Nothing Left to Give

So there were 10 patients when I got there and we quickly filled the whole way up with patients in the waiting room. I had a busy day because I had a chest pain patient (elderly black male, dialysis pt) who got admitted. Then an 60-some yr old woman cancer patient that had to get a picc line(which shouldn’t have been but was a huge ordeal) and was admitted. Then an 80yr old uterine cancer patient who was bleeding heavily (mostly becuase her doctor had WAY over done it with the blood thinners- her clotting lab was supposed to be below 2.5 and hers was 9) I swear all my patients got admitted. Then we had all sorts of stuff like an acute appendicitis that went to the OR. There was a cardiac arrest in the hospital. I had this other guy who had a lengthy medical history and was there with his mother and sister who would not let this 52 yr old adult male answer anything! For himself! They had to be Italian or something the way they were smothering him. He had prosthetic eyes and when I was trying to ask him questions His sister was going on and on about his eye condition in 1985 and I said as nice as possible “but he doesn’t have eyes anymore so I think it’s probably irrelevant to his current complaint of LEFT HIP PAIN!”. We were jammed full the WHOLE day with two of the slower doctors and the patients just kept coming. the second side was still open when I left! let me tell you that when “Princess” -real name!- checked in with abdominal pain and “menstrating”I had ZERO patience.

Time for Bed!

So my day started off with me leaving the house at 6am and getting on the highway at 620 as per usual. However last night around 3am some assholes were driving on the highway out of the city shooting at each other the two cars ran into this and that and the one shattered all over the place (everyone survived-perhaps unfortunately for the human race) and attempted murder charges have already been filed. Regardless. It being a crime scene and all the outbound highway was still completely shut down at 6am and the inbound lanes were creeping along at 1mph because everyone needs to spend appropriate time gawking you know. So that was 50minutes of my life spent in traffic that I’ll never get back…

The day really didn’t improve much, I was charge nurse today and one of the old nurses was being a huuuge pain in my ass because she’s so lazy and slow. Usually when she’s in charge she doesn’t take any patients because “she’s in charge” well I don’t know what her excuse was today, because it was like pulling teeth trying to get her to pick up patients today.

I had a patient that went to the OR because she was having a miscarriage, which looked fairly complete to me in the cup but clearly was not because she continued bleeding profusely — all over my pant leg. Awesome. I managed to get some out at work with a bleach wipe, but we’ll see how the washer does…

Then I came home to find Hubbin in A Mood because the mac apparently ate all photos from 2009. Bye trip to France. Ta ta Hubbin’s three weeks in Germany. The mac pulled a stunt similar to this once before and the photos were somehow recovered by one of the geniuses at the mac store, so I’m not abandoning all hope yet — however I will be buying a new external hard drive for my PC to back up all future photos– (recall my PC recently melted it’s motherboard and got it’s hard drive reformatted three times in attempts to restore balance) — I did have an external harddrive but it was hijacked to support the mac ie: the perfect family home computer. That just ate 2009

Please tell me…

Who out there actually enjoys school? Like genuinely?

I had yet another person ask me today “how’s school?” “do you like it?” and then be surprised when I said “It’s okay, no, not really”

Why is that such a surprising answer? Explain to me exactly what I should like about going to sit for 8 hours in a class room on my day off? A beautiful sunny day? About sitting here tonight on my night off looking up information for a research paper and typing up responses to a dumb fact-finding mission my teacher has sent me on. Explain to me what’s supposed to be fun and enjoyable about this?

“Oh sure I just love spending all my free time reading text books and writing papers, sure, school is GRAND, who wouldn’t like school?! There’s nothing I’d rather be doing on one of the last nice days of summer than sit in this classroom listening to someone tell me about political science, or nursing research… And boy I can’t WAIT to get home and start working on my paper rather than finishing the laundry or going to the gym”

Is that really the answer they’re expecting? It can’t be? Right?

Incredibly Frustrated

See, this is why I took a break from blogging, the negativity. Now school started and I’m right back cranky again!

My computer and I are still fighting. We managed to wipe it clean and reinstall windows but now vista wants to install every update since 2007. I’ve started doing them just 5 at a time, and all goes well till it gets to the part where it wants to reboot to finish installation and then it goes “whoa whoa whoa, nevermind, I can’t make it through start up afterall, back up to before that install” round and round we’ve gone like this for a WHOLE WEEK now! I’ve gotten some installed, but there’s still like 20 updates that throw it for a loop everytime. Plus my speakers aren’t working now, and my trackpad isn’t working now. UGH.

AND. As if that wasn’t enough, the online class program my school uses was upgraded from Blackboard 7 to Blackboard 9, and they changed our usernames in the process. Well I’ve had it up to HERE with blackboard 9 because every single time I’ve logged on since they upgraded it says that my password is invalid. So I have to do the “forgot my password” BS where you fill out a form and they send you an email and you have to follow a link to reset the password, then I get in and you have to change the password. I’ve done this (not even kidding) 12 times already and it can’t seem to remember my password and the next time I log in it’s invalid again. GAH!

My patience, she is wearing thin.

Miss Piggy seems to be limping along, she’s still in her little papertowel bedding “ICU” tank, still getting dropper fed calcium and water and fingers of food. I did however find her in a different position this evening than what I left her in last night. (that’s good) AND I took her out to do a little lukewarm water soak and witnessed her clumsily move each extremity (very good) to inform me that the water was too warm. She’s still lethargic and still struggling with coordination, but hopefully she’ll continue to improve and bounce back.

My husband just served me pancakes for dinner! This evening may be making a turn for the better afterall!

Lame

So essentially I’m very lame and have no very good excuses as to where I’ve been for the past few weeks. School has been totally kicking by butt time commitment wise (and therefore emotion wise) Today I spent no less than 10 straight hours on this beautiful sunny day hunkered down in Panera typing up THIRTEEN pages of notes for my midterm in Pathophysiology which is on Tuesday. Pathophysiology is a little overwhelming as I expected and I’d like to meet whoever had the bright idea to make this class into an “accelerated format” class and make the students responsible for 14 weeks worth of lessons, including 14 separate online tests, the mid-term, final, class presentation, and online discussion board questions in an 8 week time period. Our mid-term on Tuesday, 4 weeks into the class, covers the first 600 pages in our text book. Nice. And the final… 4 weeks from then our final will be covering the next 8 online tests and 800some pages in the book.

Make my statistics class accelerated — we’ve learned nothing in that class!

I’ve also been working nights because they’ve decided we should work 6 offshifts each month now. Out of a total of 12. I also had a traumatic shift one of those nights where I made my first major med-error as a nurse. Hopefully last, although a few people have assured me that’s just wishful thinking. I had a patient who was being boarded in the ER for the night because there were no beds. She was a sick cancer patient who was in for pain control. Very sweet, I tried to take good care of her and everytime I walked in asking her how her pain was an reinforcing that I had her narcotics in my pocket and could give them whenever she needed them (probably better for her than being admitted to a floor room because she was my only patient for most of the night). Anyway. The floor doc came down and wrote orders for her sometime around 3/330am. I looked them over, morning labs, regular diet, PRN (as needed) med, Daily med, Daily med, patch to get changed each sunday. She was assigned a bed about 630am so she left before change of shift.

I was driving home about 8am and I got a call from the daylight charge nurse asking if I had given her metformin in the middle of the night because the floor was “all fired up” about this med not having been given. I said “nooo, I only saw daily meds” – anyway long story short, apparently one of the meds was ordered “daily with a dose now” and I totally missed it. And to make matters worse I found out the next week that it wasn’t metformin (oral diabetes medication) but atenolol (blood pressure medication). I felt like the worst person alive. Her pressure had been up through the night but the ER doc had finally written for some nitropaste which brought it down, plus she was in pain which can elevate pressure too. I mean nothing bad happened, when she went to the floor her pressure was about 130/80… but I still felt just AWEFUL. It’s totally inexcusable regardless… but it’s not even like I was busy or doing something else. I just didn’t see it? I looked through the list and just never saw it. Oh god, I was in tears for days. Plus I was convinced I was going to be fired.

I had a long talk about it with my preceptor, which I think was good for her too because she was having a lot of guilt about that cardiac arrest patient from the other week, but the summary of her advice was “You have to look at how your patient was, what was her pressure when she went to the floor?” I said 130/80, and she said “well then it doesn’t matter, shit happens and no one died” and my mother kept telling me “it’s bad, but it’s a learning experience, it would have been worse if you had given her the WRONG med, or too much of something… nothing bad happened to the patient”. Ugh, I hope to never go through that again! The guilt was terrible… for weeks! Everyone has assured me I won’t be fired. The charge nurse that day said she was pretty sure our boss was most upset that the floor called him at home, on his day off, at 730am. It’s been a few weeks, and I haven’t got a pink slip yet, so hopefully I’m okay.

I also totally fell off the shrinking-jeans wagon for ahem, all of March… which is now spilling over into April. I’ve just been too busy to go to the gym, and have been induldging my food wants just a LITTLE too much. A little because I want to, but I’m sure a little has to do with stress… I need to get back on that. Of course, then there’s this mid-term.

Please just ignore the GPA.

I’m trying to write an essay in support of my anesthesia application today. I’m getting frustrated and actually stopped typing at one point, looked at the wall in front of me shook my fist at it and said “I can do it, I swear, just give me the opportunity”…

Would it be wrong to send in as my total essay: “Please. I swear to you I am smarter than my transcript makes it appear. Also, don’t let the lack of experience fool you, I learn quickly. I promise”

….I have the distinct feeling I’m going to be stuck taking bullshit “Community Health Nursing” classes for the rest of my graduate career rather than “Organic and Medicinal Chemistry”

Here’s the Anesthesia Curriculum outline:

	Supporting Courses:	Number of Credits
	HSC 510 Methods of Research I	3
	HSC 612 Methods of Research II	3
	Health Sciences Courses:
	HSC 001 Projessional Aspects	0
	HSC 500 Pharmacology of Anesthetic Agents I	3
	HSC 501 Pharmacology of Anesthetic Agents II	3
	HSC 503 Organic and Medicinal Chemistry	4
	HSC 504 Biochemistry	3
	HSC 521 Human Anatomy, Physiology, & Pathophysiology I	5
	HSC 522 Human Anatomy, Physiology, & Pathophysiology II	5
	HSC 512 Medical Physics	4
	HSC 655 Advanced Theory and Practice of Anesthesia	4
	HSC 530 Anesthesia Didactics I	6
	HSC 630 Anesthesia Didactics II	6
	HSC 505 Introduction to Principles of Anesthesia	1
	HSC 700 Leadership and Management in Healthcare	3
	Anesthesia Courses at Hospital:
	All Clinical Practicums
	Applied Chemistry of Anesthesia Seminars
	Clinical Principles of Anesthesia I
	Clinical Principles of Anesthesia II
	Anesthesia and Disease Processes
	Anesthesia Conferences
	Professional Aspects of Anesthesia
	Pharmacology Seminars

Mocking

I have class today and I woke up and it’s snowing… but not snowing as in “sweet class will be canceled” snowing as in “haha, you need to leave EARLY for class and drive carefully, haha!”

Statistics which everyone told me would be the bane of my existence, isn’t so bad… however this “community health nursing” class makes me want to slit my wrists and gouge my eyeballs out: yes it is that bad, and the homework for it is even worse. I have to come up with a community health need in my community give these random community members a presentation on that health need and then give the class a presentation about giving the presentation. Can’t we just do it the old fashioned way where you assign me a topic and I give a presentation to the class about it?

Seriously?

Oops

We got tired of comcast raising our bill each month and got dish network a few months ago and got their DVR as we were addicted to our comcast DVR. Unfortunately the dish DVR is the least user friendly electronic I’ve ever interacted with Hubbin was bitch bitch bitching about it the other night and why won’t it just effing record Brotherhood for me. So he tossed me the remote and asked me to set it up while he took a shower. So I fiddled for a while and it started recording right at 9oclock.

Tonight I’m brushing my teeth and here shouting in the living room something about why did I erase our DVR. I shout down “I didn’t! I just recorded
Brotherhood for you!” “you did and then it recorded the next 72 straight hours over everything that we had saved!”

Oops. I didn’t mean too. I’m a little angry that I lost all the episodes of the shows I like to watch that I was about a month behind on >:(. Dexter, Californication, Weeds…. All gone.

So much for organization

Since I got my computer last fall I’ve been meaning to put some order to my MP3s, so I did a major overhaul two days ago and after backing up all my MP3s started uninstalling itunes, my NCLEX study software and this or that… midway through the process of putting some of my CDs onto my computer I reallized that my computer is no longer recognizing my CD/DVD drive. Isn’t that nice? What a mess, so sure my computer came with restore CDs and drivers on CD and my computer won’t recognize CDs! I’ve tried the internet too. I spent the morning backing up all my other files cause Hubbin thinks it may be best to just wipe down and reformat my harddrive and start the whole thing from scratch…

I just wanted organized music

We’ve also be discussing tactics to consolidate home computer use. We’re thinking of getting a Mac to be a main-family-computer that we’ll both sync our iphones to and use to keep track of my rotating shifts and then share a common source of music/photos/etc. I toyed with getting the Mobile Me software from Mac since it supposedly works with PC too… perhaps we’ll be taking a drive to the Mac store tonight to consider options… (if my computer wasn’t less than a year old perhaps I’d consider replacing it with a Mac… I bet Mac doesn’t let you accidentally delete your CD drive! Stupid Vista)

Wouldn’t it be nice?

So at work right now I’m supposed to pick my schedule for April. As in the same month I’ll be doing my externship for school.

Today we received an email from the course coordinator asking us to rate the top 3 hospitals we’d like, the top 3 types of units we’d like, and if we want “night”, “evening”, “weekend” or “rotating” shifts. The end of the email says they’ll let us know more information “hopefully before spring break”, which is two weeks from now but to please be patient because there are over 100 of us at our campus alone.

Don’t you think if they’re going to mail out this survey they should have mailed it out in JANUARY so they could have “coordinated” all of this more than 2 weeks ahead of time? Given this is the “night and weekend program” which is supposedly designed for people that work?