Pick-up lines according to Josh
~ Your hair is beautiful, like a horse.
~ I love hugging you. You are so soft and squishy.
~ It's great to see you today. But would you mind not talking?
~ Don't worry, large women are beautiful.
~ You aren't fat, you just have a large butt.
~ You shouldn't have cut your hair. But it looks ok.
~ You look just like Beth (our manly looking teacher).
~ You aren't short, you just have the body of a primary schooler (grade schooler).
~ You have long arm hair.
~ You have beautiful veins under your eyes. I bet I could start an IV on them.
You'd be swept off your feet too, right ladies?
Nursing pharmacology help
http://spaces.msn.com/pharmhelp
Good luck!
Your site referrals
1. Sign in to your space.
2. Click on "Edit your space"
3. On the right side of the screen, click on "Settings"
4. Click on the tab that says "Statistics"
This will bring up information on your total page views. Below this you will see a table. The column on the right says, "Referring address." This lets you know how people reached your site. On the example HERE, there are a lot of blanks. This means that someone typed my site address in without following any links. When you see "http://spaces.msn.com/konekita", this indicates that either Sonia (konekita) was logged in and visited my site, or that someone was at her site and followed a link to mine.
When I hover my mouse over the www.comcast.net address, a yellow box will appear. (RETURN TO EXAMPLE) This box has a lot of random text and then the words "head+to+toe+assessment+icu+nurse". If I click on that link, it will bring me to a comcast search page (similar to google) where the person had entered "head to toe assessment icu nurse".
Let me know if that does not make sense! If it does make sense and you go through your own site referrers, let me know what entertaining results you find (as long as they are appropriate)!
Do your teeth hurt?
My random thoughts while attempting to study
~ If I can drive around with the parking brake on and not even notice it, is it really doing any good when I am parked on a hill?
~ Women take twice as long to pull out of a parking spot when they see another driver waiting for them. Do they really need to fix their makeup before they drive home from the grocery store? Couldn’t they just pull to the back of the parking lot to do that?
~ When you are stuck behind an extremely slow driver, they will always hit the light right as it is turning yellow and go through, leaving you stuck with the red.
~ Navy blue scrubs are cat hair magnets.
~ You never realize how often you use a certain muscle (or that you even had it) until it is sore.
~ I guess mace is not considered a weapon because I accidentally had it in my purse during my last flight.
~ It is extremely amusing to watch a teenager who has his pants sagging to his knees as he tries to run. It somehow reminds me of a penguin waddling around.
Lesson of the weekend
The rebel
For those of you who were wondering...
I wanted to be an interior designer when I grew up. Well, maybe not, but that's the only excuse I can come up with for ripping the wallpaper off my wall.
I was not the one who convinced Michael that diaper ointment was edible.
Putting diapers on the stuffed animals (powder included) was all Pat's idea.
I love my classmates, most of the time
It must be genetic
My younger sister Mary is also a nursing student. Recently, she was working at a health clinic and had a little boy come in with his mother for several vaccines. The boy sat on his mom's lap and they both cautiously watched as my sister gave him the shots. Because he was so tough and behaved himself, Mary and her classmate let him have a temporary tattoo. He picked one, and Mary placed it on his arm and soaked it with water to get it to stick. It didn't work. Her classmate got another tattoo and also tried, but all they ended up doing was getting the boy and his mom wet. Imagine how worried that poor mother must have felt when she realized that the two girls who just gave her son several important vaccines couldn't even figure out that they needed to take the little plastic cover off the tattoo before applying it to the skin!
Pink slip?
After months of searching for post-college employment, I finally landed a job as a receptionist at a high-security company. I had three extremely important responsibilities: answering the phone, only letting employees with their badges in through the front door, and stocking the coffee. During my first week sitting at the front desk, an elderly man walked in and demanded that I open the door to the office (you need a keycard to open the door). I had never seen this man before, so I told him I needed to see his employee ID. This obviously offended him, and he stomped his foot on the floor like a kid having a temper tantrum and said, "I am Bob Smith." I replied, "OK Bob Smith, can I please see your employee ID?" His face started turning red, but I tried to keep my cool and pretend like I wasn't scared or intimidated. There was a man from another one of our offices sitting in the waiting area a few feet away, and I looked to him for help. His eyes were huge and he looked shocked, but didn't offer any backup. Bob Smith must have thought I was deaf because he again stated his name, and told me he was going to go check his mail, and I had better let him in NOW. That's when I realized what was going on- this was a test. They were seeing if I could handle the pressure of someone trying to get in without a badge. I was going to pass this test with flying colors! After a few more minutes of arguing with Bob Smith, another employee walked through the front door, and Bob Smith slipped in behind her. The man who had been sitting in the waiting area started laughing and said, "You better go check your mail box for a pink slip!" My heart jumped up into my throat. Was I getting fired for him slipping through the door? Was I actually supposed to tackle him?! The man then asked if I knew who Bob Smith was. I told him I didn't. I'm sure you can see where this is going- Bob Smith is the owner of the entire company.
Maybe that's something we should have gone over in my training?That pink slip never arrived in my mail box. The owner probably found the situation funny once he had time to settle down. Or maybe he knew better than to mess with me- I proved how tough I am (all five foot one of me)!
Diabetes lesson
1. Type 1 diabetes is an auto-immune disease where the body's immune system destroys the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas.
2. Type 2 diabetes is characterized by insulin resistance and relative insulin deficiency.
3. Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), or carbohydrate intolerance, is first diagnosed during pregnancy.
4. Sweetart-induced diabetes is caused by an uncontrollable urge to consume Sweetarts.
I think I am dangerously close to having type 4 diabetes. Those Easter bunny shaped sweetarts are just too good to resist...
Reality?
Reality TV is a big hit these days. Many of us enjoy taking a break from our own lives to experience someone else's "reality" for a few minutes. But I'm sure many of you know that reality TV does not always depict what actually happened. Random video clips are spliced together to create a show that is entertaining and tells a story, even when no real story exists. We are spoiled by this- we see the perfect couple and wish we could be that way (their fights don't fit in the story line- so we never see that part of their reality), we want to be like the guy who always has the perfect joke (his bad jokes are conveniently not aired), and there is always something exciting going on (why would they show you the boring stuff?). The editors of a reality TV show pick a story to tell, and use whatever clips they can find to help them tell that story, ignoring whatever does not fit.
My blog is not reality TV. It is reality Katie. This means that I am going to write about what I experience in my life, good and bad. If I dislike something, I will say so, I'm not going to sugarcoat things because I want to make everyone happy all of the time. I think that this is part of the appeal of my blog- people get an honest look at the world of nursing through my eyes. Many things are exciting and wonderful, but there are also things that are upsetting. There are things that I will never write about because they are too personal to my patients or I feel I would be violating someone's confidentiality, but other than that, I will write what I want. My purpose in this blog is to let people experience my journey into nursing right along side me. When I have a bad day and am literally covered in poop, I know that I can go home and write about it and hopefully give a few of you a good laugh, and receive some supportive comments to keep me going. I will portray things as I see them, sometimes with a humorous twist, whether they make me or nursing in general look good or bad. If people are inspired to go into nursing based on what I write, I think that is wonderful. It is never my intention to scare people away from nursing- but if presenting them with the reality of what goes on scares them away, then I think it is in their best interest to know this before investing time and money into nursing school. I would be doing these people a disservice if I painted a wonderful "reality TV-like" picture of nursing and then they were shocked and angry when realizing that things really aren't perfect. On the same page, I could paint a wonderful picture of all nurses in general to help get nurses more respect. One person even commented to suggest that I do this. Unfortunately, that is not what my blog is for. As anyone in my clinical group can attest to, we have seen many nurses who should not be nurses. There are nurses who show up to work for their paycheck and treat their patients like nothing more than a job. I have seen several nurses who walk into their patient’s room, turn the TV to their favorite soap opera, and watch that while performing patient care. Don’t they realize that talking to their patients could be just as entertaining, plus therapeutic for the patient? I could ignore these things and lie and tell you that all nurses are wonderful. But they aren’t. Many of them are amazing people. I have met some of the most compassionate human beings, and I pray that I get one of them to take care of me if I am ever hurt. I am hoping that my blog is read by some of the nurses who no longer treat their patients with respect. Maybe seeing my anger at the situation will infuriate them too and help them remember why they went into nursing in the first place.
To conclude my long rant, I just want to say that I acknowledge that there are many wonderful nurses out there. I know that quite a few of you who are reading this are amazing nurses (or future nurses). But there are also nurses who aren’t compassionate or caring, and if that is what I see, that is what I am going to write about. Maybe someday there will be nothing negative to write about. Wouldn’t that be wonderful…
The ER
Thanks to my wonderful new friend Sue, I was able to shadow in the emergency room yesterday. I wasn't sure what to expect, and was praying that I would finally find something I liked. I am happy to say that my prayers were answered- I loved it. I think I learned more yesterday than I have in all of my clinicals combined. Best of all, this was the first time I didn't see a single nurse who did not want to be there. Normally, several of the nurses I see have bad attitudes and care more about gossiping than about taking care of their patients. I've gotten used to this and have learned to expect it on every floor. I was in shock when I saw how different the ER nurses were. They were there to do their jobs and help people, not to stand around and complain. Several of the nurses were excited to show me interesting patients and teach me how they do things. After seeing six people put in IV's, I'm no longer nervous about it- I'm excited to go try it on a real patient! The doctors were all friendly and worked right with the nurses. The patients were definitely interesting, and I liked how the nurses were able to work with many different patients throughout the day- they'd fix one, send him on his way, and get started on the next. Unless I fall in love with Pediatrics (which is still a possibility), I think I’m going to be an ER nurse!
Honor society or honor scam?
Your ID please
Siblings... gotta love them
I am a wonderful sister. I never realized how true this statement is until swapping "how I tortured my younger sibling" stories with a few friends. The worst thing I have ever done to my siblings was that I tried to convince my brother Chris that a bowl filled with dirt was actually crushed up Oreos. I even went as far as eating a tiny bit myself to prove it to him. Unfortunately, that didn't work, so the whole thing backfired on me and I was the only one who ate any dirt.
One of my classmates has a younger sister who had severe asthma when she was a child. My classmate would sneak up on her sister when she was sleeping and cover her mouth and nose so she couldn't breathe. The poor girl would wake up in a complete panic, thinking she was dying from an asthma attack.
Another friend of mine hated her little brother. They went with their mom to a crafts store, and my friend slipped a spool of thread in her brother's pocket. When they left the store, her brother pulled the thread out of his pocket to see what it was. Their mom saw him with the "stolen" thread, and made him go back inside to return it and apologize to the manager. My friend enjoyed the whole scene, especially her brother getting into deeper trouble when he refused to confess to his crime.
Now that I think about it, there was one awful thing I did to my older brother, but it wasn't exactly on purpose. We were in the van on a long road trip and he suggested a game. I had a pencil and he had a pillow, and the game was that I would try to stab him with the pencil while he blocked with the pillow. Sounded like fun to me, so I stabbed him right in the arm (I truly thought he would block it). The tip broke off the pencil into his arm, and he was crying in pain. My poor mom had to pull the van over and when she saw the tip of the pencil in his arm, she panicked and drove right to the ER (she didn't want him to get lead poisoning). It ends up that pencils aren't made of lead, so he was ok, and to keep me out of trouble, he told my mom that he had accidentally stabbed himself while drawing. What a great brother!
Excuses
Some of you may be surprised by this, but I am extremely talented at screwing things up. I've had this ability for many years, so I have had a lot of practice creating clever explanations for my mistakes. After seeing a post about excuses on Dr. Cara's site, I thought I would list some of my more recent excuses and invite you guys to include some of yours.
~ After doing an awful job making my patient's bed, the fitted sheet (one size fits all) started pulling up the four corners of the mattress, creating a trampoline-like effect with the sheets. It looked like a five-year-old had made the bed. When my patient started laughing, I said, "Oops, looks like I grabbed the wrong size sheets again!"
~ Other times when I am having trouble getting that stupid fitted sheet on the bed and my patient is watching, I will casually mention how I heard that the hospital bought extra-long beds for the taller patients, but hasn't bought the longer sheets yet.
~ After dropping the patient's pill on the floor, "That was a pass, you were supposed to catch it."
~ When messing almost anything up, I say, "That was just practice," and then try again.
~ When rollerblading with my brother and I fell in a dramatic, ungraceful way, I got back up and imitated my ungraceful move to make it look like I did the whole thing on purpose. Smart, huh?
~ When cleaning something very disgusting in clinicals and I start to gag, I start coughing instead. This covers up the gag sound (and actually helps me stop gagging) so the patient isn't embarrassed.
~ When caught by Mike checking out a cute guy at the grocery store, "Wow, Mike. I think that shirt would look great on you!" (Try this one at your own risk!!)
~
~
~ From M: "A friend of mine started playing the piano in class while the teacher was speaking! Knowing my friend to be the troublemaker she questioned him about the music and my dear friend came up with this excuse, "Well, you see our classroom is directly above the music room and when they built the building they mixed up the pipes so actually what you hear is coming from the music room." Needless to say, he was thrown out of the room.
~
~
1. I'm a first year - I don't know ANYTHING. 2. I'm tired. 3. I'm stressed.
~
Years ago while still in high school...9th grade actually...I dated a guy I should not have.(long story) I made this lie/excuse up if I was ever to run into him some where again and he recongized me. It would go something like this....Guy: "Oh Hi..How's it going?"
Me: "Umm..Do I know you?"
Guy: "Yeah..It's me Kris"
Me: " Sorry you must have me confused with someone else"
Guy: "No...Your Tricia right"
Me: "Yeah..How do you know my name?"
Guy: "Remember me...Kris?"
Me: "No...never seen you before"
Relax now, panic later
I just now looked at our class calendar, and we cover several random topics over the next week, have a few hundred pages to read, and the test is next Monday. MONDAY?!
Crap. This is going to be a bad week, but I am happy to say it was definitely worth it!! Time to get that blood pressure back up, reform that knot in my stomach, and start grinding my teeth in my sleep again! Five months and one week to go.....Organ donation
Let’s say that you do want to be a donor but you haven’t discussed it with your family yet. Something awful happens to you, and you are brain dead. Your family is asked if they will donate your organs, but when they go in to see you, they look up at the screen and see you still have a pulse, heart beat, and appear to be breathing (you are on a respirator). From watching ER or other medical shows, they “know” that you are still alive until that heart monitor line goes flat, so they do not allow the doctors to donate your organs. How could they, you are still 'alive'?! This is one of the biggest problems for people waiting for organs right now: people do not understand brain death. When a person is brain dead, there is no way that they will recover. They are actually dead, but the doctors are keeping the body going to keep the organs alive. As soon as they pull the plug, the person’s body will die too. Brain death is not the same thing as a coma or even being in a persistent vegetative state. I think it is crucial that people educate themselves on organ donation and brain death before they are put in a position where they have to make this extremely important decision for a loved one. It is also important for you to sit down with your family and tell them how you feel about organ donation. I know this isn't the easiest topic to bring up, but if something does happen to you, talking about it now will make their decision a lot easier, and they will have the comfort of knowing they did exactly what you wanted.
I am an organ donor for many reasons:
1. If I was ever in need of an organ, I would not hesitate to put myself on the organ recipient list. If I’m willing to take an organ, isn’t it only fair that I offer mine to someone who needs it when I die?
2. If there is any way that my own death could help someone else live, I would feel selfish keeping that opportunity from them. I’m not going to be using my heart, but I’m sure thousands of people out there could.
3. It is amazing to think about a part of me living on in someone else.
4. Being an organ donor does not cost anything.
5. Despite the rumors you have probably heard, being an organ donor does not mean that the doctors will not work as hard to save your life.
6. How could I turn down the chance to be a hero?
Here are some sites you can visit for more information:
Organ donation myths and facts
Brain death information
Frequently asked questions
Little girl who received heart
Gift of Life Foundation
Job searches
I'm jealous of you soon-to-be-grads because you are almost done with school, but at the same time I'm really scared about my own graduation- I still don't know anywhere near enough to have someone's life in my hands. Plus, I have no idea what area I am going into. I am leaning towards pediatrics or ER, but I don't have my Peds rotation for a few more months, and I will never get an ER rotation (and my school won't even let us shadow in the ER).
A question for the students out there- have you figured out what area you are going into? If so, how do you know it's right for you? Did you enter into school already knowing what you wanted, or did it just hit you during one of your clinicals?
Don't try this at home
**I am in no way encouraging or condoning this type of behavior**
Mike is good friends with an architect named Adam. Adam is a smart and friendly guy, but he is still a crazy jock at heart. About a year ago, Adam was out drinking with a group of friends. He was talking to a woman and somehow they began discussing which gender has the highest tolerance for pain. They both thought their own gender was superior, so the woman suggested a contest to see who was right. There was a candle on their table, so she suggested that they see who could hold their hand over the flame the longest. She told Adam to go first. Adam held his hand over the flame, actually watching the fire come up between his fingers, for "four Mississippi." After he went, he looked at his hand and it was charred a little bit. Now it was the woman's turn. She held her hand over the flame for "one Mississi" and pulled it back. "Ouch! That hurts, I'm not doing this!" she said. Adam was proud of himself for winning. Five visits with a burn specialist later, he was able to tie his shoes again. When he told me this story last night, I asked him if he had learned any important lessons. His response? "Yea, never be the person to go first." He is still proud that he won the "highest tolerance for pain" contest. I acknowledge that he won, but disagree with him on what exactly he won. I think the appropriate title of their contest should have been, "Who is the biggest idiot?"
Three months?
I think there are things growing in Mike's refrigerator that even a microbiologist would be unable to identify. I found an opened bag of cheese that smelled and looked disgusting, and asked Mike how old it was. "Only about three months," he replied, thinking he was proving some point. I looked at the back of the bag and it said, "Use within three days of opening." Hmm... three days, three months, same thing, right? BOYS!!!
Cooking tip
Give it as well as take it
My turn as the patient
Did you forget to tell me something?
A few days later, the woman was back on her meds, and was incredibly sweet and cooperative. I went in with Rachel to say bye to her before we left, and she said to Rachel, "I really enjoyed working with you. Did you know I'm a mental patient?" Rachel managed to appear shocked by this news, and I took that as my cue to leave before the woman asked me the same question. I don't think I could have kept a straight face after the "attack of the food" incident. I hope she stays on her meds in the future, I couldn't believe the difference they caused in her.
No comments:
Post a Comment