explodey things go boom

I had a conversation with a fellow nursing student the other day. It went something like this:

Me: "...now we're at war with Libya."
Her: "I didn't know that we're at war with Libya!"
Me: "Well, that's generally the idea when you drop bombs on a country."
Her: "Bombs? I thought we only dropped missiles!"

/facepalm

Roadkill

My car died yesterday.

In traffic. On I-5. I was running late to class because I woke up and found out my car need jumping to start, anyway.

See where I'm going here? The alternator'd had enough of life.

Anyway. I merged into the slow lane, and almost immediately my radio made that weird groaning noise that faded as my music disappeared and my car lights dimmed. Good thing traffic was standing still.

Setting aside the fact that this was absolutely a freaky situation, this is where it gets funny.

I quickly realized that since my car had no power of any kind, and thus, my warning lights did not work. Traffic was starting to creep forward, so I hopped out of my car and yelled to the lady behind me that my car was dead and I didn't know how to get off the freeway.

Keep in mind we are maybe 200 feet from the next, clearly marked exit.

Her response? "I don't know how to get off the freeway either! I'm from Oregon!"

*facepalm*

Maybe she didn't notice my Oregon plates.

Anyway, the nice man in the panel truck behind her jumped out, stopped traffic, and shoved my poor little car onto the freeway shoulder.

My hero.

conversations in the kitchen

Grandpa: "Hey, your legs are looking pretty white."
Me: "I know, I wish we could hold class outside."
Grandpa: "Or tell your teachers to get a heat lamp or something."
Me: "Kiss my foot."
Grandpa: "No... your white legs might be catching."

i'll be over here, on my own little island

I think I'm officially the nursing school outcast.

Everyone I've heard from hates pharmacology and pathophysiology.

They're interesting classes. Lots of work, but super fascinating. The hard classes with the cool content always pique my interest, but when I go those classes, everyone moans about how hard they are and how they're going to fail. Naturally, they enjoy the classes about application of nursing. Those are alright to some extent, but I prefer the clinical setting.

Maybe I'm just weird.

Or maybe eight hours of class per day, two days a week, has already melted my brain.

My med/surg prof is hilarious though. She did say "I'm going to give you plenty of knowledge that you can use to win bets or drinking games."

:)

mixing up homophones

This is the part where I admit that I loved pharmacology. Almost everyone complained about it all the time, but I think it's fascinating. Can't wait for patho. I ended the semester on a high note... scoring about 90% in all my classes. Sweet.

Some quotes while studying for finals that I feel particularly highlight the special-ness of nursing students:

Me: "How does an oil retention enema work?"
Her: "You mean an oral retention enema?"
Me: "Um, no, all enemas go in the other end."
Her: "Well, it's for impaction, and if a patient is impacted, how else are you gonna get it up in there?"
Me: "..."

I can see that going well... "Excuse me, sir, I'm gonna need to you open up please."

And then we reviewed enema procedure. If you give an enema in a left side-lying position, logic would suggest that a patient lie on their right side while waiting for it to work. Or possibly on their back.

Me: "How would you position a patient to help them hold an enema?"
Her: "On their stomach with their butt in the air."
Me: Hysterical laughter

Sometimes you just have to wonder.

*Technically, oil and oral aren't homophones, but in this case they were.

what we have here...

...is a failure to communicate.

Throughout my whole life (or at least the parts when I had someone other than my mother grading my papers), I have gotten good writing grades. Sometimes I can form sentences. More rarely, I string together words that make sense. When I write, I procrastinate until the point of no return, then stay up all night and drag the words out in a process so painful that it's probably not worth the good grade.

And then I had to take a Nursing Communication class.

Both of the writing projects I've done so far (a speech and a "wellness education" brochure on a health-related topic: drug-induced coma was my cheery subject) have been recieved in confusion. By this, I mean that the feedback my instructor gave me clearly showed that she had NO IDEA WHAT I WAS TRYING TO SAY.

It's frustrating.

If your communication professor doesn't understand you, is it because you're a bad communicator, or is she failing at communicating communication?

Do you see my dilemma?

I'm totally not failing any of my classes. I'm just annoyed that I have to keep doing well on the quizzes in that class to keep an A.


In other news, I just got a perfect score on an essay I turned in for the class I detest the most. Thank goodness for small favors. And pie charts. Haha.

napping is my new hobby

I'm playing intramurals soccer. On turf. It's quite delightful, except for the serious carpet burns I get when I slide tackle people. Of course, that's why you're not supposed to slide, but sometime you just have to. Every game is total football for me. Oh soccer. You are balm to my school-weary soul.

In other news:

Grandpa: "I don't like that Reba lady."
Me: "Why? What'd she do to you?"
Grandpa: "She beat me when I told her I didn't like her music."

Hahaha.

nursing is srs bizness.

Epidemiology class. Talking about modes of transmission for disease. The prof asked us to give her examples for each type, so we did.

Sexual? Herpes.
Birth process? HIV.
Food? E. Coli.

Touching? COOTIES!


After the whole class finished snickering, she asked for a "real" example and the guy next to me protested that cooties IS a real threat. Yes, we are friends. Obviously.

Then we started arguing about how if vectors are living animals, are they still vectors when they die? For example, if a raccoon is carrying rabies, and it dies, and then you make soup out of it, will you get rabies from dead raccoon soup?

...yeah. I don't know either.

i don't remember signing up for this.

Spring break is over. Back to the daily grind. Mondays suck.

I gave a speech in communication class today. On why you should drink coffee (it's good for you, obviously). One of the guys said it was the best speech he's ever heard. He likes coffee.

In lab tonight we did blood glucose testing on each other. I ate M&Ms as fast as I could to see how high I could get mine while my partner laughed at me. 137*.

After that, we were doing neuro exams, got bored and had lightsaber duels and wizard fights with our penlights.

We also did restraints... we were practicing on a crib because it's easier to tie half-knots on round poles than on square ones. My partner and I were minding our own business and hammering the crap out of each other's deep tendon reflexes when we heard "HEY! SOMEONE COME TIE ME TO THE BED!" From our lab instructor.

Mondays are awesome.

*Normal blood sugar is ~80-120 (or 70-110 depending on which book you read)
**Obvously, stuffing your face with chocolate does not give you a fasting blood glucose.

my soul was hardened already

Not quite halfway done with my first semester and they have my summer all plotted out. Two days for clinicals and two days for patho, psych and med/surg classes. Yay. Should be fun. I love having three-day weekends.

I got another A on my second pharm test, stayed above the class average. Sweet. I struggled with the material for awhile. Next test is everything from pain to poo in fundamentals.

Among the things overheard in catheter lab tonight:
"Hey, can I see your vagina?"

...

good to know

Student 1: "What is this? Hamburger?"
Student 2: "Um, no, that's supposed to be steak."
Student 1: "You're silly. Steak is shaped like Africa!"

the force is strong with this one

It's getting worse. Now the boys say "SQUIRREL!" every time I get distracted by something in class. My attention span is not that short, I promise. They just like to show off their hip knowledge of Pixar movies.

Some stuff I just don't get. We were introduced to energy healing. I started pretending I could open doors like a Jedi and then mock-seriously started waving my hands above my partner's head. The prof stopped mid-sentence, looked at me and said "I feel like you've done this before."

Uh... yeah.

It's ok. I pretend to be a Jedi all the time, when I'm not busy fighting orcs. Nothing to see here, move along.


I got an A on my first pharmacology test. Clinical next Friday.

miss fidget

Still learning how to keep from killing people.

One month down. First test over. I have a constant headache which I suspect from the holes drilled in my head that knowledge is poured into four days a week.

Yesterday, we were given an exercise on energy healing. Yeah, it's a little more into alternative therapy than I'm comfortable with, but anyway. The professor started talking about finding balance and being in the moment. She asked why it was so hard for us to find stillness.

The guy sitting behind me poked me in the back and hissed "She means you!"

Guess I have a hard time sitting still for three hours. What a surprise.

i love that our friendship is based predominantly on threats.

I did it.

I survived the first two weeks of nursing school.

They gave me a bag of needles and told me not to leave them in the soccer field. I feel so... reliable.

Then they told me all the ways I could potentially kill somebody. I feel so... inadequate.

Two weeks down, 18 months to go.


Oh. If you're one of those people and you're reading this, stop telling me how much you hate needles when I tell you I'm going into nursing. I really don't care, and they're so much less scary than crush injuries. Which I might give you if you keep making that comment.

purple pride

I went to my new school to sort some things out today. Found the doors to the building in which Student Accounts is located were locked, so I went to get my parking permit. While I was filling out paperwork, two girls came in and asked if Student Accounts was open today.

Me: "Um, both doors to the building are locked, if that means anything..."
Vehicle registry lady: "Oh my gosh, that can't be right, someone should be in there. But we don't talk to them. You'd have to go to the building. But someone should be there!"

I went back, just to check.

The doors were still locked.

gee... that's news to me

I really hate going to the eye doctor. It's worse than going to the dentist for me. Right now, only my right eye is dilated because the chick missed my left eye with the drop (twice). Seriously. This is what went down:

Eye doctor: "So... the vision in your right eye has changed a little bit."
Me: "It has not. When your assistant was checking it, I told her I rubbed my eye and then she found an eyelash in it but said it was fine."
Eye doctor: "K. Lemme check real quick."
*checks real quick*
"Yeah, you must have had something in your eye because her readings don't make any sense compared to the ones I just got."
Me: "...told you."

modern-day hitchhikers

I'm stuck in Hermiston because my stupid car died on the freeway. To be fair, it didn't die, it just stated making a horrific clunking noise that was scary enough to make us stop and call Triple A. Also, my parents don't love us enough to come and pick us up, so we had to get a hotel room.

Turns out that the hotel that the tow truck driver brought us to is the one I got in trouble for sneaking out of during a state theatre conference trip my senior year in high school. This time we snuck Panda in. Also they gave me two free beers. And they have FSC. Woohoo.

You know what I learned today?

Never leave home without your towel.

clear blue december

It's cold now. Most of the leaves are in the street now, and the rain has stopped, but I think there's no point in having cold without snow.

Why do they call the week before finals "dead week"? It's never stopped my professors from assigning stuff, me spending ridiculous amounts of time in my books, and generally wishing I didn't have to drag myself out of bed at the crack of early. Wait... maybe that last one is the reason. I think they should call it "undead week." Everyone looks like zombies, and I'm pretty sure they gave up bathing and sleeping.

I got my nursing school schedule. I'm leaning to the right on the terrified/excited scale right now. I'm quitting my job tomorrow to spend the holidays with family before the hard work begins. I can't wait. :)

World Cup draw on Friday!

the doomsday clock is ticking

Old people say weird stuff.

On Friday (the 13th), I walked into a lady's room to check on her. She was curled up in her armchair and her eyes were wide. She was staring intensely at the bathroom door.

Me: "Hi! What are you doing?"
Her: WAITING FOR ARMAGEDDON
Me: "Oh... is that supposed to happen today?"
Her: I HOPE SO

Guess it didn't happen.