Black Monday

Tomorrow is known as "Black Monday" at our nursing school. A very large Pharmacology test and a very large Health Assessment test. I am interested to see how it goes. We are allowed to use our books for 30 minutes for both exams. That is exciting! Lucy and Fang, my two apathetic sidekicks, are my study partners, but they haven't been much help this time around. I did learn what a flail chest was today though. Here is a video:


I have been looking at other medical blogs on blogger, and there is a plethora of information here! If you read my blog and would like me to list yours, let me know!

Vintage Nurse Prints

My cats and I were looking at things on the internet and generally ignoring the pile of work that I have to do, and I found some images that I thought were neat. I am glad that the nurse's uniform has evolved since Florence Nightingale's times.



I know several of you do Art Journal Pages like my mother (from here on out known as Woman That Kind of Knows Everything) and I just thought these images were neat.

Studying Schedule Comparison: Planned vs. Real Life

At our college, we got a whole week off from school because of professional development and Thanksgiving holiday. I had written a study schedule out that looked similar to this:

Monday: Outline Chapter 32, make flash cards Read Ch. 5

Tuesday: Outline Chapter 7, Read Ch. 9

Wednesday: Read Ch. 567 and outline everything

You get the idea. Lots of outline, highlighting, flash cards, post its, pens, pencils, coffee, red bull, motivation, life goals, small miracle from God, responsibility....blah, blah, blah.

This is what my schedule has ended up like:

Monday: Wake up at 11. Drink some coffee. Look at books on desk. Play solitaire till 5. Complain about having no time to do anything.

Tuesday: Wake up at 10:30. Skip the coffee. Pretend to be doing work while actually reading every blog I can find. Hey! Learning about what there is to do in Italy during the winter could somehow be relevant!

Wednesday: Call Nursing School friend. Complain about how they give us so much work and there is just no time to do all of it.

Let me explain something right here. I have no job. I have a significant other that makes just enough for us to be able to let me go to school full time and not worry about working right now. I have all the time in the world do whatever I need to get done. This woman I was talking too? She has five kids, a husband that's a police officer and works odd hours and she is a scrub tech full time at the hospital. Does anyone see the discrepancy here?

So. Now it's Friday. I have two exams Monday. What am I doing? Blogging to you people. What could I have done ALL day yesterday instead of gorging myself on large quantities of dead bird and canned cranberry dressing and pie and cake and bread dressing and deviled eggs and soda and green bean casserole and and and and...HOW ABOUT STUDY? See, now I'm yelling. I need to get a grip.

Super Nurse and her Apathetic Sidekick Cats

Nursing school is an adventure like never before, where Super Nurse (really Student Super Nurse, but we aren't going to get into technicalities here) leaps bedpans with single bounds and dodges exams with her amazing super powers. Her apathetic cats diffuse her textbooks into her mind with their amazing powers of osmosis! Okay, not really. Nursing school is hilarious. There is that single awkward moment where you have your gloved hand on a man's genitals, a catheter tube in the other, and you suddenly realize you dropped the lube. Oh, did I mention that there are three other nurses watching? I need somewhere to record all of these ridiculous moments, and some of the serious ones. There is all sorts of things that go on in a hospital that isn't like what you see on television. What I have discovered is most important in this business is that each and every patient that you have is first and foremost a human being. They are not the condition they have or the disease that has ravaged them. They are a human soul that needs caring for. The nurses that care for these patients are human too, and it seems to be an amazing relationship between the two. Usually the relationship is one of trust and dependence. When someone else is wiping your ass, it can get a little sticky. The doctors may diagnose you, but I am the one that keeps you alive: remember this.