1 year to go!

I have finally finished my 1st summer semester from hell! I'm proud of myself. I didn't think I would make it when I looked at my schedule at the beginning of the summer, but by some miracle I did. It's weird to think that by this time next year, I will be done. After all of the sweat and tears (many, many tears) it will be finished.

So right now I'm on a little 2 week vacation until we start again. It feels weird not having anything immediate to do. I feel like I'm wasting my time watching TV when I should be working on something nursing related. I can't fully relax! I know that by the time I do start to relax, it will be time to go back to school. *sigh* Oh well. I'm thinking that I would really like to go on a small road trip through Moab and then to the 4 corners. It seems fun. I know, it would be really fun to go to Vegas, but Eunice can't quite go there yet. I guess she could, but.... nah. We'll see what happens this next week.

L&D

Finally Med Surg clinicals are over! The stress of pre loading and writing care plans is over...for now! Oh well, I have to enjoy the little things. My Maternity nursing clinicals have started. They actually started last Friday. We get to go to Labor and Delivery, Postpartum, or Nursery. These clinicals are only for 3 weeks. Last Friday, I had the privilege of going to L&D which was something I was really looking forward to. I just think it's amazing to see something like life being started. It's really encouraging especially since most of the time you have to see patients because they are hurt and are in need of some medical intervention. L&D was so great! I loved it! The nurses were so helpful and the nurse that I was following let me to everything. I finally got to put in a foley cath on my patient! (Only nursing students would be excited about putting a tube up someone's urethra) She also let me 'check' my patient. 'Checking' a patient is basically the vaginal exam to see how much the cervix is dilated. I know, it sounds really gross, but once again this is something that a nursing student would be elated to do. I'm glad that my client let me check her. She was so great about everything! Clinical is just so much more enjoyable if you have an awesome patient...and nurse. If the nurse and/or patient won't let you do anything, you won't learn! I learned so much from that clinical. By the end of the clinical, I could read the fetal monitor and the other monitory with the mother's contractions. It was way cool. The best part about this was I witnessed 3 births! They were all vaginal. I was kind of hoping to see a c-section, but I'm not complaining! 3 vag births is great. The first one was a first time mom. She delivered a baby boy. He was so cute...well you know once they wipe him off a little. I know it sounds really cheesy, but I kind of teared up on this one. It was the first birth I had ever seen in reality. I have watched a few births on videos, but you don't appreciate it as much when you are 13 and are just not comfortable with your own female anatomy let alone watching someone else's on a screen with other 13 year olds. I noticed as the dad was watching the nurse do the APGAR scores, I think I saw him tear up. It was beautiful. The second birth was another baby boy. I remember the mom had Harry Potter IV playing the whole time. It just made me laugh a little inside. This baby boy actually kept urinating when the nurse was trying to do the APGAR score! Urine was just shooting all over. I really didn't expect it. They had to diaper him up. The third birth was also a baby boy. This was with the woman I was primarily taking care of. I really wanted to help her and stay for the birth, so I actually stayed until 4. Clinical ends at 2. But it was worth it! I would have done the same if given another chance. I really wanted to see her baby. With this birth, I got a front seat in all the action! I had to hold one of her legs while the other leg was being held by the husband. I remember she took one hour to push and she kept saying that she felt sorry for the husband and I because we had been standing for an hour straight. I was just perplexed. We just kept telling her that she is the one that's working the hardest! She's the one that is pushing this human being out! I was just amazed that this woman in labor was feeling sympathy for us. It was just shocking to me. When she finally delivered, it was an amazing baby boy. He was so beautiful. :) And I finally learned why the put the little hats on the newborns. CONEHEAD! I just never knew that. Luckily conehead goes away in a day or two. So pretty much L&D was awesome. Tomorrow I either go to postpartum or the nursery. My classmates tell me it is boring, so I guess I'll just have to experience it for myself.

Time

Today I was driving on my way home from school when I noticed that there was a fireworks stand up in Smith's parking lot. I thought it was odd because the 4th is a loooong time away... HA! It's not. I keep thinking it's May. Time is going by so fast. There are 6 or 7 weeks left in the semester. Where is the time going?? Where?! I demand to know!!

Adventures at Work

Yesterday at work I had the strangest call...to say the least. This guy calls in on the Rocky Mtn Retina line and we're talking. It's about 7:30 at night so I'm just basically telling him that the office is closed and if he needed anything office related, he could just call tomorrow when they open. He said okay and then ...."You wouldn't mind talking dirty to me, would ya honey?"
I was dumbfounded. It really caught me off guard. In the almost 2 years I've been working at the service, I've never had a call like that. I've had dumb people, angry people, dumb AND angry people, but not this. My first thought was wtf? and then it was EW!
..Not really knowing what to say, I just awkwardly laughed at politely declined. He chuckled and just said Okay... Alright, well I'll call back tomorrow then honey.

Bizarre!

Summer Semester

I have not had a chance to even blog. It's been such a crazy semester so far. I'm actually looking back to AP American History in high school and wishing for something like that. That would be 10x easier!
This semester is Med Surg and Maternity. 2 classes would sound easy, but not when there are clinicals on top of it and a whole bunch of other crap they want you to do besides tests all packed into a death crazed short term of a summer. The good thing is that it's short. PAINFUL, but short.
Let's see.. for Med Surg, we have 7 tests, a final, and clincials. In clincials, they want us to go the day before and get a patient to write a careplan for so we can be prepared to take care of them the next day. This is annoying and time consuming, but I really see the use for this. You get to see the client's history, what meds they are taking, and a whole bunch of stuff that the nurse you are going to work with won't know. They don't have time to even look at the chart. They look at the orders, medications they have to give, and go off of report from the nurse on the previous shift. They don't really have time to browse through the client's chart and assess which religion he or she is. Personally, it is actually kind of nice to get a background on the client. We have clinicals, BUT apparently this semester we aren't doing enough hours because it is such a short semester, so we have to go into the lab and do these things called microsims. I haven't done them yet (doing the first 2 hours tomorrow!) but basically you need to do 6 hours worth. They are a simulation type thing on the computer where you have a client and you are taking care of them and then sometimes they will have complications and you have to figure out what to do before they die. Some of my friends have 'killed' patients... I'll probably do them same! ha. AND then as if we didn't have enough to do, we have to do 8 hours worth of case studies. I have yet to do this as well, but from what I've heard they aren't bad, it just takes a lot to get 8 hours in.
For Maternity we have 4 tests, a final, and clinicals. For clincials in this class, you don't have to go the day before and pick a patient. BUT before you even start clinicals, there are 3 careplans that have to be memorized. I haven't done that yet, but I'm waiting until next month when I actually have to be concerned about it. There are also quizzes for each unit but they aren't so bad. I think that may be it for the work load of maternity (I *think*... could be mistaken, there is just so much to do). Obviously maternity is the easier course. The thing that sucks about the tests though...is there are a couple of weeks where we have a Med Surg and Maternity test the same day.
I've been doing Med Surg clinicals. They are harder, but surprisingly I am enjoying them. You get to see all sorts of crazy crap. The nurses so far have been so nice and helpful. It's been good. Last week I got the sweetest guy. He was an older gentleman that was admitted to have all sorts of surgeries. It was cool. I got to see his HUGE abdominal incision.
The floor I was working on last week was really busy. The nurse I was working with was really stressed. I could tell. He was trying to convince me that it wasn't too late to stop nursing school and become something else. It totally caught me off guard! He was still funny. I did get to see him remove a rectal tube which is something I never knew exsisted. It's like a foley catheter only up the other way... No one on the floor knew how to take it out, and it was his first time to take one out. Honestly, totally disgusting. If I have one piece of advice for someone taking out a rectal tube, paper towels all over. Put them down. PAPER TOWELS. Don't forget it. Otherwise there will be liquidy bowel movement all over the sheets and floor and someone (probably a poor CNA) will have to clean it all up.
I've gotten to do some skills that I've learned last semester and this semester. I've been able to inject people with various drugs, take IVs out, take foley catheters out, and administer medications through an NG tube. It's been educational. Can't wait to see what the next floor will offer!

BTW the picture above says--->STUDYING: the World's leading cause of spontaneous napping.

The Death Star

Today I went to my hospital orientation at IMC aka the Death Star. I can see why it is named that now... I mean I always knew that it was big, but it is a HUGE mass of confusing building. It took me 15 minutes to figure out where I needed to go, but I eventually found it. There was this one point when a group of us went down to HR to find where to get our badges. When we got back, we took a detour up the wrong stairs and we accidentally walked into a doctors office. It was so strange! We had to walk through the office to get to where we needed to go. I can't believe that the stairs actually lead us there. Pretty weird.

Later, I went to the cafeteria. The food is actually really good. I had their chicken wrap. Yum! I'm sure over the next 2 months I will get acquainted pretty well with the hospital... at least the women's center and floors 8-12 of the patient tower.

California

So last week I went on my first road trip...unsupervised. I know, I know. Is the world really ready for Katherine to be unattended to?? It better! It was one of the best experiences I've had so far. I'm glad I took the time to go.

It was just me and my friend Dixie and we drove to Los Angeles. I know at first my mom was really scared of me going because she's heard about things in LA, but I finally convinced her that I would be okay...even though I know she probably was still worried (Mothers...always worrying, I think it is a part of the job description). It was about a 10 hour drive.

Our first day we went to the Hollywood Walk of Fame and I met Yoda, Flash, and Freddy. Jason was too busy being a creeper in the corner staring menacingly at everyone. We walked around to all of the different places to shop around there and then we left and went to the Santa Monica beach. One of the reasons I choose to go on a road trip to California was because of the beach. I LOVE the beach. I fell in love with it last year in the Philippines and I really wish that I lived by a beach, but I guess the scenic mountain views will have to do for now. :)

The next day, we went to Universal Studios. It was better than I expected it to be. We got to go on all of the rides! I didn't think that we would be able to. I thought we would have to wait for at least 30 minutes for every ride, but I guess we came at a good time because it's not summertime yet. My favorite rides were the Mummy and Jurassic park. We also went on the tour ride of the studios they give. It was really awesome to see the sets of Psycho, Jaws, and Desperate Housewives.

The next day we went to Knott's Berry farm. It was so exciting. There were not huge lines. Actually the lines were even shorter than Lagoon. I was really surprised. Their rides were so intense. You go backwards, forwards, upside down...everywhere! I enjoyed it. I kind of got nauseous which is something that I usually don't get at amusement parks, but it was still a great experience.

Our last day, we met up with Dixie's cousins and drove to Oxnard to go shopping and eat crabs. Man those crabs were tasty! The restaurant is right next to a dock and they really have the freshest seafood. The crabs were alive. You go and pick whichever crab you want to eat and they cook it for you. My crab was only $9. Can't get that at the Red Lobster here! It was delicious and met every expectation. It was definitely one of the highlights from the trip.

One thing that I noticed (how could I not?) was the way Californians drive. Aggressive. I mean you have to be or you will never get anywhere. If you want to change lanes, you have to cut the person off. You force them to let you in, otherwise you will miss your exit! Also, with Utah there are basically set gridlock hours like 7am-9am and 5pm-6pm. In LA, there is traffic all of the time! I guess except at night around 9pm-6am. It seemed that anytime we drove during the day, the roads were always congested at some point. If I have one piece of advice (it's kind of a common sense piece of advice, but I will give it anyway) DO NOT drive on the LA freeways at 5pm. Don't do it!! We did it (of course). When we were finished with Knott's, it was about 5 and we weren't really thinking, so we drove back to our hotel. It literally took us 2 hours. 2! And I was the unlucky one that had to drive. It was horrible. Being back in Utah, I am eternally grateful for the relatively empty roads. The traffic here really isn't that bad. There might be a 10 minute delay, but it's better than an hour and a half delay. Now when I'm stuck in traffic, I'll think back to LA and just keep my lips shut.

I enjoyed California and hope to go back soon, but I'm also glad to be back home with everyone I love, the Utah traffic, and even the Wasatch Mountains. So I guess it's back to the drawing board to plan my next road trip! Where will I go next?

There are also more pictures on my Facebook if you want to check em out