done

My preceptorship is done.


Did you hear that?

My preceptorship is DONE!
Since the first day of nursing school I had heard about our preceptorship. How we would start off following our nurse and by the end we would have the nurse follow us instead.
I was terrified.
But I did it. All eleven twelve hour shifts. And all from 6pm to 6am. And I didn't fall asleep and/or die driving home in the mornings. (maybe with just a few close calls...)

I learned so much. My nurse was awesome. I can't find any flaws in the way he does things. I honestly think he's one of the most knowledgable nurses I've ever worked with. He's organized and rarely needs reminding about what to do. He was great. It was a pleasure doing his work for him.

I got to do a bunch of things I've never done before. Such as:

Catch a urine sample
Watch a sheath be removed
Find a heart murmur
Change a central line dressing
Put on a five lead heart monitor
Recognize crazy heart rhythms like A flutter and A fib and PVCs.
Order labs and send them out
Give nitro paste and nitro stat
Order medications from pharmacy
Give meds and IV meds without my nurse watching me
Deciding when to hold meds
Call a patients house to get a med list
Give end of shift report
Fill out care plans
Take care of five patients
Put a bandaid on a "wee willy"
Admit a new patient in the middle of the night
Order a stat EKG
Go down to the cafeteria at 1 am in search for lemon pie
Put someone on a bed pan
Sand bag a bleed after a cardiac catheterization
Set the pace on a heart pacer
Badder scan

I did embarrassing and stupid things like:

Erupt water all over a room from an oxygen humidifier
Spill heparin on a patient
Forget to clean an IV port
Get peed on
Use my own stethoscope on a patient with droplet precautions
Forget my patients names
Almost tipped a patient to the ground
Kicked a catheter box
Taking three tries to get an ID band on correctly
Letting IV meds spill on the floor
Forgetting to open the clamp to the IV tubing
Missing an IV stick (although, I did have six people staring at me while I tried. I got nervous.)
Asking a janitor how to get to the cafeteria
Teaching CNAs how to say "crazy" in Korean
Not knowing answers to questions
Taking five minutes to do a simple drug calculation
Forgetting to tie the patient's gown as we walked down the hallway.
Charting the stuff on the wrong patient's chart. (God bless delete keys.)

It was a GREAT experience.

But....

SO GLAD ITS DONE.

this was my hair after waking up after a night of clinicals.

I'm sick of driving to St. George and back 3 times a week and really need a normal sleeping schedule again.

red, pink, hearts, and love

valentine's day. i was determined to make this one better because last year's was the worst.

today i made it best. the way it should be. red, pink, hearts, and love.

red: annalie let me in on her family tradition. her mom would take string and put it all over the house. in rooms, out rooms, in things, under things. at the end of the string would be a present. so this morning i got up early and went over to annalie's house and we made a string mess of her house. she has 6 roommates. so by the time we were done making 6 different lines all around her house, it was a mess! but a LOVELY mess! she came over to my house and helped me make string treasure hunt awesomeness for my roommates too. it was a BLAST to do! and SO much fun to see them follow their string to their present. this is DEFINITELY going to be a tradition for me.



the pictures don't do it justice.



it was way more awesome than this.



pink: i had my favorite four year old come over to my house today. she kept telling me over and over again that her favorite color was pink. we pretended there were snakes in my kitchen, chased the bunny, watched "depectable me" and played hi-ho cherry oh. we even went on a walk and got to hide from people. my favorite part is when she says, "luigi, I love you." How could anyone not feel loved when she's around?

hearts: we cut out a bunch of paper hearts yesterday in preparation of this blessed day. then we heart attacked a couple people's houses. it was fun to tape hearts to their doors. it reminded me of my mission days. especially the part where we were caught. hehehe. sharing the love is fun.
love: i just love so many people in my life. i've got the best family anyone could ask for. seriously, y'all should be jealous. i've got some of the best friends up north. and right here in cedar i have the best. i'm so lucky to have such great people around me that make my life happy happy all the time. i couldn't ask for anything more.

i think that's what valentine's day is about. recognizing the love you have in your life and showing it to others without fear of being rejected. it's valentine's day for goodness sake! everyone wants a little loving.

love you all! thanks for making it best.

learn

let's take a moment to re-educate ourselves.

now, i realize i am not perfect when it comes to grammar and spelling. especially spelling. and yes, i don't usually like to use capitol letters when i type. but i feel it a need to educate the masses on something that truly BUGS me when it's used incorrectly.

let's take a trip back to second grade. remember when our teacher told us that we weren't supposed to be putting ourselves first in a sentence when there were two people in the sentence? for instance, "me and brittni went to the store." that's not polite. so our teacher told us to switch it. then it became "brittni and me went to the store." then teacher explained that we couldn't use me for a subject. think of it. if brittni wasn't there and it was just me, then i couldn't say "me went to the store." you sound stupid.

so we were taught about how we need to use "I" instead. "Brittni and I went to da club."

well, the lesson didn't end there. but i tend to think that most of the second graders stopped listening because the thought of changing all of their sentences to include those new rules boggled them. but guess who didn't stop listening? and who already knew those rules anyway because i had older brothers that liked to be smart and teach me things? ME.

teacher went on to say that you only used I if you were the subject of the sentence. even if there were two people. like "She went to the store with Brittni and I." that doesn't work, people. Not at all. It's "she went to the store with Brittni and me." true story. i'm not lying.

you only use "person and I" when you're the subject. meaning, when you could replace it with "We." Like "We went to the store." You don't use it at the end of sentences. Me is used when it's the object. it's not rude, it's proper. use me when you can replace it with "us." like "she went to the store with us." never would you say "Us went to the store" or "she went to the store with we." but that's what most people say when they use I and me wrong.

get it?

don't worry. i'm pretty sure most of the general public doesn't. it just makes you look stupid, people. i know that you think you're trying to use proper grammar by using "I", but it's making it blatantly obvious that you didn't pay attention in second grade. by trying to use I in place of yourself for everything you're making yourself look stupid. so if that's what you're going for, then fine.

i guess i'll just have to learn how to deal with people who didn't pay attention in second grade and hope to educate the masses about this. until i learn how to do that i'll still judge you and think that you're stupid.

hair

high school blonde

little mermaid red

return to the blonde-ness



my favorite shade of red



missionary brown

terrible red...... gross

dark dark dark

blonde hi-lights

another dark

favorite dark

the blue i had for 48 hours. loved it.

my current color. racing stripes. LOVE. IT.

love things

Nursing.

I love it.

But I’ll tell you a few things that I don’t love about it.

I don’t love wiping butts.

I don’t love being peed on or puked on.

I don’t love being room service.

I don’t love feeling like an idiot when I can’t explain things or remember medications.

I don’t love feeling helpless when someone feels so sick and they’re counting on me to save them from pain.

I don’t love not knowing what to do all the time.

I don’t love charting.

But there are some things that I do love.

I love the patients.

I love getting to know them.

I love knowing more about them than their doctors do.

I love laughing at myself with them.

I love joking with them.

I love sitting with them and rubbing their shoulder when they’re feeling like they need to vomit.

I love holding their hands when they cry.

I love listening to them and being there to listen.

I love feeling like I’m helping them.

I love hearing them say a grateful “thank you” and knowing that they mean it.

So even though I thought I’d love being a nurse because I get to stab people and take their blood and give them IVs and be in that huge room of medical supplies, I really don’t love all of that. Sure, I like it.

But when it comes to love, the thing I love most are the people.