Stairmaster to heaven

I survived my first week of clinical. It was only orientation to the unit so the sum total of my clinical experience so far has been poking a finger for a glucose test and delivering a meal tray. Next week I will be assigned a patient.

Another experience I had was volunteering at Stand Down - a program for homeless vets. A group of first-year nursing students went to perform health screenings for nearly two hundred vets. We did blood pressure checks, glucose tests, PPD placements, and foot soaks. I also got to do the very important job of making copies of the screening forms for VA records - it may not sound very glamorous, but I feel that being able to use a combo copy-scanner-fax machine is a very important life skill and that our educational system is failing us by not incorporating the proper use of office equipment into the curriculum.

My other exciting event of the week was my first trip to the gym. It was a religious experience - mostly because the building looks like a church. The story goes that the woman who donated the money for the building wanted a church built, but the yale folk felt that there were already enough churches in New Haven. The yale peeps wanted a new gym - so being the smart people that they were, or at least the rich white people who were used to doing whatever they wanted, got a little tricksy with the rich old lady. They designed the building to look like a church, showed her the building, said "look, see, there's your church, thanks for the dough, bu-bye." Apparently the woman liked churches enough to build them, but not enough to go in them. Or maybe she thought that god needed keep up with his cardio like the rest of us. Anyway, that's the story of the gym. My story goes more like: I came, I precored, I left.

Check out the size of my package

This is my new pen light.


This is the package it came in. All by itself. In this package.

To the heart of it

I haven't been very good about this whole blog thing, but here's is the update:

I have started my classes and am taking: Medical-surgical nursing, biomedical science, and pharmacology (actually called Intro to Drug Therapy, but every one calls it pharm). Along with the med-surg class, I will also have clinical rotations which start this week.

My first rotation is going to be on a cardio-thoracic floor and I have to say that I am very excited. I am also very nervous; while I have been working with patients for the last few years, I have never worked with sick people. It's weird because all the work and anticipation that went into getting me here was about becoming a midwife, and even though I knew the nursing would come first, the reality of it is just hitting me - I'm going to be working with seriously ill patients. I'm not complaining, I do want to be a NURSE-midwife and I know I am going to take valuable experiences away with me, but I'm scared. The whole hospital thing is also new to me - so new that I'm not even sure what I should be worrying about yet, and as a constant worrier I find that very disconcerting.

Best seat in the house

I have recently discovered that I can watch TV while sitting on the toilet. Just one of the many perks of living in a studio apartment.