Our bedroom

We've been working on our house on the weekends, trying to get everything ready before my fiance moves in the first week of August. We've gotten the upstairs of the house painted and yesterday we starting putting our bedroom together. I am really excited with how it's turning out.

We got our bed from Ikea. Since our house is A-frame, we had to get a bed that's low to the ground. We went with the Malm style in birch. We also got matching nightstands for either side of the bed. This isn't our room and our bed is lighter than this, but this is how it looks put together.

We got this color.

Here's a crappy picture I took on my phone of our room so far. Sorry it's not the best, but our room is small so it's hard to get a good angle. We don't have our mattress yet, so what you see is the slats on the bed.

The writing on the wall is a vinyl decal that says, "Honeymoon Hideaway". That's what my mom started calling our little cabin in the woods after she visited the first time, because that's exactly what it looks and feels like. Our house is a tiny little cabin in the middle of nowhere. It's cozy and romatic, and I love it.

Almost there

I didn't tell anyone except my fiance, but I failed my comprehsive ATI test, along with half of my class.

I was so upset. It was the first ATI I've ever gotten lower than a level 2 on. In order to pass my course, I have to pass the ATI on the 2nd try.

Today, I passed. I am so happy to be nearly done with Medsurg altogether. It's been 3 semesters of stress, and I have a feeling things will be so much easier once I am done with it. There's 1 clinical and a final exam between freedom!

Next year:

OB, pediatrics, and marriage!

It's going to be a good semester. I can feel it.

The tattoo

I got a tattoo on Friday. I was scared to death, but I survived. It wasn't bad at all, actually.

Here's the story:

2 years ago in October, my maternal grandmother underwent open heart surgery. Soon after the surgery, she got more sick that anticipated. She was in the ICU on a ventilator for a month, as opposed to the typical 2 days. She was unconscious for most of that month, and every doctor, nurse, and family member thought we would lose her. I spent almost every night in the ICU waiting room, just wanting to be near if something happened. Looking for ways to encourage her, I put Finding Nemo window clings on the window in her hospital room to remind her to "just keep swimming". She has them hanging on her bathroom mirror at home now. After she was well enough to leave the ICU, we watched Finding Nemo on my laptop together.

If you can't tell, my granny and I are super close. Out of all the people in my family, I am most like her. She is the glue that holds my family together. Her quirky and sweet spirit holds a special place in my heart, and my life is so much better with her in it. Ever since she got sick, I never take a moment with her for granted. Not a phone call, not a note in the mail, not a hug, not a time when she calls me her "peach", not a call reminding me "it's only 12 days til your birthday!".

In getting this tattoo, I wanted to celebrate the moments that we've gotten to share together, and to have a piece of her with me always.  I'll never forget the twinkle in her eye and the smile on her face as we walked into the tattoo parlor with her wearing her infamous fanny pack and a bright orange top with neon purple sandles. The only thing better was adding the neon green bandage to the colorful attire. It was hilarious to see my grandparents in a tattoo parlor surrounded by grungy, tattooed and dreadlocked men playing Metallica on the radio. We got Nemo tattooed on our right legs, right above the ankle. It's one of my best memories, and we both love it.

Happy Earth Day from around my house

Nature is beautiful. Enjoy it, and enjoy these. They make me happy.

Stream of consciousness

I have so many things to do in the next 2 weeks.
I am going crazy.
I sincerely hope I don't have a panic attack today. I feel one brewing, but I am trying to keep calm.
I wish the wind and rain would go away.
I am getting a tattoo tomorrow.
I will blog about that later.
I am taking senior pictures tomorrow.
I graduate in 1 year.
I can't wait.
My parents are sick.
So is my fiance.
My cat is cute.
Earth day annoys me.
I don't see why people only pay attention to the Earth one day a year. They should do it all the time.
Being Earth-friendly saves a lot of money. I like saving money. I like the Earth. It's a win-win.
I learned how to drive a 5 speed.
My fiance is so proud of me.
I am too.
I will beat this semester.
I am determinted.
Ish.

Surprise honey, I'm gay!

No, not me. It's someone else.

Today I learned that Makeup Girl's boyfriend is gay. She doesn't know this.

Apparently they haven't slept together in over a year, and I always thought that was odd because they are quite the hot young couple. I mean, she is an attractive girl (minus all the ridiculous makeup), and he is a handsome baseball star at our school. I remember her talking about how she had to beg him to sleep with her whenever they actually did.

It was always a funny situation, but I didn't think anything of it until I heard something today.

One of my good friends found out that Makeup Girl's boyfriend has been getting sexed by a dance major dude.

Sorry, Makeup Girl. Will you get over yourself now?

(PS. I kinda sorta feel a little bad for her, because she is totally head over heels for this guy even though he's SO not into her, obviously, but karma sucks you know...)

Whale concert

Whale concert.

That was the subject of an e-mail I just recieving in my school e-mail inbox.

"Whale concert. Tickets on sale now!"

I am so confused.

The perfect day

Yesterday 1900: Arrive home after going, going, going since 0730 with a headache after almost having a panic attack during an exam.

2130: Convince myself to go to bed after popping 3 Advil, a Percocet, and an ice pack for the knife stabbing in my head.

Today: 0530: Wake up with the same headache. And my period. Shove Advil in my mouth and grab a granola bar. And 3 pieces of chocolate.

0600: Drive to clinical. Realize I forgot my coffee cup on top of my car. Remembered my happy pill, however.

0630: Arrive at clinical wearing mismatched socks and underwear inside out.

0645: Arrive on orthopaedic floor. Realize that I forgot my stethoscope in my car.

0700: Take my patient's pulse. Realize that my watch battery died.

0830: Have a wonderful conversation with my patient about the unemployment extension.

0900: Assisted my patient with a sponge bath.

0915: Squat on the floor to help my patient put her Ted hose back on. Split the crotch in my scrub pants.

1100: Forget to write my nursing note on my patients. Proceed to get fussed at by my professor.

1101: Write nursing notes.

1230: Realize I forgot my lunch.

1231: Drive to Subway.

1232: Attempt to listen to "Rest and Relaxation" CD in the car on the way home.

1235: Get cut off by a fellow driver.

1400: Crawl in bed for a few hours before work.

1600: Wake up in a cold sweat while my head pounds. Think about calling into work and/or beating my head against a wall.

1605: Pop 3 more Advil. Eat more chocolate. Coax myself back to sleep.

1800: Attempt to get out of bed and ready for work.

1801: Reset alarm.

1825: Get ready for work.

1845: Drive to work.

2100: See one of my professors working night shift. Beg her for some Ibuprofen. She gives me 4. Gosh I love her.

It's currently 9:48 pm. I am on my break at work.

Only 5 hours and 12 minutes to go.

**************************

So, my day seems pretty sucktacular, but, it actually turned out to be wonderful.

The ex-boyfriend who works at Walmart? I saw him on my way to work driving a red station-wagon. Totally makes up for it.

Oh, and this super sweet text from my fiance:

"Baby, please don't fall asleep tonight at work and if you need me, call me. Thank you for working the suck stift [night shift] to get us more money."

I really do love my life.

Oh, the possibilities

I was talking to my neurologist the other day, and he was telling me that his wife was a lay midwife (a midwife with no license). He suggested that I get in touch with her and maybe I can spend a week during the summer shadowing, which I would totally love because  I didn't have the best experience last summer. I fell in love with the profession, not the lady I was shadowing.

So excited about the possibilities.

Wordless Wednesday

I had a bad day today. So did my mom.

We sulked on the phone together.

She ate 5 chocolate chip cookies on the way home, and then a cupcake while she took a bath.

I think I need something a bit stronger. Like... Reester bunnies and beer.

Creating my own reality

This is post is going to be part of the "healing process" for me to come to terms with the unethical death of my patient. The professor I confided in said it would be good for me to journal/blog what I would have done if I were the nurse, kind of as a way to create my own reality so that I use this experience to mold myself into the kind of nurse I want to be.

What really happened:

The professor I was working with was in charge of 2 patients; the one was discharged and my patient was rather extensive. Granted, he was critically ill. There's no doubt about that; it was the way that my professor handled it.

She has a negative attitude and thinks almost everyone that is really ill is bound to die in the hospital. It's as if she has no belief in positive outcomes whatsoever. Her bedside manner is atrocious. I spent some of the morning assessing my patient. His skin was mottled from poor circulation and his lungs were full of blood; his blood pressure was fluctuaing a lot. He was sick, very sick. All my professor did was stand by his bedside and chart, all the while saying, "He's just going to die. He probably won't even make it through the weekend." She would walk out of the room talking to whoever would listen, "His wife really needs to get over it. He's not going to get better. He needs to be a DNR (do not recusitate)". If you know anything about the dying process, then you'll know that a person's hearing is the last sense they lose. That's why people talk to their dying loved one; because they can hear you. My patient could hear my professor saying he was going to die. This is aweful nursing care. I felt tears sting the back of my eyes every time she said that at his bedside. I wanted so badly to yell at her to stop it, but she isn't the kind of person you can stand up to.

Later, my professor made an inappropriate phone call to the patient's wife, "Ma'am you know your husband is really sick. If he codes, I am going to have to do things to his chest to bring him back, and there's no guarantee that will happen. Is that really what you want to happen to him?" She said this in a very condoning and accusatory tone. The wife never gave her a straight answer, because she didn't want to change his code status. After she got off the phone, my professor danced around the unit, "I planted a seed to his wife. I'm going to talk to the doctor later and see if we can get the ball rolling."

His wife was not ready to let him go. They just bought their dream house together in a different state and were moving soon. They had been married for 45 years. They were still young. There was still hope for him.

The doctor arrived later in the morning. My professor cornered him, literally. She told him that he needed to make the wife change the code status to a DNR (the doctor cannot legally do that), and the patient needed to be taken off the ventilator. I don't know why. It was like she couldn't have him dead soon enough. My mind was spinning all the while this was happening. I was in such shock, I couldn't even advocate for the patient. I'm just a student anyway.

The doctor said he wanted to keep trying, so to keep pushing the vasopressins and fluids and keep his blood pressure stable. My professor got mad. She said to the doctor and her fellow staff, "If he codes, I will work on him, but very slowly. I will make sure he doesn't come back".

I need a break. More to blog later.

Covering my bum

I didn't want this to be public anymore because I wanted to know exactly who is reading it. In the following words, I am going to share some things that happened during my patient's death experience from a few weeks ago. This is part of a theraputic project assigned to me by a professor that was kind enough to take some time for me to talk to her.

I don't share as much of nursing school and my life as I should. Writing helps me come to conclusions better than anything else. Maybe blogging more about my experience with my patient would have helped more, but I can't do anything about that now other than to move forward.

Let's just say I've been torn up about what I experienced a few weeks ago when my patient died. I contacted my favorite professor because I really needed a listening ear and someone to trust with the powerful information I held. These aren't the type of things I can discuss with other people in my life; I needed someone to confide in that understood.

The professor I was working with that Saturday killed my patient.

There. I said it. She took advantage of my patient's vulnerable wife, the attending physician, and facilitated his death.

This is the reason why I keep my idenity protected. Even student nurses hold information and power that can be very dangerous to patients, their families, fellow collegues, and even themselves. This is one of those situations.

I almost had an anxiety attack earlier. I thought someone from school found my blog, because, well, their hometown popped up on my tracker. And the tracker on my photography website.

The good new is that I am an idiot.

I have a loaned laptop from the IT department while mine is being fixed from that dirty little virus. The city where the loaned laptop is registered isn't the city where I live or go to school; it's registered in an entirely different city and state, where a girl I go to school with lives.

My tracker was showing me viewing my own blog. Duh.

I had about a 15 minute freakout before I figured it out. This did get me to thinking though. My blog is public, though I never intended for people to read it but myself. I thought about making my blog completely private so that I could journal without having to worry about someone finding it, but somehow I have managed to gain a wonderful and loyal small group of bloggy friends, and it's not fair of me to leave them hanging when I am so close to finishing my nursing school journey. They have been on this journey with me for a while now, and if I made my blog completely private, I would miss them. Their comments and encouragement are the highlight of my day, and I appreciate every person that has taken the time to read my blog.

I have decided that a week from now my blog will be readable to invited readers only. Leave me a comment if you would like to be added to the "VIP list", and I would be happy to add you.

Dirty little virus

I knew it was time for the week to end when I was trying to finish my careplan on the dead guy and my laptop got a nasty virus that even my IT degreed fiance couldn't fix.

I took my laptop to the amazing IT department at school first thing Thursday morning (that's one of the few things my school has going for them...). I had turned my wireless off the night before to save battery since the virus wouldn't let me connect to the internet anyway. I walked into the IT office at school and said, "Err... I think my computer has a virus." The nerdy Asian dude grabbed my computer and started it up to look it at, which didn't take long since it was in hibernation mode. As soon as the computer screen popped up, I see a black screen with red and yellow big flashing letters saying, "FREE PORN!" Under the flashing letters is a red link that says, "Hot wet -----!." well, you can finish the rest of that line.

I was so embarassed. I have no clue how the virus managed to conjure up that website, especially when my wireless was turned off. My face turned 6 shades of red/pink/blue/purple as I pointed and gawked at the screen. Somehow I managed to stutter, "I didn't... I don't know how... I...!" The nerdy Asian dude just shook his head and laughed it off, "It happens all the time, actually".

Whew.

Dirty little virus.