that she is confident in my abilities. Next, I had the opportunity to d/c an NG tube (NG = nasogastric)--which was AWESOME!!! And holy cow, those tubes are LONG!!! I suppose a tube that reaches all the way into the stomach and exits through the nose would have to be a few feet long, but still...it just seemed super super long as I was pulling it out! After that, I got to start an IV on a different patient (not one of my two today, but the nurse wanted to give me the opportunity--and I was more than happy to accept!). He had really bouncy veins and it was an easy start, but even so I was happy to have another successful IV start to my name. :-) To this date I have attempted 8 IVs and successfully started 6 on the first stick. The 2 that I was not able get were very difficult--one of them took four nurses after me to get it started (each nurse only gets 2 attempts) and the other one no one was ever able to start so the doctor changed her mind and said the patient could do without (it was in the ER last week an we just hydrated her orally instead--it was slower, but still worked). After the IV I needed to draw blood from my first patient (the cancer patient--also the one who had the NG tube removed). This was cool because she had a central-line, and I had never drawn blood from a CVC before. It was really cool!

Let me tell ya, it is one thing to learn how to do these various skills in school and in the lab, but it is an entirely different thing to actually DO them on a real patient and see how all the pieces fit together (IVs, flushes, caps, meds, what needs to stay sterile--what doesn't, which buttons to push and when, etc etc.). Its the difference between "I'm not sure what I'm doing, I don't know if I can do this" and "That was easy, I CAN do this!" Needless to say, my confidence soared with all these new experiences that I have under my belt now. A very successful clinical day indeed!

If you read all of this, you deserve a cookie. :-) As for me, I am going to meander towards bed. Getting up at 4am is just draining. And Scott is at a hockey game with his dad tonight, so there's really no one to keep me company so why stay up? I'm not complaining, sometimes I like to just be alone and relax. I'm working the next two days. Which means I get to "sleep in" until 5:15am!!! Isn't that sad?? Lol, compared to 4am, 5:15 is GREAT! :-D

*happy sigh*

~Abigail~