Post-Clinical

Well today was the first day of the many clinicals I'll be doing for the rest of my time in school. Let me tell you about my day. First of all, I'd like to tell you that names (and maybe some particulars about their personal situations) have been changed in order to protect the privacy of the residents of the nursing home I visited today.

First of all, it only took me 20 minutes to get there! Plenty of time! Off to a great start. My group was all very excited to start hands-on experience. Properly armed with stethoscopes, pens, pen lights, power bars, and hand sanitizer, we marched into the nursing home (name will be withheld) and onto a locked down floor that only treats patients with Alzheimer's and dementia. The floor needs to be locked down so they don't wander away, but they have plenty of areas to socialize, and even a nice little courtyard to hang out in when the weather is nice. Since the place I went to today is one of the nicest nursing homes in Richmond, I was impressed with the care most of these patients got, but it still made me cringe at the thought that I might be as confused and dependent as these residents someday.

So we got divvied up into groups of 2 or 3. I was with my two best friends in the program, Brandy and April, and we were assigned to a care partner, who takes care of the basic needs for a number of residents. My first assignment, take a tray of breakfast food into a patient's room and wake her up so she can eat it herself. In this very first room, I walked in and she was sitting on the toilet. At least that boundary got crossed right off the bat, which made it easier to interact normally with people while doing such a private thing. If you're wondering how I reacted, I smiled politely, said good morning and introduced myself, and told her I would leave her breakfast on the table for her.

My next duty was just a tad more complicated than the first. I was directed to take a tray of breakfast to a patient's room and feed her. This lady was extremely doped up on medicine and never once opened her eyes, but she was with it enough to tell me when she was full and when she wanted a bite of cereal instead of peaches. As I was finishing with this patient, the care partner I was working with told me that she would be in the "tent room," whatever that was, which was supposed to be to the left of the room I was currently in. Well after wandering the halls for 5 minutes looking for a sign, I asked someone. Well turns out I misunderstood and she said "tub room," which is where residents are given showers. This led me to my next task.

I open the door to the tub room to find a naked geriatric woman sitting on this contraption being hosed down by my care partner. Now I could struggle to try and describe this interesting chair, or I can just show you the picture below.


See, it's like a wheelchair with a hole in the middle. That hole is to be able to wash what needs to be washed with the patient seated so he/she doesn't fall. At first I thought it looked kind of barbaric to see someone hosing down a lady, but I realized the woman was really enjoying herself. You see, they only get this treatment twice a week. The other days of the week, they get a sort of spongebath (don't worry, I'll get into that more later). Anyway, so my care partner tells me to observe her wash and rinse the resident (who was pretty able to do most of the washing herself), and then I would be drying her off and dressing her (by myself! Eek!). So I gave the resident (we'll call her Mrs. Tops) a towel to dry herself where she could (as nurses, we're taught to encourage patients to do as much as they can by themselves before we assist them) and I had another towel to dry her off in harder to reach areas. Keep in mind, she's still in this chair contraption, which has now been wheeled to a different area of the room that can be curtained off for privacy while she gets dressed. I did a pretty good job of drying and dressing, I should say. I figured out that I needed to get her underwear and pants around her ankles and her shoes and socks on before asking her to stand up, which is when I dried the REALLY hard to reach areas, and then finished getting her dressed. Mrs. Tops seemed pretty with it the entire time too, but pretty quiet, like she was afraid to say anything because it might not make sense.

So at this point I was feeling pretty cocky. So I ran into April and Brandy and bragged about my latest accomplishment. That's when our care partner asked the three of us to give a bath to another resident we'll call Melissa. This lady was a complete hoot. All she did was laugh and joke about us washing her "boompa" or something like that, which I assume was some word for one of her private areas. She was a little bit more difficult to clean, dry, and dress because she was bigger and also unable to wash or dry herself at all, but the 3 of us made a good team, and Melissa was happy to be clean after just a few minutes. Then we took her into the TV room to socialize, sleep, and watch Sister Act, as the case was.

Since we made such a great team, the 3 of us were asked to give a bed bath to a resident I'll call Mrs. Durrette. She was a sweetheart. Completely easygoing and patient with us. Unfortunately, she was at a stage in her dementia where she knew she was losing it, but couldn't help it. It's almost better when they get past that point and just don't even realize they've completely lost their memory. But I digress... this "bed bath" is not actually a bed bath at all. We just asked her to sit on the toilet and used a basin with warm water and wash cloths to wet her body, then wash, then rinse. When we asked if she was getting too cold or if the water was too hot, she never complained and always said everything was fine. I told her we were nursing students and that we appreciated her letting us learn on her. She jumped into a story about how she took care of mentally challenged children, but she did get confused and thought she was still working. After we finished up washing, drying, and dressing her, we took her into the TV room like we did with Melissa.

Then we made up some beds, changed some linens. Luckily, we didn't come across any soiled linens, but we changed some because there was food from breakfast and other gross looking stuff in the sheets that I figured they wouldn't want to sleep in. Then, the three of us (and another classmate, Yue Ming) refreshed their ice waters. You see, everyone (except for those who have a risk of choking on liquids) gets one of those big plastic mugs to keep ice water in, and we refresh it at 11:00am. So we went into every room and refreshed the water. That certainly took some time. When I was refreshing Mrs. Tops' water, she said she needed to give it to her children first before she could drink it.

We had some spare time after that before we were going on our lunch break, and I started talking to a man I'll call JB. I have absolutely no idea why he's on this unit because he has a really sharp mind. He does word searches all day, and he talked to me about his extremely interesting life. From how he met his wife, to his college alma mater which happens to be very close in distance to my alma mater. He told me about his service in WWII and a very honorable position he took after his service and then where he went to get his doctorate. I had such a good time talking to him that I promised we would continue talking after lunch, but he didn't look like he believed me.

So then I went to lunch. Boring.

When I came back, it was lunch time for the residents, so I was assigned one I'll call Carla. I was supposed to feed her, but she didn't seem to really like me feeding her. She also spoke 90% spanish, which didn't help me much. It took her forever to eat her meal, but after struggling with feeding her a few brussel sprouts, about 5 bites of half-pureed steak, and some baked beans, I let her eat her brownie, and for whatever reason, the bumped up her appetite and she ate almost everything on her plate. Yay!

Well after lunch is a quiet time where residents usually nap or watch TV (Sister Act came on again). Also, someone passed away on the unit while we were feeding for lunch, which was kind of eerie since I went into every room that morning to re-fill ice water. Anyway, since no one was really doing much of anything, I sat back down with JB and talked more about his interesting life, including how he personally knew a very famous General and his family. Now you may think this is his dementia talking, but he had a cap with the organization's name on it that he proudly wears all day. I excused myself after chatting with him for about 30 minutes to make sure that nothing needed to be done, but I promised to say goodbye before I left. As I walked away he grabbed my hand, looked me square in the eye, and sincerely said "thank you." When I asked him why he was thanking me he said "just for talking to me." Yes. Nursing is definitely for me.

I basically didn't do anything else except watch bits and pieces of Sister Act before my instructor said it was time for a quick meeting with my classmates and then we would be free. So I said my goodbye to JB like I promised. He squeezed my hand and told me he would see me Wednesday, and I told him he better have a lot of word searches finished that he can show me then. He doesn't know that I'm going to make him a word search online with a general theme of all the things we talked about throughout the day. I think he'll appreciate that.

All in all, I was very pleased with everything I did. I didn't deal with any poop (success!) and I wasn't even close to as grossed out about the other stuff as I thought I was going to be. The care partners and residents at this facility made it very easy on us. While I won't be doing most of this stuff as a nurse, I wouldn't really mind it if I had to. These people are well taken care of, and it's nice to know that I'm contributing to their comfort during the final stages of their lives. All of the residents were wonderful to us, my care partner was more than helpful (she's been working there for 32 years!), and I can't wait to go back Wednesday.

Also, I'm thinking of starting a brand new blog with just posts of my clinical experiences. We'll see. Until then, I'll just post everything on here.

Pre-clinicals

Tomorrow is my first day of clinicals! I can't believe I'm far enough in nursing school to be doing this stuff already, like interacting with real live people! I'm feelings a lot of emotions about tomorrow:

1) Nervous. Since this is completely new, this is normal I know. I'm nervous for 2 reasons. First, I'm afraid I'll kill someone or do something wrong. Now the former probably won't happen since I'm just going to be doing shit jobs (no pun intended) like feeding patients, changing linens, bathing patients, and yes, cleaning up poop. But I'm really scared I'm going to fail out. If we do anything wrong, we get a failing grade. If we get a failing grade, we are kicked out of the program, and I have spent way too much time, effort, and money to fail out now. For example, if there is a wrinkle in my scrubs, I fail. If a strand of hair falls out of my tightly wrapped bun (no pony tails allowed) onto my shoulder, fail. If I walk into or out of a patient's room with gloves on, fail. My white socks must cover my ankles. My shoes must be completely white, covered toes, covered heels. I may wear a white shirt under my scrubs, but no longer than 3/4 length sleeves. No jewelry allowed except for a wedding band or small stud earrings. It's ridiculous and also not how real life nursing will be. Another fear of mine is showing up late. Automatic fail. Which is why I'm leaving the house an hour early to drive the 45 minutes to the nursing home I'm due to arrive at 6:45am to. Great.

2) Grossed out. Did I mention the poop? Yeah there will be a lot of it. And other bodily fluids. And genitalia in general that I'm going to need to clean. Sick. I'm sure I'll have plenty of stories to tell in my later post of "post-clinicals."

3) Excited! I'm going to be a real nurse! While I probably won't be doing these duties as a real RN (we have underlings like nursing students and care partners to do silly things like bathing and feeding), it's still a big step in my education. I've learned a lot and I'm excited to put my knowledge to good use and help people. I hope to establish some connection with some patients and realize that this profession really is my true calling. I'm also excited to find out what kind of nurse I'll be. I can guarantee I won't be like Nurse Ratched from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," Nurse Jackie, or Beverly Allitt

4) Exhausted. Remember how I said I'm leaving really super early to get there on time tomorrow? That sucks. I also worked a closing shift tonight and am working a double shift tomorrow, doing the same round of clinicals all day Wednesday, and then another double shift Thursday before taking my final exam Friday. Yes, I'm exhausted just thinking about it. Also, I forgot to eat dinner tonight and my mom forgot to buy me power bars like she said she would, so I have no idea how I'm going to eat tomorrow. Oh well. I'll be sure to let you know if I pass out, go into a psychotic breakdown, or hallucinate.

Well that about sums it up. It's very late now and I need to get up in just a few hours, so it's bedtime for me. Goodnight, Blog World.

Nice Girl

I am often described as a "nice girl." I'm the girl you can depend on when your tire has blown on the side of the road. I'll always offer a shoulder for anyone to cry on. I'm empathetic, compassionate, and the kind of girl that parents never worried about their kids hanging around. All of these qualities will make me a great nurse, and I like being liked, so it works out for me most of the time. But sometimes, I just wish I could be a little bit meaner.

You know the saying "nice guys finish last"? Well, that goes for girls too. Sometimes I care so much about others' feelings that my own get thrown away. There are also always people who will see how much I will do to help them out just because I'm a nice girl and generally don't mind doing favors for people in my life. It really hurts my feelings though when this happens, and for a brief amount of time, I tried out what it was like to be a little bit tougher. I changed my attitude to "tough shit" instead of "I'm sorry."

Most of this applied to work, by the way. In my personal life, I was still the same girl, but at work (where I felt most taken for granted), I became more like a machine. You see, in my job, there's this weird tight rope I need to walk. As a restaurant hostess, I need to seat the restaurant quickly and efficiently, but I also need to be fair to all of the servers, but I also need to recognize which servers can handle large or difficult parties. At the end of the night, I decide when and who can go home. So you see, servers often spill their sob stories to me to get cut. "Oh Caroline I just worked 2 doubles in a row and I'm exhausted. Please don't seat me anymore" or "I just went on vacation and I'm in debt! Please give me some good parties." So, anyway, for this brief amount of time, I basically was a huge bitch and didn't care about anyone. Everything was business. My feelings never got hurt. I didn't worry about how people thought of me.

But I wasn't happy.

So now I'm trying to figure out a happy medium of not letting people take advantage of me while also listening to individual needs. I guess part of opening up to people is taking a chance of getting hurt by them. It's weird to have both a working dynamic and a friend dynamic with most of my coworkers. While no one holds work-related shit against me, I can't handle any sort of sour feelings.

Well, I was reflecting on all of this tonight when I got undercharged by different places twice in a week. I really believe that people either consciously or subconsciously will favor someone who treats them well. Smile to the lady who checks you out at Wal-Mart. Laugh at your waiter's jokes. Say "have a nice day" to the bank teller. You just never know. And at the very least, you're making someone feel a little more appreciated.

I know I jumped around a lot (per usual), but I guess the point is there are pros and cons to everything and there is also a happy medium to everything. So now I just need to figure out my happy medium. I think I'm off to a good start though. Maybe nice girls don't need to finish first or last... maybe it's just somewhere in the middle.

Adaptation

As a biologist (I can say that instead of biology major now!), I've learned a lot about adaptation mostly in my Ecology and Evolution classes. I wrote an entire 20-page paper on how whales share a common ancestor with deer, and that whales are essentially deer that decided to return to the water. Thousands and thousands of years after the first deer-like thing and his friends decided they liked swimming more than walking on land, we have what we know as whales. They adapted everything from the water-tight skin to the blowhole. It's all very interesting.

But I've had my own experiences with adaptation. For example, when I was 10 years old I moved from the small town of Lynchburg where I attended a modest, private elementary school to a public school in the significantly larger Henrico County. It was at that ripe age that I learned how to adapt. I've been doing it ever since, and while I usually get nervous about it, I have to say I'm pretty good at it. Whenever I start a new job, I have this horrible feeling that I won't be able to understand anything about it and will be doomed to be a failure from day 1, but this never happened. When I went to France for the summer, I thought I would never adjust to this land across the ocean, but I got the gist of it in about a day and a half.

Now, as I've mentioned about 30 times in previous posts, I'm in nursing school full-time and working at the Italian restaurant where I've worked on and off since I was 16 (yes, with that job I thought I would never get the hang of it, and I certainly did). I started both of these responsibilities 2 days after graduating from Longwood University and moving back into my parents' home. I have definitely felt overwhelmed re-learning my job and experiencing a new school with new teachers, new assignments, and new students who I will spend more time with than anyone else for 15 months.

It's been almost 4 months since all of this began, and I've really gotten into the swing of things. My grades are stellar, I absolutely love my job, and I'm paying off school way faster than I thought I would. All in all, I'm pretty proud of myself. But now that I've adapted to this way of living, I have a full day off and I have NO idea what to do with it. It's funny how a few months ago I would have welcomed a day off and now I'm bored out of my mind.

But then I guess whales wouldn't be too happy to go back onto land after these thousands of years either.

The Most Petrifying Dream I've Ever Had

I just woke up from a horrible nightmare, and I wanted to type it down to preserve it forever.

First of all, know that I'm not prone to violent dreams (just the night before last I dreamt that I served pancaked to Bruce Springsteen). Also, I had creme brulee for dinner last night, which probably had something to do with this.


Well I dreamed that I was back in my old apartment at Longwood with my same roommates. Raquel and her boyfriend started being really mean to me for some reason and stealing my computer to download weird things and just not being really nice. I don't know what that has to do with anything, but that's how it started. Then a girl walked into my apartment. I can describe her to a T. About 4 feet tall, very dark, with salt and pepper hair except the white part of her hair had been dyed blue on one side of her head and red on the other. She just walked straight into my bathroom. "Who are you and what are you doing in my apartment?" I said. She said something like I needed to fuck off or something. I told her if she didn't leave, I would call the cops. So I did. Typical university police takes foooooooorever to get anything done, so they were like "OK we'll send someone over." Well they sent a freaking handy man. By now, this girl was sitting on one of my roommates beds watching TV. So I pointed to the girl and said "It's that girl in the green skirt and pink top." So he starts taking her by the arm to escort her out. She pretended that she was going with him and then once she started passing the kitchen, she grabbed a fucking KNIFE out of the knife block and threatened him with it. Now my dreams aren't THAT violent so I didn't really see the stabbing because I ran into my room and locked the door. The only thing? My door wasn't locking right, and stabbing bitch was trying to get to me next! (Insert scary music)

So now I'm playing the game of whose weight can open or close the door. She's completely lost her shit. For whatever reason, there was a door that connected my room with Megan's. Of course, that door's lock wasn't working either, but I thought if I could run into her room and lock her door, I would be safer. So that's what I did. Phew. Safe. But now she's even more pissed off. She's trying to use a credit card to get Megan's door to unlock. It pokes through just enough so I can grab it from her hands. Done. Now she's REALLY pissed. To be honest, I don't really remember exactly what happened, but I end up in Raquel's room. Bitch is now throwing herself against the door. Luckily, there's a cell phone there. I'm able to tell the police to bring a SWAT team to my apartment (Can you imagine a SWAT team in Farmville?) and save me from this ridiculous girl. Now I know it's a waiting game. Raquel's door is locked and I'm secure, but she's threatening to break down the door using a machete. MACHETE!!! So I decide I might need to sneak into Michele's room through the freaking window. Did I mention I'm on the 4th floor? I bravely started climbing out the window, when bitch bursts through Raquel's door. She gets to me as I'm just leaving Raquel's room, and all she really did was cut my finger a little bit. I realized at this point that this is the last room in our apartment. There's no where else to go, and if no one comes to save me, I'm screwed for real. With the door and window both locked, she starts throwing her weight against the door. I can see the flimsy wood of the door shaking and trying to give. Just then I heard a huge BOOM. "What the fuck, man?!" I heard her say. The blood spattered through the small crack between the door and the carpet of Michele's room. She had just been shot in the leg. I was smart enough to know that wouldn't stop this bitch so I definitely didn't open the door. Good thing, because she tried to attack the first SWAT guy before they finally took her down. When I walked outside my apartment, there were lots of stretchers lined up for victims. Apparently, in her spare time she had found and hurt my other roommates, but not seriously. And of course right then, I woke up.


I don't ever want to eat creme brulee again.

Happy Songs

Do you have any songs that just instantly make you happy? Whether it reminds you of a good time you had or it's just fun to listen to, I can't help but get in a good mood when these songs come on. So here are a few of mine. You're more than welcome to listen to any for your listening pleasure. Maybe it will even make you feel a little happy.

1) Centerfold by the J Giles Band - I've heard this in the car on the radio going to work twice in the last week, and each time I've turned it up to max volume and jammed alone in my car. Both nights, I felt fantastic the rest of the night. My sister burned me a CD with Centerfold on it the summer before my freshman year of high school and I used to listen to it all the time. That CD is long gone now, but I still remember that summer of going to the pool every day with my friends and being excited for high school. I also like any song with "Na na na" or "Sha la la" or something like that in it. It instantly makes me happy.

2) When the World Ends by Dave Matthews Band - This has sentimental value because it's my song with John. The night we started dating, I went to see Dave in concert with Alli and I remember Alli planted the seed in my head about this song. I shrugged it off at first, but the more I listened to it, the more I loved it. Now, it brings me back to the exciting days of having a new relationship. While I love the rhythm of my relationship now, the first few months of it provided feelings I had never had before that have only grown, so it's nice to hear a song and feel that way again.

3) Hotel California by the Eagles - This song reminds me of my family. I'm not entirely sure why except that every member in my family adores this song. When we would go to Hilton Head every summer, there was an outdoor bar/grill that had a few different guitar players and singers sing Jimmy Buffett songs and the like, but no one got more excited when someone would sing Hotel California than my parents.

4) Send Me On My Way by Rusted Root - Honestly, I just like how this sounds. The beat just kind of gets me moving and it's kind of silly trying to sing it since I can't really understand what the guy is saying.

5) Aux Champs Elysees by Joe Dassin - One of the last days I was in La Rochelle, my teacher gave us printed lyrics to this french song and let us listen to it. We tried singing it all together, but this well-known song was too fast for our slow-talking American ways. I have a hard time comparing this song to well-known American songs. It's a song every man, woman, and child in France knows. Not like Itsy Bitsy Spider, but not like Hit Me Baby One More Time either. Some sort of hybrid. Listening to it reminds me of summer, France, and my teacher Nelly.

6) We're At The Top of the World by Juliana Theory - Once again, another song with a "Sha la la la" in it. Something about those songs just gets me.

7) Most Frank Sinatra songs - I work in a restaurant that plays this sort of music 24/7. I know every word and when I hear these songs somewhere else, I can't help but feel a little bit more sophisticated than the rest of the crowd for knowing these classics so well. It also just reminds me of work, where all of the employees make up a kind of family. I absolutely adore my job, and I don't mind being reminded of it any time.

8) Come On! Feel The Illinoise! by Sufjan Stevens - I used to take my enormous variety of Sufjan songs for granted. I would only listen to the songs I really liked, like Chicago and For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti. On my frequent trips to Charlottesville when I was in college, however, I started opening up my mind to more. This song would always come on randomly right as I was about 5 minutes from Charlottesville. That alone would have been enough to make it one of my happy songs, but the more I listen to it, the more I appreciate that upbeat feel to it.

So there's a basic list of songs that make me feel good. Now go turn on your iTunes and listen to yours!

Goodbye

I generally hate goodbyes. I think because change scares me most of the time. Even if I'm overall excited and feeling positive about a change, it's scary to do something different. I'm very much a people-person. Personal relationships are very important to me and I try to do everything I can to maintain them even in conditions that make it difficult. For example, I make an effort to send a long e-mail to my best friend from childhood every few months, and greatly appreciate when she reciprocates. Leaving Longwood and my college best friend, Megan, was also difficult, but we try to stay in touch using the magic of the internet, and we still are able to know what's basically going on in each other's daily lives. My very best friend, Alli, moved to Chicago 3ish weeks ago. We hugged and cried and said we would miss each other, but I knew I would see her again soon when she came into town on business. I've gone 3 weeks and more without seeing Alli, so this goodbye wasn't so bad as it was exciting for her to be going on such a fantastic journey.

However, this weekend, she came home for that business trip, and I was forced to say a real goodbye, with no hope of seeing her again for at least a few months. Last night, at her dad's house, we held hands and reminisced about the ridiculous things we've encountered throughout our several years of friendship. I've had a couple of very meaningful goodbyes like this: my grandfather in his hospital bed before he died, before John left Richmond for UVA freshman year, my family before heading to France for a month. This goodbye is one of those that will always stick with me. One that's full of happiness, tears, good memories, and promises to stay in touch.

It makes me realize that it's not the end of an era, just the end of a chapter with another chapter waiting to begin.