girl in greenwood

Well, I lived through the first day of my clinical. It was not difficult, in the sense that nothing I did today was hard or super-unpleasant, but it was emotionally challenging on a lot of levels. It was hard to see some of the most incapcitated residents - although they are cared for with skill and kindess (more on that in a minute), it's kind of a shock to see people who are too out of it to sit up or open their eyes or feed themselves. I suppose that says something about our society!

Also, I felt like I was all thumbs today following the NAC that I shadowed - just as I feared, I didn't know ANYTHING. But it wasn't what I expected not to know, if that makes sense. The skills that I learned in class were all completely useful! But I still felt like I was all thumbs because I didn't know where to get supplies or throw out trash or open doors with coded locks or where to find the dining hall or a million other things. Monday will go much better now that I know a thing or two!

I'm not going to talk at length about the specifics of what I did, both to preserve the residents' privacy, and because most of my readers would probably be grossed out. :) But there were a couple moments that felt good... one was when I sat and chatted with a retired lady who lives on a less-assisted floor, and she told me about her previous job and stuff. Another was when I helped a man eat lunch, and he read my nametag and told me my last name was the same as his, and then I was able to coax him to eat all his vegetables. The woman who came around and wrote down what everyone ate was surprised - apparently he'd insisted he didn't want a vegetable.

One thing that made me glad that I'm headed down the nurse career path was that I was hugely intrigued by what the nurses were doing. Of course I'm not shadowing them because I am learning to be an *assistant* not a nurse at this time... but all their charting and med-passing and care-planning looked so much more interesting than what I was doing all day! That is good affirmation that I'm doing the right stuff.

And finally, now it's official - I honestly would rather wipe butts than work at my old spam job!