girl in greenwood

In nursing school, we spent a great deal of time discussing therapeutic communication. We were taught to validate feelings, express respect for the other person, and try to steer the conversation in a productive direction.

Yesterday I heard the following interaction while out with a group of coworkers:

Nurse 1: "You know that guy G*** with the possible mad cow disease, and how he's totally crazy?"

Nurse 2: "Sure, yeah, he calls everyone "f*cking b*tch," right?"

Nurse 1: "Yeah, that guy. The other day I gave him his meds and then asked him if there was anything else I could do for him, and he looked me straight in the eye and said, "Yes. You can suck my dick."

Nurse 2: "HAHAHAHA! What did you say - "It sounds like you're feeling horny right now. Would you like to discuss those feelings?" "

Nurse 1: "No, I just covered my mouth and ran out of the room because I couldn't stop laughing!"


I love my coworkers.

Labels: nursing, nursing school

Still here. Still studying. One week to go.

I know of 5 classmates who have passed so far. There are 3 more who have taken the test but haven't gotten results yet.

I really can't think about anything else. Sorry to be boring.

Labels: nursing school

It has begun: the studying for the NCLEX. I took inventory of myself and my study habits, and then picked up the phone and called two my favorite, most focused classmates and asked them to study with me. R* and E* are both going to be my coworkers on the same unit at Big County Hospital and we will be going through orientation together as well. We conferred on which review books we had and how we should tackle this huge body of knowledge, and yesterday we started. Today we continued with an extra bonus classmate C*. So far we've gotten through 8 chapters of the Kaplan review book and have repeatedly exclaimed "why didn't they tell us this in school??" We also learned that Maslow's hierarchy allegedly contains sex on the most basic level, right next to food, water, oxygen, and protection from extremes in temperature. This led to amusing conversation about how we've never seen any doctor's orders written for sexual interventions, and how if sex really is a basic need, as a group of stressed-out nursing students with long-suffering spouses, we may all be clinically dead.

Then since my brain wasn't quite full enough, classmate R* went home and classmates M* and D* showed up and we played RNtertainment for quite a while. There was much moaning and bitching about how the questions from the game wouldn't be on the NCLEX itself, but I wrote down 5 or 6 items to look up because I couldn't remember a single thing about them. Electromyography? Anyone? Anyone? Yeah, me neither.

And THEN, because I wasn't exhausted enough from using my brain for 8 hours, I went downstairs and worked out and then showered and cooked a healthy dinner and now I really wish someone would rub my back and hand me a chocolate chip cookie.

On that note, I spent the last 8 days watching everything I put in my face, working out more than I have in the last three months combined, logging all my food into Weight Watchers... and I got on the scale yesterday morning and there was no. change. at. all. Gahhhhhhhh. But hey, my body feels pretty good, so I guess I'll just keep at it.

Labels: nursing school, weight loss

I scheduled my NCLEX-RN exam today. I will be taking it on April 30. Now I kind of feel like peeing my pants in terror... not so much because tests are scary to me, but because it means I have a hard date that I cannot procrastinate about.

Labels: nursing school

And that is that!

I graduated on Thursday. It was the strangest feeling. Possibly because I got drunker than I have ever been in my LIFE on Wednesday with my classmates. I've been trying to make up with my liver ever since.

I have a lot of mixed feelings right now - I'm glad to be done with school and its tests, papers, and other hoops through which I had to jump... I'm both excited and terrified about starting my new job in a couple months... I'm very relieved to have some free time to myself until the job starts... I'm oddly anxious and sad about not being around my beloved classmates all the time, and am trying to feel out the right way to stay in touch with my favorite people without being annoying and clingy. The one thing that I am NOT troubled about is taking the NCLEX. I know it's a big deal, and I know I need to prepare for it, but I am completely confident that it will be fine.

Labels: nursing school

I'm feeling so much better today. I still have an alien mucous creature living in my nose, and I make funny sounds when I cough, but my energy level is normalizing and I don't feel like I need to sleep 80% of the time.

I had my last regular test at school today - it was surprisingly not that hard. Or maybe I studied effectively, although since all my studying was done while high on cold medicine, I'm not convinced that's the answer. The good news is that all of my classmates who were worried that they might not pass the class did really well today and are most likely going to be fine and graduate with us!

Now I'm off to go on a hot date with my husband.

Labels: nursing school

Graduation is two weeks from today.

My last med-surg clinical is halfway over.

I think I'm finally starting to understand how to administer IV medications. Stupid IV pumps.

I've got 3 more exams and 1 more nursing process paper to write in the next two weeks.

One of my very favorite classmates got a job on the same unit as me! She may not be able to work days with me initially, but we'll be going through orientation together. That makes me really happy - she is the one person in my class who I am certain I would have been friends with even if we weren't in nursing school together.

Yesterday afternoon one of the boys in my clinical group said, "Hey guys, two weeks from now we'll be standing in [Classmate A]'s yard with beers in our hands." Unbelievable.

Labels: nursing school

I haven't been updating this here blog. I've been busy with lots of other stuff. 21 days to graduation!

Yesterday I had an observation clinical at the inpatient pediatric unit at Downtown Nonprofit Hospital. I worked with two completely awesome nurses (one was a graduate of my program!) and had a wonderful time. I love babies, I really do... and I totally don't want to work in pediatrics. It is so sad to see sick kids - and most of the kids I saw weren't even that sick. So I'm adding peds to the list of nursing specialities I don't wish to pursue.

Okay, now I have to go write write write before I leave for clinical tonight. And tomorrow is my last day of work at Neighborhood Hospital. A normal real life is so close I can taste it!

Labels: nursing school

Job stuff update:

Big County Hospital offered me a 0.9 day shift position with orientation starting June 2. I have not told them yes or no yet, although I did send them an email letting them know that I got the offer, I am interested, but I have another interview scheduled. The reason they have day shift jobs, which is an excellent jaded cynical old nurse question, is because it's actually a new unit. The hospital is expanding and this is one of the new units that will be opening up when the construction is complete, so they're hiring for all shifts right now, both new grads and experienced nurses.

University Teaching Hospital is interviewing me next week. If I understood correctly, the interview is with the nurse manager on the ortho unit where I had clinicals a couple quarters ago. I didn't love that unit but didn't hate it either. So we'll see how that interview goes, and then I'll make a decision. I feel so lucky that I may well have a choice of jobs.

In other news, I am sick sick sick with a cruddy cold that has robbed me of my speaking voice and filled my head with snot. I dragged my arse out of bed this morning at 5:00 to get to clinical by 6:00 where I supervised 1st quarter students for a few hours, then went to campus and took a terribly difficult test (I passed! Not all my classmates did so!) and stayed for lecture. And now I am home and I am going to bed. Night night.

Labels: job, nursing, nursing school

I have been getting up way, way, way before dawn to go to clinical this week. What I've learned: I really like mentoring the first quarter students. I am flattered and encouraged by the confidence the faculty is placing in me. And I really, really don't want to be an RN in a nursing home, because it is all about paperwork and hardly any patient care. That is actually good information for me, because I previously thought that I would be interested in nursing home work.

I have two interviews at Big County Hospital tomorrow morning. One for med-surg, one for telemetry. Both are for new graduate RN positions, which I imagine will have a long & thorough training and preceptorship period. I will know more about that tomorrow. I do know how much their starting pay is, and it is not too shabby. Also, both of the units I'm interviewing with have day shift positions available! That's pretty great, considering that most new grads end up working nights until they earn some seniority.

More tomorrow.

Labels: job, nursing, nursing school

First of all, I want to say hi to rosebuttons and Z* and SN Jack. Thanks for your comments and ideas! Especially about preschool waiting lists... I'm sure every decent preschool in Seattle is already booked for the next 3 years. Also, Z*, you are welcome to write a book on my blog anytime you want. I think it's so cool that we're on this same nursing journey.

I had a good series of conversations with my coworker nurses at work on Saturday. They all urged me to take a new grad job at a hospital in order to establish a good experience base and take advantage of the extra coddling that new grads receive during residency. I said, "but what about if I get pregnant and can't finish a full year of work?" They laughed at me... and said that it happens all the time, and I would most likely be welcomed back or transitioned to another position (like the float pool? or a per diem position?). So. That's what I will try to do. I'm applying to several different hospitals' residency programs for med-surg type jobs, and I'll just have to see what happens.

As for school, I went with one other classmate today to do our "self-orientation" at the long-term care facility where we are doing our management clinical starting next week. What does that mean? We will be there Monday & Tuesday mornings with first-quarter students, supervising & mentoring them along with one of the first-quarter instructors. Then Wednesdays and Thursdays, we'll do an entire shift independently... and I believe it will be as though we are additional supervisory nurses. We're not replacing or shadowing a nurse on the shift. We're supposed to be assessing residents, directing resident care by LPNs and CNAs, passing meds to a whole set of residents twice, performing treatments like wound care... and doing a whole lot of paperwork. I think the idea is to immerse us in the world of an RN in long-term care.

I'm feeling surprisingly not anxious about this clinical. The staff made us feel very welcome today, and I'm looking forward to mentoring the new kids in the program. It makes me realize that I'm come a really long way in a really short time. That's cool.

Labels: nursing school

In class today we filled out applications for the college for graduation, got the contact info for the state nursing commission so we can start sending them information about ourselves, got the contact info for the testing company so we can go ahead and send them a pile of money for faster test authorization now, and got the order forms for our pins. I think we all started to hyperventilate a little.

My biggest issue right now is that I don't know what kind of job I want to look for. One reason I wanted to go into nursing is because of the flexibility, but now that I'm getting ready to step into the work world again, I feel like there are too many choices. Most nurses & teachers have told me that getting a year of general med-surg experience is smart because it allows greater adaptability going forward, but I've also heard people say that if you're interested in critical care, go ahead and take an ICU job as a new graduate. I have ruled out some things - I don't want to work in labor & delivery, I don't want to work in the ER, I'm not very interested in working in ortho (although it would be a decent new grad job). But I don't have a burning passion for one particular area of practice. Some of the nursing students I know have a thing that they want to do, like oncology or trauma or NICU or psych or whatever. I don't have a thing like that.

Additionally, I am trying to balance the whole finding a new job thing with the whole spawning a smolt thing. We're not trying to have a baby just yet, but neither of us are getting any younger. So I feel kind of pressured to get work ASAP, so I can get a good chunk of work experience under my belt before I take time off for having a kid. And I would like to be able to go back to work part-time in a per-diem position or on a "traveler" contract, so we wouldn't have to put our baby in day care. I don't know how to balance all the variables.

Labels: nursing school

I've been neglecting my poor blog! As my pathetic short posts have probably hinted, I've been just overwhelmed with everything that's been going on, both good and bad. So here's a quick update on several things in my life:

School. This is this first week of 6th quarter, which is my LAST quarter of nursing school. Graduation is scheduled for March 20. I have two courses with two clinicals - advanced med-surg and nursing management. For med-surg, I'm going to the big downtown location of my employer, which will be interesting. For management clinical, I'm going to a nursing home where half the week I will supervise first-quarter students during their first clinical, and the other half of the week I will manage care for the residents and also manage the staff (CNAs et al) who work there. I am scared to death about the management part - I feel like I don't know enough to tell other people what to do!

House. We're getting settled into the house. I rearranged the kitchen cabinets today, and found a place to plug in the dustbuster. One of our friends asked R* if we were happy in the house, and his answer was "Um... happier than at the apartment? We haven't lived at the house long enough to know." I concur. I think the house is going to be fine but I haven't been here long enough to be sure.

Apartment. I probably shouldn't talk too much about this, but suffice to say that we've found a lawyer and are investigating our options.

Health. Remember how I signed up with Weight Watchers October 1st? Yeah. I stuck to it just fine until the whole Sh*tland thing got underway. And when we were worrying about where we were going to sleep that night or whether we'd have poo in the bathtub, I didn't give a crap about what I ate. So I haven't lost any weight. At least I've managed not to gain any, either. I worked out today for the first time since we moved into the house... I am really out of shape. But it felt good.

Also, remember how I was having too much anxiety? I finally got my act together (and powered through my anxiety about making phone calls) and saw a psychiatric nurse practitioner who specializes in medication management and counseling. After discussing my symptoms and my family history, she agreed with me that I seem to have a biochemical issue that is probably genetic, and changed my medications. It's only been a few weeks and so far, so good.

Kitty. Our Kismet kitty has been such a trooper through all of this upheaval. She didn't like the night she spent in a hotel with us, but she was well-behaved. And she was downright cheerful about staying in the rental condo for a week, even though she didn't understand why we were bothered by her clawing the upholstered chair. (She doesn't do that at home!) Today I took her to the vet for her annual checkup, and the doctor told us she's perfectly healthy, but Kismet registered a complaint with the vet techs. I have never heard her hiss, growl, or yowl before, but she did all three while she was getting her nails trimmed. Goodness. She is a furry purring ball of love at home.

Car. The dealership service center patched my tire and charged me $19. And they vacuumed my floor mats and left me a new bottle of water. Awesome.

Books. I've read a lot of books during my time away from school. The kind you read for fun. You can read about the books I've read and what I thought about them on my shelf at Shelfari.

Las Vegas. R* and I went to Vegas for 3 days right before Christmas. We stayed at the Bellagio and saw 4 shows and ate lots of fantastic food and drank way too much and played slot machines for no apparent reason and generally had a great time. We pretty much avoided the skeevier parts of the Vegas experience altogether. I'm just a little bit bummed that I didn't see any Elvises. (Elvisi? Elvi? Elvoose?)

Christmas. We went to my parents' house and they made Christmas for us. They'd gotten a tree and decorated and put up lights and Mom even got stockings and stuff to put in them. We played games and cards and ate homemade food and took naps and went to see "The Golden Compass" and went for a walk in the snow and generally had a lovely family time. It was really good.

Leavenworth. Because I worked New Year's Day, I didn't want to do anything major on New Year's Eve, which turned out to be just fine since the Space Needle fireworks didn't go off as planned. At all. We had planned to spend the night in a hotel downtown with a view, but we cancelled it in advance. Thank goodness. It would've been a real letdown! So this past weekend before school started, R* took me to Leavenworth to see the winter wonderland. It was so snowy and beautiful! It's not like city snow - everything was covered in this thick puffy blanket of marshmallow cream snow. Because the town is so small, the snow doesn't get all dirty and gross from air pollution and lots of traffic. We went for a walk on the grounds at Sleeping Lady prior to having dinner there, and it was so neat. The snow was about waist deep and they dug out paths between all the buildings. I felt like a mouse in a burrow. The stars came out and they looked so huge and bright because we were out in the mountainy woods - so pretty!

Anyway. I've got to get to bed. I've got clinical orientation tomorrow, oh joy. Oh snore.

Labels: family, health, medical, nursing school, travel

# posted by girl_in_greenwood @ 9:25 PM 1 comments

I just had an unexpected niceness happen to me. I'm sitting in the hallway at school, waiting for my classmates to finish the final exam we had today so we can go to lunch. My clinical instructor from last quarter walked by and said hi, then turned around and sat down next to me and said, "I was talking with the 5th quarter faculty the other day, and one of them said, 'You know who I really like? That Emily. She is so well-rounded and smart and with it.' "

What a sweet, sweet thing to say!

Labels: nursing school

I've checked off a few more things for this quarter:

Done with clinicals.
Done with care plans.
Done with teaching project.
Done with term papers.
Done with going to work the day after my last day of clinical which really sucked for the record.

Still left to do before the quarter is over:

Take several exams.
Write approximately twelve thousand more log entries to turn in on Tuesday. (Actually, I'm almost done with this, but I cannot stand to write any more tonight.)
Go to see my parents for Thanksgiving wherein there will be eating of pie and turkey and stuffing and potato chips and much sleeping in and much drinking of tasty beverages. I can't even express how much I'm looking forward to this.
A one-night stay at the Salish Lodge on our way back after the holiday, wherein there will be snuggling in front of a fire, soaking in a bathrub, and hot stone massages.
And some more exams.

It's really close. Graduation is four months away. Unbelievable.

Labels: nursing school

It's been a whirlwind couple of weeks. I realized today that this week and next week are the busiest weeks of the quarter, so I'm actually feeling really positive.

Last week was my first week of labor & delivery clinicals. I haven't seen any births. I did get to assess a newborn and her mom, though, which was awesome. I love babies. I also got to hang out with a mom who was in for observation due to pregnancy-induced hypertension - she had me feel her baby kicking, which was really cool. The census is pretty low at this hospital, and the c-section rate is pretty high, so I despair of actually witnessing a an old-fashioned birth. We shall see.

Over the weekend, R* and I went out to Port Townsend for a couple of nights. His band played a show Saturday night, but we went up on Friday so we could have some downtime. It was nice but too short.

This week in addition to classroom time, I've been out on the road with hospice nurses as part of my community health clinical. I'm actually really, really enjoying it and will write more about it soon. Also for community health, I'm doing a teaching project with 3 of my classmates on Monday and Tuesday. Then I've got three days in a row of L&D clinical, and then I'm going to lie down and sleep a great deal. After that, things slow down significantly - I do have a few more days of L&D clinical, and half a day with a lactation consultant, but that's about it. It will seem like a luxury to be done with clinical a month before the quarter is over!

Oh yeah, and I'm working on Saturday. I'm seriously trying to figure out how I can swing by the hospital tomorrow and put my name in the "please let me have a day off if you don't need me" book.

Labels: nursing school

All this talk about babies and breastfeeding in class is making me want to have a baby.

That is all.

Labels: babies, nursing school

I'm back at school this week for my next-to-last quarter of nursing school. This quarter the courses are Childbirth and Community Health. I am looking forward to the labor & delivery stuff because I think it's interesting, even though I have no intention of being an L&D nurse myself. The community health coursework is really boring to me... a lot of it is about policy and health care access and all that wonky sort of stuff that just makes me feel impotently angry. However, I think I'm going to be able to shadow a hospice nurse for my clinical for that class, which will be great.

Right now I'm still feeling very confused. I'm pretty sure I know what dates I'm supposed to be where, but that's about all I know. I'm not even sure what paperwork I'm supposed to turn in tomorrow! I hate feeling lost.

Labels: nursing school

Okay! I finished 4th quarter on Wednesday. Final grades haven't come out yet, but I believe I'm going to get a 3.5 in both classes.

We signed a lease on the apartment I mentioned previously. Now we are in the middle of packing up and getting rid of stuff, putting other stuff into storage, and generally trying to make our house look beautiful and uncluttered so people will want to buy it. My parents are going to come help us do some of the last repairs and painting and stuff, which will be excellent.

I'm looking forward to the opportunity to get rid of extraneous stuff. It feels good to simplify a bit. But it sure is a lot of work to go through everything we own and make decisions about whether we're going to take it with us, throw it away, Freecycle it, give it to someone specific, or put it in storage.

New job starts on Monday. I talked to my new boss this week and she told me she's going to have me orient with the RNs, so I don't know if I'm going to be a "junior nurse" and have my own patient load or what! Regardless, I'm looking forward to it and I'm sure it will go fine. This first week is going to be all classroom orientation, anyway, which will be snoresville. I've done clinicals at this hospital before so I already know how their documentation works, how to use the Pyxis, which brand of blood glucose monitor they use, blah blah blah. I think I'll take a book and read under the table like I did in 5th grade social studies class. Haha.

Labels: moving, nursing, nursing school

I have a monster headache today. My inner nursing-school hypochondriac wants to declare it a cluster headache and go to the ER for some oxygen and good drugs, but in real life I think it's just a regular ol' tension headache that needs some ibuprofen and big glass of water, which I'm taking care of right now.

School is nearly done. I've turned in all my assignments, including extra credit and my giant term paper. I've taken my last two regular exams and did just fine on both of them, so now all that's left is the two final exams for med-surg and for psych. Interesting, each final is only 60 points, not 100 points like usual finals. I will study for these exams, but I am so not worried about them.

In moving news, I got us a storage space today and bought a handful of boxes to start the pack-a-thon. Yesterday I plowed through our biggest storage closet and got rid of a bunch of stuff, posted a bunch of stuff on Freecycle, and divided up the rest into "take to apartment," "pack for storage unit," "leave with house" (light bulbs for the light pots, the egg holder for the fridge), and "Freecycle later". Now that I've got boxes, I can get going on packing stuff up and we can start ferrying things to the storage unit.

I also went and looked at an apartment today. It's not perfect - there are definitely both pros and cons - but it would be fine for a year or so and the price is right. It's like a mother-in-law apartment in the owner's house - upstairs there's the owner's unit and downstairs there's his workshop. I like the idea of living someplace that isn't an apartment complex full of people. Pros: super-nice neighborhood, walking distance to some of our favorite restaurants, big living room, big kitchen, extra leetle room for an office, storage space, hardwood floors. Cons: bedrooms are tiny and don't have real closets, just closet-y areas without doors, no dishwasher, electric stove, bathroom is nice but tiny, no off-street parking, laundry is in a storage room next to the apartment. We'll see - the owner is going to run credit checks and all that and get back to us with a decision soon. I tried really hard to be pleasant and gave him info that should make him want to rent to us: R* has a great job! We've been homeowners for quite some time now! We like quiet living spaces! I love the owner's artwork! Etc. If this place doesn't work out, no big deal - we don't plan to move before August 1 anyway.

All of this extroversion today was hard for me. Especially with a headache. But I got a lot accomplished so go me. Now I'm going to go find some lunch and then go put stuff in boxes.

Labels: moving, nursing school