Lucy! I’m Home!

Nursing school—so we meet again…

So I have already accepted the fact that my summer is just going to…well…suck. Work, then class till 930 pm… clinicals Saturday AND Sunday… geriatrics (*shudders*)… No offense to those that love it, it’s just not my population. It reminds me of Fundamentals all over again—hip replacements and back surgeries; 98% of the floor on fall precautions… I would rather take another round of maternity over that. Oh well, such is life…

My Med-surg/Geri class starts tonight—but we didn’t even have an instructor assigned until yesterday! So the syllabus, book list, and first couple of lectures were just posted around 10:30 pm last night. Which of course leaves me plenty of time to buy 11 books (thankfully I already have 6 of them from previous classes), get them delivered (as if I would ever pay the school bookstore’s crack prices), and read the first few chapters for tonight’s lecture at 6pm (like that’s gonna happen). Excellent—we haven’t even started yet and we’re already behind…

The syllabus, though at 15 pages is one of the shorter ones I’ve seen, looks like one hell of a headache. Exams, quizzes, med math, check-offs…the works. And then Pharmacology, with all of its glorious attributes, starts on Thursday. I feel like that damn coyote dropped his anvil on me. Can’t… Breathe…

I am hoping though, that this is just beginning-of-the-semester jitters and I’ll somehow survive it all…

And Now a Word From Our Sponsors…

Nursing Care of Women and Childbearing Families is over—grade (and quite a nice one if I may say so myself) is signed, sealed, and delivered. I’ll now have the pleasure of a solid week and a half of quality sleep before we go back for the summer semester and Care of Older Adults and Pharmacology, followed by Peds and Mental Health this fall… I’ll be back to school (and blogging unless something superific happens) after May 18th…

And an early Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers, mommys, and baby mamas. 

“The hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world.”

~William Ross Wallace~

Silence Is Not Always Golden

Our last OB clinical was yesterday—there really was a light at the end of that long, dark tunnel. I really didn’t think I could take another day on the postpartum floor so I was glad when my instructor said I could go to the NICU. But it’s never a good sign when you get there and the charge nurse presents you to the nurse she’s assigning you to and tells her, “I’m sorry, I have to give you a student today.” WTF?!? And like I wasn’t even standing right there! The nurse kept a straight face but you could tell she was less than pleased. So there I was, only there for about 60 seconds, and I was already turned off to the whole situation and ready to leave. You have TWO whole patients who sleep 98% of the day anyway, what is the big damn deal? Lord forbid I keep you from your sticky buns and trash mags…  

But I took a deep breath and kept it moving. It was the last day, and I was determined not to feed the trolls. I did the eternal scrub up to my elbows just to be able to enter the unit but was not allowed to touch anything—not  a chart, not an isolette, and certainly not a baby—for five-and-a-half painful hours. I should have brought a crossword puzzle or something. I’m really starting to rethink my desire to be a NICU nurse. Not because of the less than stellar experience I had (because the nurses in the NICU where I volunteer are great), but because I’m starting to think it’s just not enough excitement (patient care/interaction) for me. I know that some people like relaxed jobs where they sit around and don’t do much, but if that’s all I wanted to do I could have went to school for envelope stuffing or something. The most interesting thing that happened all day was two incidents where fentanyl (big time pain med—100 times more potent than morphine) syringes came up to the unit completely empty. But they weren’t just empty syringes. They were actually drawn up to the dose that was supposed to be in them but there was nothing in those chumpies but air. Gone unnoticed, that would have been one hell of an air bubble… Freak pharmacy thing or…you fill in the blank…

Though it’s no secret that maternity wasn’t my favorite rotation, our last moments in OB will forever leave a footprint on my heart. As we walked through L&D we could hear a woman in the actual pushing stage of labor. And she was a-hollering—totally to be expected when you’re pushing something the size of a watermelon out of a hole the size of a lemon. She had the nulliparous students in the hallway cringing at how much pain she apparently was in. So she’s in there screaming and you can hear the nurses encouraging her to push. There was a climax of activity/noise and then all of a sudden it was quiet. Since we were not actually in the room and able to see what was going on, at first when you hear the woman stop screaming you figure okay—the baby is out. But then you slowly start to realize that it’s too quiet. The critical thinking wheels start to turn and you ask yourself why isn’t the baby crying? Next thing I know they were calling for a neonatal crash cart… 

…dystocia…nuchal cord x 2…baby completely blue…umbilical cord separated from the placenta…blood everywhere…

When you work in health care you will sometimes see how even in a beautiful situation such as a new life being brought into the world, things do not always go as planned. Always count your blessings.