Ah, To Be A Nursing Student Again...

Today at lunch I stood behind a group of UT nursing students eating lunch after their clinicals and I thought, man, those were the days. My best friend and I often reminisce about when we were lowly nursing students and life was so simple. Here's a list of Pro and Cons to being a nursing student.

PROS

1. You can't really mess us anything that bad with patients because the hospitals and nursing schools don't really let you do that much. I mean, it is no fun when you have to get stuck a million times for an IV by a nursing student, but besides some bruising and perhaps an enhanced fear of needles, it is not really life threatening.

2. You get to practice assessments on your fellow classmates. It can be kind of fun when you try to check for hearing loss using a tuning fork placed on top of your friend's head (it's really a way to assess this).

3. Late night study groups! My friends and I used to camp out at Starbucks and gross out the patrons with our discussions of all types of infectious diseases and our books opened to pictures of what every STD ever looks like on genitalia.

4. Nobody understands what you're going through like your pals from nursing school. When other majors are doing projects and writing major papers (which we do too) you are giving enemas and cleaning MRSA wounds. Your friends in nursing school understand you and are some of the closest friends of your life while you are in school.

5. If you are meant to be a nurse, nursing school is where you truly feel understood. If you are like me and you have always had a first aid kit in your trunk and you have always grossed people out at the dinner table with your tales of surgery shows and bodily fluids, then nursing school is the place where all your humor and attitude are finally understood. Nurses have a sick since of humor and usually have a pretty no-nonsense attitude. We are usually very honest and direct but we also care a lot about people (even when they get on our nerves).

CONS

1. You don't get paid for doing any work in the hospitals, no matter what you do. I was smart enough to get a job as an extern while in school so they would pay me to do all the vile things they made me do in nursing school for free. When you have to disimpact a person, you want to know you are getting paid for it.

2. You have a lot of studying to do, along with clinicals at 6 in the morning. Nursing school is no joke, it requires a lot of hours of studying and memorizing. Even if it what you want to do, it takes a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get through nursing school.

3. You can feel very isolated from other college students. I know that my husband (boyfriend at the time) had no idea why I would get so stressed out about school. It is just hard to relate to what you are doing because there is so much more hands on learning than other majors.

4. You get the crap work in your clinicals, sometimes literally. Nurses will give students the worse possible patients, usually because they are a good learning experience but sometimes just to keep the students busy. If there is a cranky old lady with c-diff diarrhea (one of the most horrific smells on earth) you better believe you are changing her diaper. I once had to give sponge baths to a female prisoner who was extremely happy to be out of prison for a while and very picky about me cleaning her just so.

5. You can get very easily overwhelmed in nursing school. I know I cried a lot during nursing school because you have to know so much and you are learning so much and sometimes your instructors will just stand there and drill you on facts and it makes you feel a LITTLE BIT CRAZY!!! Ah, the memories...

Ode to New Orleans

For those who don't know, Taylor and I, along with his parents, little brother Duncan and our friend Blake will be traveling to New Orleans at the beginning of May. I am very excited! Taylor and I are in love with New Orleans! We have been there several times and love it more and more each time we go. This trip will be our longest, we are staying for 4 days and 3 nights! We usually just go for a weekend but we decided to make this trip special. The trip is for Taylor's 24th birthday! I just thought I would share a couple of our favorite places to go in New Orleans from pictures I found on the Internet. We will post vacation pictures after we return.


This is our absolute favorite part of New Orleans. CAFE DU MONDE! Taylor insists that we eat there at least 3 times a day. He even makes beignets at home. He does pretty well with them! This place is super crowded but it is open 24/7/365.

This is one of my favorite places, JACKSON SQUARE AND THE ST. LOUIS CATHEDRAL. I love walking around the square and seeing all the original artwork, plus the fortune tellers and palm readers at night. One time when we visited we got to see a wedding as the bride and groom were coming out of the cathedral, so beautiful. We have a really cool picture of the cathedral on our living room wall that we purchased on our last trip.

Of course, the ever popular BOURBON STREET. Although we are not the biggest party animals, this street is still fun to walk down at night and see all the crazy people and maybe stop in for a hand grenade or daiquiri.

Here are a few places that we haven't been but plan to go on this trip..

STEAMBOAT NATCHEZ

AQUARIUM OF THE AMERICAS

THE CEMETERIES

THE BEAUTIFUL HOMES OF THE GARDEN DISTRICT

And finally, one more look at the beautiful St. Louis Cathedral just cause I like it.

Adventures in Nursing, Part 5

WARNING! This story contains gross materials, squeamish readers beware!

Story 5: WHAT A WAY TO COME INTO THE WORLD!

I was on shift 3 of a 4 shift string. I was having a pretty lousy week. I had already had two "precips". For those of you who don't know, "precips" stands for a precipitous delivery, meaning there was no doctor and possibly no nurse there for delivery. I hate precips! I do not get paid enough money to do the doctor's job.

My first precip was just a normal baby and the mom was going natural and just didn't let me know that she felt like she needed to push. That happened at times at Parkland because patients rarely wanted epidurals. So, okay, one precip, that happens. With the second one, the Resident (ER, not OB) had been up doing his mandatory delivery duty so that if a lady came into the ER and we couldn't get down there in time, they didn't just all run around like chickens with their heads cut off. He had literally just checked the patient's cervix, said "She's like 6 cm" and walked out the door. I turned to the patient and I could see the baby's head crowning. I stuck my head into the hall and said, "You might want to step in here for a minute, the baby is crowning." That precip was kind of amusing except that the baby came out not breathing and I had to run to the delivery room with him and call NICU. There were a few tense minutes but he did fine. But suffice it to say, I was getting a little sick of delivering these babies by myself. Then came Day 3...

I had this patient that I had just gotten admitted and she didn't want anything for the pain but she was definitely in full blown labor. I was just going down the hall to get her husband from the waiting room when I passed the nurses station. A call light lit up and when the secretary answered it all I heard was a scream! I looked down the hall and the room I had just left was lit up. I ran back down the hall and threw open the door. The patient had projectile vomited and it had hit the wall, the floor, and the ceiling! It was like a scene from the Exorcist. I almost slipped in what smelled like egg curry vomit, it still grosses me out to think of it and I am not afraid or bothered by vomit normally. I came around the bed and pulled back the sheet, to see a baby's head, lying in diarrhea and urine! Yuck! I called for help and the residents came running. I finished delivering the baby as they ran into the room. The baby wasn't breathing, so I cut and clamped the cord quick, held the baby to me, half wrapped in my scrub top and ran down the hall to the delivery room! I hit the emergency button for NICU and they were there within a minute. By that time, the baby still wasn't breathing well but his heartbeat was strong. The NICU staff took over and ended up taking him to the NICU for observation. I guess his birth was just kind of shocking to him. I don't blame him. We got the patient all cleaned up and recovered, she was so embarrassed. I told her that kind of thing happened all the time, even though I could see the glares from the poor cleaning staff that had to clean up that room. I think that was, by far, my grossest delivery ever.

I hope my story didn't make anyone too queasy. I was so traumatized by the multiple precips that week that I refused to go to work the next night, the precips just seemed to be getting worse and I didn't want to borrow trouble.

Adventures in Nursing, Part 4

Before I share this story with my readers, let me say, I am not incomfortable with naked people. It is part of my job to deal with people who are being examined nude. I have seen more naked people than I would have liked in my workings as a nurse and throughout nursing school. However, this episode of nakedness did make me feel a little awkward, you'll see why...

Story 4: THE AUSSIE SURPRISE

One night, I was assigned, joy of joy, an Australian patient who was coming in for cervidil. Cervidil is a medication that is placed vaginally to soften the cervix. We use it to get patients ready for induction. The patient was this beautiful Australian amazon woman and to my enjoyment her husband was Australian too. I love any accents especially Irish, English, Scottish, Aussie or Kiwi. They were super sweet and fun to talk to so I took my time doing the admission paperwork. We let our patients eat dinner when they have cervidil placed because then they are not starving when we don't let them eat all the next day. The patient's husband decided to go out and get them some food from a restaurant. The patient and her husband ate, the husband drank some beer, which is a little odd to do in the hospital but, whatever floats your boat.

Anyway, not to describe their whole night, but they went to sleep and the patient was to call if she needed help up to the bathroom because she had been given Ambien to help her rest. Our cervidil patients sometimes have cramping during the night, plus they have to be on continuous monitoring for the baby which involves big belts around their waists. The funny thing was the patient called me several times in the night and each time I went in the room she kept getting more and more naked. The patient had decided to wear her own pajamas instead of a hospital gown. It was a cute little tank top and pant combo with the tank top opened from just under the breasts down to allow room for her belly to stick out.

The more times I came in, the more I felt like I was at a very slowed paced strip show. First, came the pants, understandable, they do get warm. Then, the top, getting a little more incomfortable. Then, the last time I went in the nakedness climaxed. The patient was completely naked except for her two monitoring belts. But that wasn't the shocker. The patient's husband, who had been asleep all the other times I had come in, he got up and helped me get his wife to the bathroom, IN ONLY BIKINI UNDERWEAR!!! I don't know if Australians have a little different view on nudity, but that was the first time I had seen one of my patient's husbands almost completely naked. The underwear didn't leave a lot to the imagination to say the least.

We still got along fine, but I did make sure that when I went to visit her on the postpartum floor the next night that it was WAY before bedtime. No more nudey shows for me! Just thought I would share this story, I was inspired by Holly's X-rated Petting Zoo story.

Adventures in Nursing, Part 3

For those of you that don't know, when I first got out of nursing school I decided to take a job with Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. I was working in their Labor and Delivery, which delivers the most babies in the United States and second in the world (there is a hospital in India who delivers the most). It is a crazy place! I went there because it is also a great place to get experience, you will see things there in the first 6 months that you might not see in 30 years of nursing elsewhere. I am glad that I went there because it made me able to deal with whatever was thrown at me in my nursing career, but it was also very hard on me. I would work a 12 hour shift and realize on my way home that I hadn't been able to sit or eat the entire shift. I had 5-6 laboring patients a night sometimes, where most hospital will never give you more than 2. So, suffice it to say that I have a lot of crazy stories from Parkland. Today, I will treat you to two mini tales, one about myself and one about a friend that started at the same time I did.

Story 3A: INTERCOMS ARE NOT GOOD IN AN EMERGENCY!

I was in the midst of the 6 month internship at Parkland. It takes that long to learn all the info you need to be a functioning Parkland nurse. About 3 months in they start letting you out on your own, doing vaginal deliveries and taking care of laboring patients. You are not allowed to do c-sections or recovery room until you go through the second half of the internship.


So I was on one of my first days on my own and one of my patients is delivering. So the first year resident and I went back to deliver the baby. Deliveries at Parkland are very low key if they are routine, just you and a resident. So, I was busily getting my stuff ready for delivery, drawing up pitocin, getting my warmer ready for the baby and working on completing paperwork. You don't take a patient back for delivery at Parkland until the baby is mostly hanging out so the doctor can usually handle all the coaching once you get back to the delivery room. So I was not really paying super close attention as the baby is delivered, until the resident says, "uh-oh." I look over and the resident has the baby's head out but nothing else is coming. She states, "I think we have a shoulder dystocia here, call for help!"


For those of you who don't know, a shoulder dystocia is when the baby's head is out but the shoulder is caught on the mother's pubic bone. It is not really a party, and can be very damaging to the baby if not resolved in seconds. So, I ran over to the intercom, we had to press 510 to call overhead for help. This was an emergency procedure so everyone available on the unit would come running. But what I kept hitting was 5-1-0 then X to cancel. I did this like 3 or 4 times, 510X, 510X, 510X each time getting more and more frantic. Finally, I concentrated hard and hit 510 and then proceeded to scream "SHOULDER DYSTOCIA!!!!!" Little did I know that they were preparing for a twin delivery across the hall so when I yelled, I almost got knocked out cold with the door as people came rushing in the help. Luckily, the shear force from all those bodies charging in catapulted the baby out. I called the NICU and they came to examine the baby who was screaming loudly by that time. Both mother and child were safe. The resident and I came out a little worse for wear, I think.


Story 3B: A C-SECTION WITH A SURPRISE


This story involves my friend Tarsha. She was one of my fellow interns who had come all the way from Virginia to Parkland because she saw the hospital on Discovery Health. She was nice, although she was an inquisitive gal who liked all her ducks in a row. She was a great nurse, but didn't do all that well under stressful situation unless she had everything together. Tarsha, of course, figured out that you can't always have everything prepared. This episode helped her on that road.

I was delivering my patient on the Midwife side of Labor and Delivery. The births were usually low risk and midwives did most of them with the occasional c-section, so we kept a 2nd and 4th year resident on that side. Tarsha had been in another room pushing for a while when I went in to do my delivery. Apparently, they had decided to call for a c-section in Tarsha's room for a large baby. The patient had pushed for 3 hours with no progress. Unfortunately, the unit was very busy so the charge nurse, who is supposed to go back and help the nurse during a c-section wasn't able to. Tarsha told me later that the residents were in a big hurry and were rushing her. She told them that she had to get the drugs for the anesthesiologist and when she came back in the room they had started the c-section without her. Big no-no! Tarsha hadn't been able to get her warmer set up, call the nursery or anything. Back in my delivery, I was just finishing up when I hear over the intercom, "Undiagnosed twins in OR 1, UNDIAGNOSED TWINS!!!". Poor Tarsha, I thought. So, I finished up my delivery and recovery and had my patient transported upstairs. When I got back, the charge nurse tells me to go check on Tarsha because no one was able to go and help her. SHE HAD CALLED FOR HELP 45 MINUTES EARLIER!

Tarsha told me that when I walked into the OR it was like I had a halo and a beacon of light. She told me that she had walked back into the OR after getting her meds to see the baby being pulled out. She grabbed the baby and called for nursery. Tarsha began drying the baby and stimulating as she should when she heard "Baby B? Baby B?". She turned around and the other resident was holding up another baby! There was only supposed to be one baby in there and Tarsha didn't even have a second warmer. So she called the NICU to help with the babies, and then the patient started bleeding uncontrollably. By the time I got in the room, the anesthesiologist needed more drugs to sedate the patient because the spinal anesthesia only lasts about 2 hours. He put her under general anesthesia and the attending physician was called into the OR. We had to race down to the blood bank and get some units of blood. Meanwhile, it was total chaos in the OR for a while. They didn't end up having to do a hysterectomy on the girl which was nice considering she was only 18. Her babies did well and she recovered nicely. Poor Tarsha is still a little traumatized, I think, she still shudders when she thinks about that day. This story is not a good example of how to be a charge nurse or what a good resident should do but things happen and at a place like Parkland, sometimes if everyone comes out okay that is all you can ask for.

I am sure that I will remember some other charming stories from my days at Parkland, although some of the ones that did not end well I don't think I will share. Just remember working for county hospitals, in general, is usually like working in a war zone and you are just glad to come through each shift alive.

Nursing Recruitment for World War II

We are going on a trip to New Orlean at the beginning of May and one of our stops will be the National WWII Museum. I stumbled across some WWII nursing recruitment pictures while looking for pictures to put on my Adventures in Nursing series. I thought they were very cool and something I wasn't sure I would get to see at the museum. Hope you like them as much as I did...

Just a look at the fact that there has pretty much always been a nursing shortage it seems.

Adventures in Nursing, Part 2

I had completely forgotten this good tale and it didn't even happen that long ago. It took place during the time when Taylor and I lost our minds and thought that the best place to move as newlyweds was to St. Paul, MN in January! Minnesota is a beautiful place but I do not recommend moving there to native Texans, there is no good BBQ or Mexican food there! Plus, it snows there, like big 12 ft of snow! Anyway, I digress...

Story 2: SAM SHOWS OFF HER ACTION HERO SKILLS

When we lived in St. Paul, I worked as a travel nurse at this hospital in downtown St. Paul. They were going from paper charting to computer charting and needed extra nurses to help fill in the void as their regular staff nurses learned the computer system. It was a nice unit.

So, this one night, I was taking care of a patient who was having her 4th or 5th baby, I don't remember. The patient didn't speak English and since I do speak some Spanish and no one else in Minnesota does they, of course, assigned her to me. She was very nice and wasn't interested in an epidural, very low maintenance. Plus, she was a clinic patient, so she was being taken care of by this very nice Resident.

The resident had just come to check the patient's cervix to see if she was making any change and she was about 6 cm. We figured it would be going pretty quickly from here. The patient decided that she needed some IV pain medication, so I stepped out of the room to grab some. While I was out of the room, the patient requested that the Resident (who also spoke Spanish, miracle of miracles!) help her up to the bathroom. Now, an experienced OB doctor or nurse would have known that when this is not your first baby and you feel like you need to go to the bathroom, it might be time to have the baby. This Resident, nice as she was, did not know this.

So, when I walked back into the room I find the Resident helping the patient back from the bathroom. We told the patient to lie down and I pointed out to the Resident that we might want to see if she was fully dilated at this time. The patient wanted to wait until her contraction was over to lay down. All of a sudden, her water broke all over the floor! Okay, I know in the movies when a person's water breaks, they have the baby within seconds. However, in real life it usually still takes a while, in fact, it can take hours. Not in this case though. Once the patient's water broke, I noticed she started making this face that you don't ever want to see a patient who is standing up on the side of the bed make. It was a face that said, I am going to push this baby out now. I yelled at the Resident to grab some gloves and as she fumbled I noticed that the baby was crowning. As if in slow motion, I dove across the bed (since I was standing on the opposite side of the patient) and stuck my hand out just in time to stop the baby from just dropping out onto the floor on his head! By that time, the patient was screaming and the Resident had finally managed to get some gloves on. She grabbed the baby and we helped the patient get back into the bed. By then, others had heard the scream and came into the room from the nurses station.

Not to worry though, the baby was unharmed, the mom was fine and all I came away with was a need to change my scrubs and wash down my arms about twenty times to get the bodily fluids off me. This is not a story that really showcases my good nursing abilities but at least no one was hurt. Unfortunately, sometimes things happen that are out of our control. I don't really think there is a moral to this story, it was just one of those crazy times that seem to come along with working in Labor and Delivery!

Adventures in Nursing, Part 1

Since my life is rarely exciting enough to blog about more than once a month, I have decided to start a series of blogs called Adventures in Nursing. I plan to share with my readers some of my grossest, funniest and most humiliating nursing experiences. I find that nursing is a constant source of amusing stories because you are dealing with other's most personal issues and experiences. I will, of course, avoid using names to protect the innocent. I hope that my readers will be able to appreciate these stories and begin to understand the twisted world that is nursing.

Story #1---THE STRIPPER AND THE PREGO

This story comes from my days as a Labor and Delivery nurse at a suburban hospital in Dallas. Let me first say that on my unit at this particular hospital we had a habit of calling the pregnant women, pregos. Since we were a suburban hospital we didn't see a ton of domestic violence issues with our pregnant patients, but we did get a few. Most were fights between husbands and wives but this one was a little bit different.

So, we are all sitting around the unit on night shift and it had been kind of a "slow" night (you never ever say that a night is slow in either L&D or the ER because bad things shall fall upon thee). All of a sudden, in walks a 5 ft pregnant girl of about 20 and her friend. The patient said that she had been in a fight and had been pushed to the ground on her stomach. So, one of the nurses walks her to a triage room, passing the entire glass window that ran along our nurses station. The two ladies were dressed in tube top dresses that ended mid-booty and both women had on knee-high patent leather platform boots with stiletto heels. We were able to hold our laughter in until they got into the room. You have to understand, most of our patients were soccer moms so tube tops and stilettos were a little out of the ordinary. When the nurse came back she states that this gal is the patient of one of our most conservative doctors and she had asked her twice who her doctor was because she couldn't believe one of his patients would look this way. This doctor usually had mostly very upper class housewives as patients who came in a full makeup for delivery.

Of course, the charge nurse chooses me to take care of this patient. I walked in and gave the patient a gown and told her to give me a urine sample please and I would be back in a minute. As I was leaving I glanced at her friend who was sitting in a chair by the door. Something was weird about the top of her dress, almost as if she stuffed her bra (not that she had one on) or something...

I came back out and gathered my supplies to run the usual bloodwork and one of the other nurses had gone ahead and called the doctor to give him a little update. The charge nurse decided that she had to go in with me to get another look and hear what had to be an interesting story. As we walked in the door, we glance over at the same friend and the top of her dress is no longer looking odd, she was sitting there with a lap full of cash! So, as I am standing there talking with the patient about what symptoms she is having, the friend is straightening and counting out her tips for the night! It was a little distracting to say the least. My charge nurse had to leave so she wouldn't start laughing. Turns out the little prego had gone to see her friend, the stripper, dance at one of the shadier strip clubs in Oak Cliff and as they were leaving a fight had broken out in the parking lot. My patient had been socked in the jaw and shoved to the ground by some big guy in the skuffle.

But never fear, the baby was perfectly fine and we gave the girl an ice pack for her jaw, which was going to be very pretty in the morning. I nicely suggested to the girl and her friend as they were leaving that perhaps the strip club is not the best place to be when you are 32 weeks pregnant. The patient agreed and promised not go out to the club again until after the baby was born.

I guess the moral of the story here is strip clubs and pregnant women don't mix, so if your best friend is a stripper and you just have to see her dance, maybe have her come to your house to show off her skills rather than chancing a rumble at the club!

Hope you enjoyed this first tale, there are more to come so stay tuned!

My Husband

For some reason today I am feeling extra warm and fuzzy towards my husband so I will make this blog entry about him...

I would never have thought that I would marry the quiet 14 year old that I met in the Teacher's workroom while preparing for a mission trip to Minnesota. He seemed so nice that day, just kind of shy. Little did I know. My husband is anything but shy. I learned this fact through the rest of our trip as I proceded to borrow his scissors and then have him hold me upside down and shake me until I gave them back. He also pushed me down on the ice when they took us ice skating. He was pretty much just generally rude to me. I was about ready to run him over with my car, which he knee-dropped later that year leaving a huge dent in the hood! The list of rude comments, teasings, and general mean behavior could go on forever as many of you who knew him at the time can atest.

So, why him? I guess I must have been some kind of massicist in high school because I just thought he was so darn cute. No matter how mad he made me, I would always forgive him. I think I knew deep down, even then, as a 16 year old that this guy was special. Let me now tell you some of his good qualities.

Now, not everyone may believe this is true but my husband is hot! I mean, look at that face. He is the epitomy of tall, dark and handsome. That's what I think anyway. My husband also has a contagious smile and laugh. He doesn't smile very often but when he does it is really special. The photo above is a rare smiling picture to say the least. He is also hilarious, again maybe something others would not agree with. He can make me laugh anytime of the day or night. He has a great dry sarcastic since of humor and he can be very witty.

My husband is also athletic. I mean look at him! He is huge! His favorite sport of the moment is disc golf. You may not think that this is a very active sport but you have obviously not been to some of the parks that Taylor and his friends have gone to. We are talking some serious hiking here. My husband was once the Amateur World Doubles champion in disc golf with his best friend Blake. He loves to play disc golf whenever he can.

Did I mention that Taylor is also an awesome cook? In this photo, he is carving the fried turkey he made for Thanksgiving. We did most of the dinner ourselves. Not bad for a couple who had only been married less than a year at the time. He makes awesome meals. He is in love with the grill and he makes the best barbeque chicken ever! Our new favorite thing has become having people over for dinner and we try out new recipes on them. Taylor's dream is to enter the World Championship Barbeque Cooking Contest in Memphis with his brother Hayden. I think they are going to try out a more local contest this next fall and see how they do.

So those are just some of the reasons why I love my husband so much. This is not to mention that he is smart, determined, stubborn, caring, loving, a great son and a good brother. He does so much to help his parents and I am always so proud of him! Plus, I love him because he loves me back!

Okay, I am done gushing now. I hope that I didn't make too many people sick with all my lovey feelings toward my man.