School started again on Tuesday. I'm taking only two classes at the moment: Women's Health and Management of Care. Management of Care is going to be boring and you probably won't hear me talk abou it much. Women's health, on the other hand, means I get to play with babies. Oh, and women, most of them pregnant. You'll hear about that a lot (disclaimer for the parents: Yes, I adore the little babies, and no, I do not plan on getting pregnant any time in the near future.)
I've had two clinical days so far on the OB floor. The first day we were jsut there to observe for a couple of hours, but I still got to hold a couple of newborns and see a bunch more. And their moms. Can you tell which I'm more interested in? The second day I go to use a doppler to find fetal heart beats in pregnant moms and watch two circumcisions. (Disclaimer #2: I'm going to go into detail about the circumcision procedure. Skip the next paragraph if you don't want to know.)
Before I start, I should say that I don't really like circumcision, because there is no proof that it has any benefit whatsoever. Recently a study came out about how circumcised men have a lower chance of contracting HIV during heterosexual sex, but the most current literature reviews say that there is no significant benefit (trust me, I just checked). That's how I felt about circumcision before I'd ever seen one. Now, what does an actual circumcision look like? First they give the baby some sugar water (which somehow calms them down) and then inject lidocaine into the nerves that run along the top of the penis. Then they let the lidocaine do it's thing for about 5 minutes so the area is numb. The baby is then put on a little tray thing with slots for his legs, which are held in place with velcro. A kicking baby would be a very bad thing during this procedure. One nurse holds down the baby's top end while the doctor takes some forceps and separates the foreskin from the glans of the penis. Naturally, the foreskin may not separate from the glans until he is 5 years old. Once the foreskin is separated, a cut is made so that it can be pulled back exposing the glans. Then they put a little plastic bell shaped thingy (called a plastibell, shockingly) over the glans to protect it. The doctor then ties a piece of string as tightly as possible around the base of the glans to cut off circulation to the foreskin. The foreskin is then cut off close to the string and the plastibell is removed, leaving a little plastic ring between the remaining bit of foreskin and the glans. Over the next 7-10 days the foreskin will become necrotic, turn black, and fall off, along with the string and plastic ring. For the most part, the baby doesn't feel anything during the procedure except for the initial lidocaine injection. The painful part is urination and diaper changes for the next week or so while he heals up.
Okay, so that's how it's done. Why is it done? We got a little history lesson from the doctor who did the ones we watched. She was Norwegian, where almost no one gets circumcised, so she went and looked up the history of it when she arrived here. Apparently it gained popularity in America after WW1 when many men developed infections because they were unable to clean themselves properly underneath their foreskin while in the trenches. I don't know if that's true or not, but that's definitely the time period when circumcision took off in the US. Now 80% of American men are circumcised. In the rest of the world, the cultures that circumcise are mainly Muslims and Jews and only 30% of the total male population is circumcised. None of the national medical associations in the US recommend circumcision and most families say that they do it because they, "want him to look like his father." Anyway, I'll get off my soapbox now and go back to my usual blogging.
I haven't really been doing anything since I got back except school and sleep. It's been freezing cold here for the past couple of days, about -10 and frequently snowing. I'm mostly hiding out inside and trying to stay warm. I did manage to get to a blood drive yesterday, which was good. My hemoglobin is still nice and high (12.9!), which I love to see, and they only had to poke me once. I even got a free movie ticket and coupon for coffee. Also, I discovered that hospitals that use blood from the red cross get charged based on how much blood is donated at their facilities, so support your local hospitals by going to their blood drives! I may be going with a couple of other students to donate platelets sometime in the near future too. I haven't done that yet, but I've been wanting to give it a try.
That's about all for now. I'm sure there will be more to write about soon. A lot of the next 5 weeks is going to be OMG BABIES!!!!! so consider yourself warned.
Showing posts with label friends. Show all posts
Showing posts with label friends. Show all posts
Friday, January 16, 2009
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Snow
There was an inch of snow on the ground when I woke up this morning. It stuck around all day, and more is going to be coming down throughout the week. Let winter begin.
How did I respond to this snow? First with a lot of impolite words, mostly under my breath, and then by turning my singlespeed bike into a fixed gear. See, I'm not going to ride my race bike in the snow because not only would it be dangerous on skinny slick tires, but I'd end up ruining the bike once they start putting down salt and I start crashing because of ice. So, in order to continue riding as often as possible this winter, I need to ride my steel-framed clunky commuter bike. But that's no fun. At least until now.
A fixed gear bike does not let you coast. Any time the wheels are turning the pedals turn too. It's how all bikes used to be before the invention of the freewheel. The benefits of riding a fixed gear bike are that you get stronger (zero rest = strength + endurance), pedaling technique improves, and you learn how to pedal at a really high cadence, because that's just what happens when you going to go downhill. And, it's a whole lot of fun, mostly because it's a new challenge. The challenge is simple, if you attempt to stop pedaling while the bike is moving forward you do one of two things: If you're in control you skid to a stop and feel lucky, if you're out of control the bike flips you over the handlebars. I rode it around the block a couple times today, but it was getting dark fast, so I'll need to do a real test ride as soon as I get the chance. With luck I won't be doing any flips.
In other news, school is still insane, but I'm still enjoying it. I will be observing in the operating room all day tomorrow, which I'm really looking forward to. I have no idea what kind of surgery I'll be able to see, or if I'll see multiple, that will be decided when I show up.
My housemate, Jess, and I spent an entire day baking this weekend. We're coming up with winter survival plans and a lot of them involve food. This plan was specifically to get a weird food at the public market every week and make something with it. This weekend was persimmons. I'd never had one before, but it turns out they're really delicious. We made persimmon tarts and persimmon cookies. And then just for fun we made some hummus. Next week I think we're going to try making bread, and something with our mystery market food. This is a fun game.
How did I respond to this snow? First with a lot of impolite words, mostly under my breath, and then by turning my singlespeed bike into a fixed gear. See, I'm not going to ride my race bike in the snow because not only would it be dangerous on skinny slick tires, but I'd end up ruining the bike once they start putting down salt and I start crashing because of ice. So, in order to continue riding as often as possible this winter, I need to ride my steel-framed clunky commuter bike. But that's no fun. At least until now.
A fixed gear bike does not let you coast. Any time the wheels are turning the pedals turn too. It's how all bikes used to be before the invention of the freewheel. The benefits of riding a fixed gear bike are that you get stronger (zero rest = strength + endurance), pedaling technique improves, and you learn how to pedal at a really high cadence, because that's just what happens when you going to go downhill. And, it's a whole lot of fun, mostly because it's a new challenge. The challenge is simple, if you attempt to stop pedaling while the bike is moving forward you do one of two things: If you're in control you skid to a stop and feel lucky, if you're out of control the bike flips you over the handlebars. I rode it around the block a couple times today, but it was getting dark fast, so I'll need to do a real test ride as soon as I get the chance. With luck I won't be doing any flips.
In other news, school is still insane, but I'm still enjoying it. I will be observing in the operating room all day tomorrow, which I'm really looking forward to. I have no idea what kind of surgery I'll be able to see, or if I'll see multiple, that will be decided when I show up.
My housemate, Jess, and I spent an entire day baking this weekend. We're coming up with winter survival plans and a lot of them involve food. This plan was specifically to get a weird food at the public market every week and make something with it. This weekend was persimmons. I'd never had one before, but it turns out they're really delicious. We made persimmon tarts and persimmon cookies. And then just for fun we made some hummus. Next week I think we're going to try making bread, and something with our mystery market food. This is a fun game.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
I must be procrastinating or bored
Yeah, yeah, I'm bad at updating. At least I'm not as bad as some people I could name... ;)
It came as quite a shock when I realized that it's officially November now. Halloween is over, I get to vote on Tuesday, as usual I will feel weird without a poppy on the 11th, and Thanksgiving will arrive before I even get a chance to breathe.
I'm sick right now. I started feeling yucky on Monday, but nothing too bad, just achy and tired. Then on Wednesday I was at clinical in a patient's room and I suddenly became very dizzy, nauseous, and felt like I was going to black out. Luckily, I was surrounded by nurses and they sat me down, got me some food and juice, and refused to let me get up for almost an hour. I was feeling pretty much okay after I'd eaten a little and rested, but my instructor let me take the rest of the day off, for which I am grateful. I went home thinking that maybe I'll catch up on some work, but ended up just falling asleep for 3 hours.
When I woke up, I had just had time to get dressed and get bored enough to call home to tell all about my fainting fit when a prospective medical student knocked on my door. Jordan had volunteered to put him up for a couple of nights while he interviewed at the med school. He was a nice guy, very geeky, from MIT, and a former Google intern. He was clearly not a medical student yet because he still had this bright-eyed optimism and excessive amount of energy. Jordan and I tried not to dampen his spirits too much with reality during the dinner conversation. Poor guy, he thinks he knows what's coming but he really has no idea.
Jordan and I had an interesting conversation about med school applicants after our prospie left. Apparently current students get to interview applicants and their comments are pretty highly valued during the admissions process. Jordan said that the majority of students have a canned answer for, "Why do you want to be a doctor?" which I would expect. The surprising thing is that if you rephrase the question to include a little more reality, such as, "You are volunteering to give up the next 8-10 years of your life to intense school, no sleep, and harder work than you've ever experienced. What makes that sacrifice worthwhile for you?" they have no idea what to say. It makes me wonder whether these people really know how brutal and pointless a lot of medical school can be, or if they were just not aware or willing to consider other options in health care.
I got to skip my second clinical day on Thursday in lieu of shadowing a home health nurse around on Friday. Thursday was instead spent in a combination of resting and shopping. I got myself a Zipcar and did all the things that I had been avoiding because I didn't have time. I even bought myself some snow boots and a tuque. Bring it on, winter, I'm ready for you. I also stocked up on soup to keep my cold-ridden self going.
Friday was my home health shadow. Sarah was very kind and drove me out to the agency office because I was in no shape to bike. I then followed my nurse around as sh met with a couple of little old ladies with minor wounds and caught up on some documentation. She couldn't get in touch with her other patients for the day, so just dropped me off at home around 1pm. I called Sarah to let her know she wouldn't need to give me a ride back home, and she asked me to come over and give costume help. She had a truly fabulous big floppy hat with ribbons and flowers on it and a long shiny purple dress that matched perfectly. I did what little I could to help her curl her hair in big bouncy ringlets and then went home to sleep for a while. At about 5:30 we got our first trick-or-treaters, Sarah and co. as well as another family with a pair of 2 year old blond twin boys. More trick-or-treaters followed pretty quickly after that, and we sadly ran out of candy before they stopped. I hadn't expected so many, but it turns out that a lot of kids get driven in to our neighborhood from the more dangerous areas of town. A lot of them didn't have costumes and were using their backpacks for bags. My guess is that was for financial reasons rather than the usual "we're too cool to get dressed up" reasons.
After candy dispensing, I started to get dressed to go to a Halloween party hosted by some classmates. I've stopped attempting to go to most of the class parties because they have devolved into loud and obnoxious groups of very drunk people, but this one was hosted by a different house and was advertised as being pretty quiet. Plus it was within walking distance and Sarah was coming with me. I had borrowed an amazing coat from the 70's and some equally amazing boots from Sarah, combined with a loud and obnoxious thrift store shirt and a miniskirt turned into something approximating a girl from the 70's. I made a valiant attempt at straightening my hair but it just wasn't going to happen. The party was fun, and not full of obnoxious drunk people. Although my favorite costume by far was the girl that came in a patient gown, covered in bandages, and with a foley catheter bag filled with tequila. I got home around midnight exhausted and immediately fell asleep.
Today has been lazy, I've just been cleaning up around the house, occasionally hacking up globs of green goo, and trying to get some rest. Probably should have done my homework, but it's Saturday and that somehow seems wrong. I'll probably still be trying to rest and recover tomorrow, so I can do homework then.
Oh, and before I go I should explain my decision from the last post. I've thought about going straight into graduate school and come to the conclusion that I'm not ready for that. This program is too fast to give us time to really apply all the things we are learning, we only get little tastes of applied nursing during clinical. I want to have the opportunity to be a bedside nurse for a while to figure out how it really works and have a better chance of focusing my graduate work on real life problems and potential solutions. Also, I've been a poor starving student for almost 6 years straight, I want a real job and some time to do the things I'm missing this year, like racing, dancing, and painting. And if I don't go to graduate school, that's okay too, since I'll likely make a better salary as a staff nurse than as nursing faculty. The main reasons that this decision makes my life easier are that I don't have to start working on grad school applications and I am much more likely to just come back to Portland in May. There's still a chance I'll stay in Rochester, but it's not real high.
It came as quite a shock when I realized that it's officially November now. Halloween is over, I get to vote on Tuesday, as usual I will feel weird without a poppy on the 11th, and Thanksgiving will arrive before I even get a chance to breathe.
I'm sick right now. I started feeling yucky on Monday, but nothing too bad, just achy and tired. Then on Wednesday I was at clinical in a patient's room and I suddenly became very dizzy, nauseous, and felt like I was going to black out. Luckily, I was surrounded by nurses and they sat me down, got me some food and juice, and refused to let me get up for almost an hour. I was feeling pretty much okay after I'd eaten a little and rested, but my instructor let me take the rest of the day off, for which I am grateful. I went home thinking that maybe I'll catch up on some work, but ended up just falling asleep for 3 hours.
When I woke up, I had just had time to get dressed and get bored enough to call home to tell all about my fainting fit when a prospective medical student knocked on my door. Jordan had volunteered to put him up for a couple of nights while he interviewed at the med school. He was a nice guy, very geeky, from MIT, and a former Google intern. He was clearly not a medical student yet because he still had this bright-eyed optimism and excessive amount of energy. Jordan and I tried not to dampen his spirits too much with reality during the dinner conversation. Poor guy, he thinks he knows what's coming but he really has no idea.
Jordan and I had an interesting conversation about med school applicants after our prospie left. Apparently current students get to interview applicants and their comments are pretty highly valued during the admissions process. Jordan said that the majority of students have a canned answer for, "Why do you want to be a doctor?" which I would expect. The surprising thing is that if you rephrase the question to include a little more reality, such as, "You are volunteering to give up the next 8-10 years of your life to intense school, no sleep, and harder work than you've ever experienced. What makes that sacrifice worthwhile for you?" they have no idea what to say. It makes me wonder whether these people really know how brutal and pointless a lot of medical school can be, or if they were just not aware or willing to consider other options in health care.
I got to skip my second clinical day on Thursday in lieu of shadowing a home health nurse around on Friday. Thursday was instead spent in a combination of resting and shopping. I got myself a Zipcar and did all the things that I had been avoiding because I didn't have time. I even bought myself some snow boots and a tuque. Bring it on, winter, I'm ready for you. I also stocked up on soup to keep my cold-ridden self going.
Friday was my home health shadow. Sarah was very kind and drove me out to the agency office because I was in no shape to bike. I then followed my nurse around as sh met with a couple of little old ladies with minor wounds and caught up on some documentation. She couldn't get in touch with her other patients for the day, so just dropped me off at home around 1pm. I called Sarah to let her know she wouldn't need to give me a ride back home, and she asked me to come over and give costume help. She had a truly fabulous big floppy hat with ribbons and flowers on it and a long shiny purple dress that matched perfectly. I did what little I could to help her curl her hair in big bouncy ringlets and then went home to sleep for a while. At about 5:30 we got our first trick-or-treaters, Sarah and co. as well as another family with a pair of 2 year old blond twin boys. More trick-or-treaters followed pretty quickly after that, and we sadly ran out of candy before they stopped. I hadn't expected so many, but it turns out that a lot of kids get driven in to our neighborhood from the more dangerous areas of town. A lot of them didn't have costumes and were using their backpacks for bags. My guess is that was for financial reasons rather than the usual "we're too cool to get dressed up" reasons.
After candy dispensing, I started to get dressed to go to a Halloween party hosted by some classmates. I've stopped attempting to go to most of the class parties because they have devolved into loud and obnoxious groups of very drunk people, but this one was hosted by a different house and was advertised as being pretty quiet. Plus it was within walking distance and Sarah was coming with me. I had borrowed an amazing coat from the 70's and some equally amazing boots from Sarah, combined with a loud and obnoxious thrift store shirt and a miniskirt turned into something approximating a girl from the 70's. I made a valiant attempt at straightening my hair but it just wasn't going to happen. The party was fun, and not full of obnoxious drunk people. Although my favorite costume by far was the girl that came in a patient gown, covered in bandages, and with a foley catheter bag filled with tequila. I got home around midnight exhausted and immediately fell asleep.
Today has been lazy, I've just been cleaning up around the house, occasionally hacking up globs of green goo, and trying to get some rest. Probably should have done my homework, but it's Saturday and that somehow seems wrong. I'll probably still be trying to rest and recover tomorrow, so I can do homework then.
Oh, and before I go I should explain my decision from the last post. I've thought about going straight into graduate school and come to the conclusion that I'm not ready for that. This program is too fast to give us time to really apply all the things we are learning, we only get little tastes of applied nursing during clinical. I want to have the opportunity to be a bedside nurse for a while to figure out how it really works and have a better chance of focusing my graduate work on real life problems and potential solutions. Also, I've been a poor starving student for almost 6 years straight, I want a real job and some time to do the things I'm missing this year, like racing, dancing, and painting. And if I don't go to graduate school, that's okay too, since I'll likely make a better salary as a staff nurse than as nursing faculty. The main reasons that this decision makes my life easier are that I don't have to start working on grad school applications and I am much more likely to just come back to Portland in May. There's still a chance I'll stay in Rochester, but it's not real high.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Quick update
I met with the director of the Ms/PhD program here last week. She talked me through the whole program, and how to pay for it, and how to apply. It was extremely helpful, and I've now decided that I will be applying. The program lasts 4-5 years and they only take 2-3 students each year, so I'm not sure if I'll get in but I can at least apply. I'm also looking at schools in Boston, Philadelphia, and San Fransisco. And I contacted OHSU to see if I could do their Master's and PhD programs simultaneously. Unfortunately, it sounds like I'll need to get an Adult Nurse Practitioner license, which OHSU does not offer.
In other news, I've been having a great time with my housemates. Jess continues to bake cookies every night (coincidentally, I started going to the gym again) and Jordan is rarely around but when he is we generally geek out together about health stuff or gadgets like my new iPod. I've settled in well and I really love living here.
Things are still going well with Paul and I. His parents will be in town for a little while at the end of the week, so I'll probably be meeting them. Since my schedule is completely wacky and his is completely normal we have difficulty getting a lot of time together, but that'll be changing as soon as I'm done with Psych.
Speaking of psych, I hate it. I don't really feel the need to elaborate, except to say that mental health care is an oxymoron and I'm spending my clinical time angry and frustrated. I will be very glad when it's over.
We had the tail end of Hurricane Ike come through Rochester last night. Wind was gusting up to 60mph and blew down many trees and knocked our power out for about 18 hours (midnight until I got home this evening). Luckily I was in class almost all day, so it didn't really affect me too much, still very annoying and by far the longest power outage I can remember. The only casualty was our ice cream.
Sarah and I have a plan to go to the gym together three times every week starting on Monday. We'll see if it works, but I think it'll help me a lot to be responsible to someone. Ideally I'd like to be 15-20 pounds lighter by the beginning of the collegiate cycling season next spring. That should be doable, as long as I work hard at it and Jess's cookie production slows down.
In other news, I've been having a great time with my housemates. Jess continues to bake cookies every night (coincidentally, I started going to the gym again) and Jordan is rarely around but when he is we generally geek out together about health stuff or gadgets like my new iPod. I've settled in well and I really love living here.
Things are still going well with Paul and I. His parents will be in town for a little while at the end of the week, so I'll probably be meeting them. Since my schedule is completely wacky and his is completely normal we have difficulty getting a lot of time together, but that'll be changing as soon as I'm done with Psych.
Speaking of psych, I hate it. I don't really feel the need to elaborate, except to say that mental health care is an oxymoron and I'm spending my clinical time angry and frustrated. I will be very glad when it's over.
We had the tail end of Hurricane Ike come through Rochester last night. Wind was gusting up to 60mph and blew down many trees and knocked our power out for about 18 hours (midnight until I got home this evening). Luckily I was in class almost all day, so it didn't really affect me too much, still very annoying and by far the longest power outage I can remember. The only casualty was our ice cream.
Sarah and I have a plan to go to the gym together three times every week starting on Monday. We'll see if it works, but I think it'll help me a lot to be responsible to someone. Ideally I'd like to be 15-20 pounds lighter by the beginning of the collegiate cycling season next spring. That should be doable, as long as I work hard at it and Jess's cookie production slows down.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Housemate bonding time
Today was so much fun. Turns out Jess and I get along very well, and we both like to bake. This could be a dangerous combination. We started today by going to the Public Market, where we both bought enough food that we could barely carry any more. Me at the market without the bike limiting what I buy spells trouble. So, once we got home, we scrounged up some lunch and proceeded to bake stuff. Jess made snickerdoodles and I made zucchini muffins and everybody got to happily eat all afternoon. Then we both took naps, woke up, and started to make dinner. We decided on black bean burgers (Jordan is vegetarian, and Jess and I are both happy to eat veggie), which had me a little intimidated at first, but were amazingly easy. We didn't even follow a recipe, just sorta made it up. A combination of black beans, crumbled toast, red bell pepper, onion, parsley, chili powder, an egg, some salsa, and I think that's it. All mashed together and formed into burger-shaped things, then grilled. They tasted like a burrito turned into a burger. We also made corn (6 ears for a dollar!) and drank some really good Oregon wine. It was a delicious dinner, and I nice way to get to know my new housemates.
I wish I could spend more time with Jordan before school starts for me, but school has already started for him so he spends most of his time studying for an upcoming neuro exam. Memorizing the parts of the brain and the names of the blood vessels and stuff. And he proves to me every day that I made the right choice by not going to medical school.
Speaking of medical stuff, I got attacked by either a nasty bug of some kind or the most potent poisonous plant I've ever encountered sometime during my visit. What started as some ugly bumps on my legs first turned into angry red splotches covered in blisters and have now become scabby, weepy, nasty and even bigger than before. I'm hoping that the scabbiness means they're healing finally. I took pictures of them, but they're pretty gross so I won't post them unless requested. And, I'm starting to find new angry red bumps on my legs and now on my forearm. I'm worried that by scratching I've spread whatever the original cause of the reaction was around. But, that doesn't make sense, since these things have been there for a week and a half and there's no way I've still got residual poisonous substances on me. I just don't know, but at least I've got access to a whole lot of nurses and nurse practitioners if it doesn't start to heal up.
Oh, last night Paul and I went to see Iron Man. I know, I'm slow about these things. But, it was really good. Tomorrow we're going to go spend the afternoon/evening at his friend Eric's cottage on a lake somewhere (not Lake Ontario). It will be fun. I've started meeting more people in the Paul/Sarah/Ronen friend group, and I like them all. And they play lots of board games, which I like even more. I was a little intimidated at first by the people at a board game night on Thursday, but managed to relax after the first game or so and actually started joining in the conversation.
I think that's it for now. I'm going to go curl up with my new Neil Gaiman book stolen from Jess (I love Neil Gaiman! Why didn't I start reading this stuff earlier?) and chill out a little before bed. Two more days of vacation...
I wish I could spend more time with Jordan before school starts for me, but school has already started for him so he spends most of his time studying for an upcoming neuro exam. Memorizing the parts of the brain and the names of the blood vessels and stuff. And he proves to me every day that I made the right choice by not going to medical school.
Speaking of medical stuff, I got attacked by either a nasty bug of some kind or the most potent poisonous plant I've ever encountered sometime during my visit. What started as some ugly bumps on my legs first turned into angry red splotches covered in blisters and have now become scabby, weepy, nasty and even bigger than before. I'm hoping that the scabbiness means they're healing finally. I took pictures of them, but they're pretty gross so I won't post them unless requested. And, I'm starting to find new angry red bumps on my legs and now on my forearm. I'm worried that by scratching I've spread whatever the original cause of the reaction was around. But, that doesn't make sense, since these things have been there for a week and a half and there's no way I've still got residual poisonous substances on me. I just don't know, but at least I've got access to a whole lot of nurses and nurse practitioners if it doesn't start to heal up.
Oh, last night Paul and I went to see Iron Man. I know, I'm slow about these things. But, it was really good. Tomorrow we're going to go spend the afternoon/evening at his friend Eric's cottage on a lake somewhere (not Lake Ontario). It will be fun. I've started meeting more people in the Paul/Sarah/Ronen friend group, and I like them all. And they play lots of board games, which I like even more. I was a little intimidated at first by the people at a board game night on Thursday, but managed to relax after the first game or so and actually started joining in the conversation.
I think that's it for now. I'm going to go curl up with my new Neil Gaiman book stolen from Jess (I love Neil Gaiman! Why didn't I start reading this stuff earlier?) and chill out a little before bed. Two more days of vacation...
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Vacation, moving, and getting ready for school
Vacation was great. I did a lot of stuff, saw a lot of people, and had a lot of fun. Highlights include: Lauren's graduation picnic, riding the Portland Century, special dance at Tuesday Blues, and several episodes of hysterical giggling over nothing in particular. I"m not going to recap the whole vacation because most of the people that read this blog were there.
I am now moved into my new home in Rochester. It's an adorable house recently bought by Jordan and Jess. He's a second year med student and she's an elementary music teacher. They're both really sweet and we get along great. Jess and I spent the afternoon shopping and admiring our respective book collections. I've already taken a few of hers and given her a few of mine. I've also spent a lot of time playing with Heidi, Jess's cat. Heidi is also very sweet and quite friendly. She's not up to sitting on my lap yet, but she's often found exploring my room or sitting in my windows. My room is huge, about twice the size of the previous one, and they funished it for me with a bed, dresser, and desk. I've got some more organizing to do, but I'm making a lot of progress on it. There's an enormous wooden headboard leaning on one wall that I can do anything I want with. So far I've considered covering it with hooks and using it to hang stuff, or maybe sticking a shelf on it, but I'm open to suggestions.
Yesterday, after the one hour it took to move my stuff, Paul and I went hiking at Mendon Ponds. I didn't realize until visiting that website that they have a raptor rescue facility there. I'll have to check it out some day. Too bad I'm too busy to be a volunteer, I could actually put my hawk glove to use again. The park is beautiful, I can't wait to see it when the leaves have changed color. After we got back, and I took a nap, we wandered over to Sarah's to visit with them and the kids. They left today for a friend's farm so this was my only chance to see her before classes start. The kids are adorable and crazy, as usual, and Sarah was stressed out as usual, but we had a good time anyway. Then I came back to my new place (less than a 5 minute walk!) and started the unpacking process. It's a long process, and still very much in progress. I'll post pictures once things are a little more sorted out here.
Tonight I think I'm going to play board games with Paul and some friends that I may or may not have met yet. Tomorrow will be more unpacking and organizing and probably involve going over to the hospital to buy my books. In the meantime I'm going to make some dinner and try to get through some of my growing stack of reading material. It's so fun having friends with good book collections!
I am now moved into my new home in Rochester. It's an adorable house recently bought by Jordan and Jess. He's a second year med student and she's an elementary music teacher. They're both really sweet and we get along great. Jess and I spent the afternoon shopping and admiring our respective book collections. I've already taken a few of hers and given her a few of mine. I've also spent a lot of time playing with Heidi, Jess's cat. Heidi is also very sweet and quite friendly. She's not up to sitting on my lap yet, but she's often found exploring my room or sitting in my windows. My room is huge, about twice the size of the previous one, and they funished it for me with a bed, dresser, and desk. I've got some more organizing to do, but I'm making a lot of progress on it. There's an enormous wooden headboard leaning on one wall that I can do anything I want with. So far I've considered covering it with hooks and using it to hang stuff, or maybe sticking a shelf on it, but I'm open to suggestions.
Yesterday, after the one hour it took to move my stuff, Paul and I went hiking at Mendon Ponds. I didn't realize until visiting that website that they have a raptor rescue facility there. I'll have to check it out some day. Too bad I'm too busy to be a volunteer, I could actually put my hawk glove to use again. The park is beautiful, I can't wait to see it when the leaves have changed color. After we got back, and I took a nap, we wandered over to Sarah's to visit with them and the kids. They left today for a friend's farm so this was my only chance to see her before classes start. The kids are adorable and crazy, as usual, and Sarah was stressed out as usual, but we had a good time anyway. Then I came back to my new place (less than a 5 minute walk!) and started the unpacking process. It's a long process, and still very much in progress. I'll post pictures once things are a little more sorted out here.
Tonight I think I'm going to play board games with Paul and some friends that I may or may not have met yet. Tomorrow will be more unpacking and organizing and probably involve going over to the hospital to buy my books. In the meantime I'm going to make some dinner and try to get through some of my growing stack of reading material. It's so fun having friends with good book collections!
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Life, clinicals, and almost done...
Two more days before I'm finished with one third of my nursing program. I'm almost one third of a nurse. That's a little scary.
Life outside of school has been going extremely well lately. First and foremost, the bat guys came today and did their work on the house. So, there should be no more bat invasions, and no unpleasant surprises for my incoming sublettor (sublessor? sublessee? I have no idea...)
Secondly, I had dinner with my soon-to-be housemates last night. They are wonderful! And they love to cook, and are very good at it. Jordan is a second year medical student and Jessica is a music teacher who is going back to school for a Master's in counseling. They invited me over for a "simple dinner" which included panini (on their shiny new panini maker!) salad, pasta, chips and hummus, wine, and peach cobbler. And it was all fabulous. I'm going to like living with these people. One of their friends was there too, a blind pianist from Eastman School of Music who had just returned from an international piano competition in Moscow. A really amazing guy, with a lot of good stories. The four of us got along great right from the start, lots of laughing and making plans for the house, and going on outings together, and all sorts of hilarity. I had a blast, and stayed way past my bed time on a clinical night, but it was completely worthwhile. I'll be moving into the house as soon as I can after I return from Portland.
The whole Paul thing is going rather well right now too. There was a day of canoing on the Genessee River, and some cuddling, and the purchase of a webcam for me so that we can chat to each other while gallivanting around the west coast. He's currently in San Diego at a conference, and won't get back until Friday, the day before I leave for Portland. Bad timing, but the webcam/Skype thing is pretty cool. Sarah seems to be incredibly proud of herself for managing to set us up.
Lastly, school stuff. Like I said, I'm almost done with this semester. I've determined through this clinical rotation that I have no interest in working on an ENT floor. I prefer patients that can talk to me, and so far I haven't had a single one of those on this floor. A lot of them have trachs and that makes talking very difficult unless they use a speaking valve, which can make breathing difficult. Usually they choose breathing. Also, I don't enjoy phlegm and sputum. I'd honestly rather deal with vomit and diarrhea. The whole suctioning out a trach thing is quite gross to see, but even worse to listen to. My next rotation will be Psych, on the Mentally Ill/Clinically Addicted floor. That will be very different and probably really cool. I bet I'll be longing for the patients that don't talk after five weeks of patients in withdrawal, though. And then I'm on the Cardiac Surgery floor, which I'm looking forward to a lot. Oh, and there will be a ton of classes mixed in with that stuff too. Fall is supposed to be the hardest semester of this course. Can't wait.
I think that's about it for now. I don't know how much I'll be posting from Portland, but I'll definitely be getting photos of my new place up here as soon as I can after moving in. So exciting!
Life outside of school has been going extremely well lately. First and foremost, the bat guys came today and did their work on the house. So, there should be no more bat invasions, and no unpleasant surprises for my incoming sublettor (sublessor? sublessee? I have no idea...)
Secondly, I had dinner with my soon-to-be housemates last night. They are wonderful! And they love to cook, and are very good at it. Jordan is a second year medical student and Jessica is a music teacher who is going back to school for a Master's in counseling. They invited me over for a "simple dinner" which included panini (on their shiny new panini maker!) salad, pasta, chips and hummus, wine, and peach cobbler. And it was all fabulous. I'm going to like living with these people. One of their friends was there too, a blind pianist from Eastman School of Music who had just returned from an international piano competition in Moscow. A really amazing guy, with a lot of good stories. The four of us got along great right from the start, lots of laughing and making plans for the house, and going on outings together, and all sorts of hilarity. I had a blast, and stayed way past my bed time on a clinical night, but it was completely worthwhile. I'll be moving into the house as soon as I can after I return from Portland.
The whole Paul thing is going rather well right now too. There was a day of canoing on the Genessee River, and some cuddling, and the purchase of a webcam for me so that we can chat to each other while gallivanting around the west coast. He's currently in San Diego at a conference, and won't get back until Friday, the day before I leave for Portland. Bad timing, but the webcam/Skype thing is pretty cool. Sarah seems to be incredibly proud of herself for managing to set us up.
Lastly, school stuff. Like I said, I'm almost done with this semester. I've determined through this clinical rotation that I have no interest in working on an ENT floor. I prefer patients that can talk to me, and so far I haven't had a single one of those on this floor. A lot of them have trachs and that makes talking very difficult unless they use a speaking valve, which can make breathing difficult. Usually they choose breathing. Also, I don't enjoy phlegm and sputum. I'd honestly rather deal with vomit and diarrhea. The whole suctioning out a trach thing is quite gross to see, but even worse to listen to. My next rotation will be Psych, on the Mentally Ill/Clinically Addicted floor. That will be very different and probably really cool. I bet I'll be longing for the patients that don't talk after five weeks of patients in withdrawal, though. And then I'm on the Cardiac Surgery floor, which I'm looking forward to a lot. Oh, and there will be a ton of classes mixed in with that stuff too. Fall is supposed to be the hardest semester of this course. Can't wait.
I think that's about it for now. I don't know how much I'll be posting from Portland, but I'll definitely be getting photos of my new place up here as soon as I can after moving in. So exciting!
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Weekend update
After clinicals on Friday I was pretty well exhausted, but we had our usual Friday night dinner at Sarah's planned. So I took a nap, relaxed for a little while, and then rode over there to hang out with Sarah, Ronen, Paul, and the babies. The babies were particularly fussy that night, but it didn't stop us from having a fun evening that included a good game of Settlers.
At some point during the evening Sarah and Ronen asked me if I could babysit for them that Saturday night. Of course I said yes, they've been such wonderful friends that it's the very least I could do for them. Besides, they weren't going to need me until after the babies were put to bed. At some point after that plan had been made, someone suggested that Paul should come over and keep me company while I was babysitting. He said maybe. At some other point in the evening, I asked Paul if there was a good way to bike down to David's Bridal so I could try on dresses for Matthew and Leah's wedding. The only direct route is along a road that is decidedly unsafe for bikes. He not only told me there was a route, but offered to show me personally some time this weekend. I, of course, said that I would really like that (even though the route seemed straightforward enough) and so we planned that I would give him a call when I knew what time would work best.
Fast forward to Saturday. I had a bat proofing company come at 8am to inspect the house, give an estimate, and make arrangements for them to come back and do the actual work. After that I went straight back to bed and didn't get up until noon. Then I went about my usual Saturday grocery shopping and did some minor stuff around the house and homework. Around 5:30 I called Paul and told him that Sunday around noon would be a good time to go for that bike ride. He informed me that his possible plans for that evening had been cancelled and so he'd be coming over to babysit too, which was a pleasant surprise. I then called Sarah and asked her for a ride to her place, since I knew I'd be too exhausted to ride my bike back home at midnight. She then informed me that Paul would be coming to babysit too, at which I laughed and decided that we should just do conference calls. Around 7:00 Sarah and Yasmine picked me up (apparently Yasmine was really excited that they were going to get m and insisted on coming) and I got to play with the babies for a little while before bedtime. Paul showed up during the whole bedtime process (it usually takes about 30-45 minutes, and involves no loud noises downstairs and frequent screaming from upstairs) and eventually Sarah and Ronen got to go out for their date.
Paul and I just talked for a nice long time, but just before 10pm, Maya started crying. Maya doesn't go back to sleep on her own, so I had to go up there and do my best to calm down a very upset one year old. She finally fell asleep on my shoulder after about 15 minutes, and I got her down in the crib, but as soon as I tried to open the door and leave her room she woke up screaming again. Around the half hour mark I gave in and called Sarah. She told me to just take Maya downstairs to play for a while, and she and Ronen would be home as soon as the movie was over. She didn't realize that the movie was over 2.5 hours (they saw Dark Knight). But, Paul and I managed to keep the little baby content for as long as it took, and she was awfully cute, even though she should have been asleep. When Sarah and Ronen got home they were very grateful and Paul and I were both exhausted. He gave me a ride home, and somewhere along the way asked me if I would like to go to a soccer game tomorrow evening. I said yes, gave him a very tired hug, and immediately collapsed in bed.
Today, I had to go get my rabies shot at 10am, which took almost no time at all. And then around noon, when I'd had some real breakfast and done a little bit of homework, I called up Paul and we went off on our dress trying on excursion. The ride was fun, and quite pretty along the Erie canal. Paul valiantly stuck around while I did the dress thing, and then we rode back. He left me at home so I could get a little more homework done, and a shower, before picking me up for the soccer game. The Rochester Rhinos are not a very good team, but they're a lot of fun to watch. I don't think I've been to any pro soccer games before and I really liked it. I might even have to go again some time. We cheered, and booed, and yelled at the refs, and laughed at the cheerleaders, and generally had a lot of fun. And Paul was a total gentleman and opened my car door for me, held my hand, paid for my ticket, offered me his jacket, etc. I think this might qualify as a first date.
So, this was a very good, but not terribly productive weekend. For the next week I have to write up a nursing care plan for my assigned patient from last week's clinicals, go through a mid-term evaluation with my clinical instructor, verify the transcipt that Nami and Nina put together last week, transcribe my part of this week's focus group session, and work my W,Th,F clinical shifts. It's going to be another long and exhausting week. Only two left.
At some point during the evening Sarah and Ronen asked me if I could babysit for them that Saturday night. Of course I said yes, they've been such wonderful friends that it's the very least I could do for them. Besides, they weren't going to need me until after the babies were put to bed. At some point after that plan had been made, someone suggested that Paul should come over and keep me company while I was babysitting. He said maybe. At some other point in the evening, I asked Paul if there was a good way to bike down to David's Bridal so I could try on dresses for Matthew and Leah's wedding. The only direct route is along a road that is decidedly unsafe for bikes. He not only told me there was a route, but offered to show me personally some time this weekend. I, of course, said that I would really like that (even though the route seemed straightforward enough) and so we planned that I would give him a call when I knew what time would work best.
Fast forward to Saturday. I had a bat proofing company come at 8am to inspect the house, give an estimate, and make arrangements for them to come back and do the actual work. After that I went straight back to bed and didn't get up until noon. Then I went about my usual Saturday grocery shopping and did some minor stuff around the house and homework. Around 5:30 I called Paul and told him that Sunday around noon would be a good time to go for that bike ride. He informed me that his possible plans for that evening had been cancelled and so he'd be coming over to babysit too, which was a pleasant surprise. I then called Sarah and asked her for a ride to her place, since I knew I'd be too exhausted to ride my bike back home at midnight. She then informed me that Paul would be coming to babysit too, at which I laughed and decided that we should just do conference calls. Around 7:00 Sarah and Yasmine picked me up (apparently Yasmine was really excited that they were going to get m and insisted on coming) and I got to play with the babies for a little while before bedtime. Paul showed up during the whole bedtime process (it usually takes about 30-45 minutes, and involves no loud noises downstairs and frequent screaming from upstairs) and eventually Sarah and Ronen got to go out for their date.
Paul and I just talked for a nice long time, but just before 10pm, Maya started crying. Maya doesn't go back to sleep on her own, so I had to go up there and do my best to calm down a very upset one year old. She finally fell asleep on my shoulder after about 15 minutes, and I got her down in the crib, but as soon as I tried to open the door and leave her room she woke up screaming again. Around the half hour mark I gave in and called Sarah. She told me to just take Maya downstairs to play for a while, and she and Ronen would be home as soon as the movie was over. She didn't realize that the movie was over 2.5 hours (they saw Dark Knight). But, Paul and I managed to keep the little baby content for as long as it took, and she was awfully cute, even though she should have been asleep. When Sarah and Ronen got home they were very grateful and Paul and I were both exhausted. He gave me a ride home, and somewhere along the way asked me if I would like to go to a soccer game tomorrow evening. I said yes, gave him a very tired hug, and immediately collapsed in bed.
Today, I had to go get my rabies shot at 10am, which took almost no time at all. And then around noon, when I'd had some real breakfast and done a little bit of homework, I called up Paul and we went off on our dress trying on excursion. The ride was fun, and quite pretty along the Erie canal. Paul valiantly stuck around while I did the dress thing, and then we rode back. He left me at home so I could get a little more homework done, and a shower, before picking me up for the soccer game. The Rochester Rhinos are not a very good team, but they're a lot of fun to watch. I don't think I've been to any pro soccer games before and I really liked it. I might even have to go again some time. We cheered, and booed, and yelled at the refs, and laughed at the cheerleaders, and generally had a lot of fun. And Paul was a total gentleman and opened my car door for me, held my hand, paid for my ticket, offered me his jacket, etc. I think this might qualify as a first date.
So, this was a very good, but not terribly productive weekend. For the next week I have to write up a nursing care plan for my assigned patient from last week's clinicals, go through a mid-term evaluation with my clinical instructor, verify the transcipt that Nami and Nina put together last week, transcribe my part of this week's focus group session, and work my W,Th,F clinical shifts. It's going to be another long and exhausting week. Only two left.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Clearly Monday was too optimistic
This one is going to be another quick and dirty list.
1. The wedding was beautiful and I had a lot of fun with all my Oregon (and other) friends.
2. I made it back to Rochester without a problem and even got a 3 hour nap on the floor of the Philadelphia airport.
3. Sarah kidnapped me for hanging out on Monday and I fell asleep on her couch after dinner. Ronen was kind enough to drive me home.
4. I've started my Acute Care clinical. It's a lot more exciting than Long Term Care was. I'll elaborate more about clinicals when I'm less busy (read: after August 15th).
5. I emailed my landlord and there will be bat-proofers coming to check out the house either Saturday or Monday. Apparently after the initial bullying attempt he becomes a reasonable person.
6. I have an RIT student coming tomorrow night to check out my room and the house to see if he would like to sublet. Therefore the rest of the night will be spent cleaning and then collapsing in bed.
And finally, a plea for help. My suitcases were stored in the basement and apparently that was a poor choice, because they are now filled with bugs and spiders and various creatures that I don't want in my stuff (not sure about bats). Any ideas on how to rid said suitcases of said critters?
1. The wedding was beautiful and I had a lot of fun with all my Oregon (and other) friends.
2. I made it back to Rochester without a problem and even got a 3 hour nap on the floor of the Philadelphia airport.
3. Sarah kidnapped me for hanging out on Monday and I fell asleep on her couch after dinner. Ronen was kind enough to drive me home.
4. I've started my Acute Care clinical. It's a lot more exciting than Long Term Care was. I'll elaborate more about clinicals when I'm less busy (read: after August 15th).
5. I emailed my landlord and there will be bat-proofers coming to check out the house either Saturday or Monday. Apparently after the initial bullying attempt he becomes a reasonable person.
6. I have an RIT student coming tomorrow night to check out my room and the house to see if he would like to sublet. Therefore the rest of the night will be spent cleaning and then collapsing in bed.
And finally, a plea for help. My suitcases were stored in the basement and apparently that was a poor choice, because they are now filled with bugs and spiders and various creatures that I don't want in my stuff (not sure about bats). Any ideas on how to rid said suitcases of said critters?
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Feeling better
I'm back home now, having spent a really nice day hanging out with Sarah and the little ones. I had gone over to her house to do that online exam, because if I went home I was pretty sure I would forget about it, and ended up staying until after dinner. She gave me lots of hugs, fed me, chatted with me, let me play with her adorable children, and generally did a fabulous job of cheering me up. I think Maya is starting to get to know me, and Yasmine will usually give me random flying hug attacks throughout the day and won't let me leave without saying goodbye. It's very sweet and cute and a perfect way to forget about stressful life stuff. We even went for a walk to the park after Ronen got home and I got to play with more adorable small children, including a set of 2 year old twins named Henry and Calvin who insisted on repeatedly filling my hands with woodchips.
Tomorrow is my first day of clinicals. I'm going to a long term care facility close-ish to the hospital, but far enough that I'll be carpooling with my friend Laura. I offered to buy the coffee if she'd drive, which I think is a good deal. We have to be there at 7:00am, so I'm meeting her at her house by 6:30, just to be sure that we're not late on our first day. I have a few final things to do before I'm ready to go, but otherwise I should be all set. I'm sure I will have a lot to talk about after this first day, but I may not get to blogging about it until later, depending on how long I need to recover.
Tomorrow is my first day of clinicals. I'm going to a long term care facility close-ish to the hospital, but far enough that I'll be carpooling with my friend Laura. I offered to buy the coffee if she'd drive, which I think is a good deal. We have to be there at 7:00am, so I'm meeting her at her house by 6:30, just to be sure that we're not late on our first day. I have a few final things to do before I'm ready to go, but otherwise I should be all set. I'm sure I will have a lot to talk about after this first day, but I may not get to blogging about it until later, depending on how long I need to recover.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Wound care, catheters, and trach tubes
I get to watch fun videos for this course. Tonight was oxygen therapy, wound care, urinary/bowel function, and urinary catheters. It's remarkable to me how bad the acting is in these videos, especially when the nurse says something like, "I'm not making you uncomfortable, am I?" while inserting a catheter. Umm... I don't think there's any way to make that experience NOT uncomfortable. You can make it LESS uncomfortable, but no one is ever going to say, "That was fun, let's do it again!"
This week I've got lab on Saturday, which is where I'll practice all of the fun stuff that I watched in the videos. We only get to do it on mannequins, though, not each other. It wouldn't be fair for the 1-2 guys in each lab group to have to suffer through every other student inserting and removing a catheter on them, after all. Funny, but not nice. Though I don't know how nice it'll be for the first real patient that I get to do it on...
Class is just plugging along slowly, trying to get us up to speed on all the basics we'll need for clinicals next week. After class today I went home with Sarah to hang out. We went out for lunch, chatted about everything, but mostly boys. We've concluded that boys are dumb (sorry, boys) but we like them anyway. Then we tried to do some homework, succeeded briefly, and continued to chat until she had to go to lab. I'll probably be going back over there tomorrow night for the weekly "get Paul and Caitlin in the same place" dinner.
This weekend I'll be spending most of my time transcribing the group session that happens tomorrow morning. I hope I'll get the audio file early enough that I can get a lot of it done tomorrow afternoon. I also hope that it doesn't take as long as I think it will, but that's not likely. Today was my last day of real relaxing fun time before the normal school craziness comes back in full force. I'm actually looking forward to it though, since I've had a little too much free time on my hands lately. I don't think I'll ever get over my need to be busy all the time.
EDIT: There are now 5 sprouts. All of them look a little different. It's very exciting.
This week I've got lab on Saturday, which is where I'll practice all of the fun stuff that I watched in the videos. We only get to do it on mannequins, though, not each other. It wouldn't be fair for the 1-2 guys in each lab group to have to suffer through every other student inserting and removing a catheter on them, after all. Funny, but not nice. Though I don't know how nice it'll be for the first real patient that I get to do it on...
Class is just plugging along slowly, trying to get us up to speed on all the basics we'll need for clinicals next week. After class today I went home with Sarah to hang out. We went out for lunch, chatted about everything, but mostly boys. We've concluded that boys are dumb (sorry, boys) but we like them anyway. Then we tried to do some homework, succeeded briefly, and continued to chat until she had to go to lab. I'll probably be going back over there tomorrow night for the weekly "get Paul and Caitlin in the same place" dinner.
This weekend I'll be spending most of my time transcribing the group session that happens tomorrow morning. I hope I'll get the audio file early enough that I can get a lot of it done tomorrow afternoon. I also hope that it doesn't take as long as I think it will, but that's not likely. Today was my last day of real relaxing fun time before the normal school craziness comes back in full force. I'm actually looking forward to it though, since I've had a little too much free time on my hands lately. I don't think I'll ever get over my need to be busy all the time.
EDIT: There are now 5 sprouts. All of them look a little different. It's very exciting.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Rainy Day
I'm loving the rain right now. Yesterday was a miserable 90 degrees with the sticky humidity permeating everything. Today it is about 70 and raining, which just feels like Portland.
I'm done with my first classes. I've written the last paper and taken all the tests. I have most of the grades back, but not quite all. Some are better than others, but I should pull at least an A- in everything, I think. I'm actually going to go talk to my pharmacology professor about my clinical paper assignment, because I either really screwed up something and can't figure out what, or the TA that graded my paper didn't do a very good job. I'll find out which tomorrow.
This weekend has been pretty lazy. I spent all day Thursday at Muddy Waters writing my genetics paper. Friday I lay around the house watching a really good stage of the Tour, then went for a ride in the rain that was sadly cut short by a flat tire. I changed the tire but the pump I carry with me is only powerful enough to inflate the tire to 75%. That's enough to get home on, but isn't fun to do any real riding on and any underinflated tire is more likely to flat again. After I got home I was covered in mud and grease and spent about an hour scrubbing myself clean.
I then ate lunch and promptly fell asleep while attempting to read. Luckily I woke up in time to get dressed and head over to Sarah's for a game night. Unluckily, I decided to pump up Johnny's tires before I left and managed to break the valve and let all the air out. That meant that I would have to change the tire, which takes a ridiculously long time on Johnny because his tires are kevlar and not very stretchy. So I called Sarah and she came to pick me up. She had Yasmine and Maya with her and Maya was not very happy at all. She's got a probable yeast infection, and was doing a lot of screaming. Anyway, when we got home Sarah took care of Maya while I got a lesson in cucumber peeling from Ronen. Apparently there's a very particular way to do these things in his family. Paul showed up at some point and we were all put to work getting dinner ready. Dinner involved the usual toddler-induced hilarity and chaos. After dinner, while the little ones were being put to bed, Paul and I made cookies and got Settlers out to play. We played the Cities and Knights version, which I had only played a couple of times before but really like. Paul beat us without too much competition, and then we just sat around chatting until Sarah looked like she was going to fall out of her chair from exhaustion. I got a ride home from Paul and immediately passed out in bed.
Yesterday was supposed to be my first day of working on the Fuld project. I met up with Elspeth, another friend from class who is working on the project with me, and we rode our bikes to an STD clinic in the "bad part of town." It's actually about a mile away from my house, but it's amazing how the neighborhood changes in a very short distance. It's not a dangerous place to be in the middle of the day, but I would never go there at night. We found the clinic and met with LaRon, who is running the study. We thought that we were going to be recruiting young moms to participate in the focus groups but LaRon informed us that they had been having trouble getting enough people, so they've hired a full-time recruiter. That was a big relief to me, since walking up to teenage moms in the street and asking them if they'd like to come talk about their sex lives didn't sound like much fun. So Elspeth and I just got a tour of the STD clinic, which is a cool nurse-run free clinic that offers a lot of really good services for free. He then gave us the software and stuff we would need to do transcription and emailed us the audio files of preliminary group sessions so that we could get an idea of what to expect. I started listening to one last night and transcribing it is going to be hard work. First of all, it's hard to understand what they're saying because of the way the talk and all the slang they use. Secondly, they all talk at the same time, and they have their kids with them to scream in the background. I'm one of the people transcribing next weekend, so it'll be very interesting to see how well I do. At least I don't have to recruit, but it'll be slow going.
Today I'll just be hanging out at home finishing up a lot of minor chores. I'll edit my genetics paper, do some laundry, maybe some baking, finish listening to those audio files, sew patches onto my scrubs, and maybe get to the assignment that we already have for our next class. It's not due until Wednesday though, so I'm not terribly worried. My schedule looks pretty manageable next week, it's the following week that things get crazy with the beginning of clinicals.
I'm done with my first classes. I've written the last paper and taken all the tests. I have most of the grades back, but not quite all. Some are better than others, but I should pull at least an A- in everything, I think. I'm actually going to go talk to my pharmacology professor about my clinical paper assignment, because I either really screwed up something and can't figure out what, or the TA that graded my paper didn't do a very good job. I'll find out which tomorrow.
This weekend has been pretty lazy. I spent all day Thursday at Muddy Waters writing my genetics paper. Friday I lay around the house watching a really good stage of the Tour, then went for a ride in the rain that was sadly cut short by a flat tire. I changed the tire but the pump I carry with me is only powerful enough to inflate the tire to 75%. That's enough to get home on, but isn't fun to do any real riding on and any underinflated tire is more likely to flat again. After I got home I was covered in mud and grease and spent about an hour scrubbing myself clean.
I then ate lunch and promptly fell asleep while attempting to read. Luckily I woke up in time to get dressed and head over to Sarah's for a game night. Unluckily, I decided to pump up Johnny's tires before I left and managed to break the valve and let all the air out. That meant that I would have to change the tire, which takes a ridiculously long time on Johnny because his tires are kevlar and not very stretchy. So I called Sarah and she came to pick me up. She had Yasmine and Maya with her and Maya was not very happy at all. She's got a probable yeast infection, and was doing a lot of screaming. Anyway, when we got home Sarah took care of Maya while I got a lesson in cucumber peeling from Ronen. Apparently there's a very particular way to do these things in his family. Paul showed up at some point and we were all put to work getting dinner ready. Dinner involved the usual toddler-induced hilarity and chaos. After dinner, while the little ones were being put to bed, Paul and I made cookies and got Settlers out to play. We played the Cities and Knights version, which I had only played a couple of times before but really like. Paul beat us without too much competition, and then we just sat around chatting until Sarah looked like she was going to fall out of her chair from exhaustion. I got a ride home from Paul and immediately passed out in bed.
Yesterday was supposed to be my first day of working on the Fuld project. I met up with Elspeth, another friend from class who is working on the project with me, and we rode our bikes to an STD clinic in the "bad part of town." It's actually about a mile away from my house, but it's amazing how the neighborhood changes in a very short distance. It's not a dangerous place to be in the middle of the day, but I would never go there at night. We found the clinic and met with LaRon, who is running the study. We thought that we were going to be recruiting young moms to participate in the focus groups but LaRon informed us that they had been having trouble getting enough people, so they've hired a full-time recruiter. That was a big relief to me, since walking up to teenage moms in the street and asking them if they'd like to come talk about their sex lives didn't sound like much fun. So Elspeth and I just got a tour of the STD clinic, which is a cool nurse-run free clinic that offers a lot of really good services for free. He then gave us the software and stuff we would need to do transcription and emailed us the audio files of preliminary group sessions so that we could get an idea of what to expect. I started listening to one last night and transcribing it is going to be hard work. First of all, it's hard to understand what they're saying because of the way the talk and all the slang they use. Secondly, they all talk at the same time, and they have their kids with them to scream in the background. I'm one of the people transcribing next weekend, so it'll be very interesting to see how well I do. At least I don't have to recruit, but it'll be slow going.
Today I'll just be hanging out at home finishing up a lot of minor chores. I'll edit my genetics paper, do some laundry, maybe some baking, finish listening to those audio files, sew patches onto my scrubs, and maybe get to the assignment that we already have for our next class. It's not due until Wednesday though, so I'm not terribly worried. My schedule looks pretty manageable next week, it's the following week that things get crazy with the beginning of clinicals.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Fun holidays
I got a real break this weekend. That's why I haven't updated, I've been too busy having fun. I haven't had class since Wednesday and I've been thoroughly enjoying myself all this time. Here's a brief summary of my long weekend:
Thursday: Be Lauren's patient for her final demo. She did a great job, and I managed to not giggle too much. Then I went to the gym, did some homework, baked some muffins, watched a movie, and just relaxed all day.
Friday: Went for a ride with Bernie and another friend of his. Can't remember the friend's name, but it was a nice long ride. I was pretty tired by the end, since I had done a lot of riding throughout the week. Post-ride I took a little nap and then went out to Sarah's for a 4th of July BBQ. It was almost all people that I'd met before, including Paul, the tall geeky guy. Everybody had a great time, and I spent most of the evening with 2 year old Yasmine on my lap trying to convince her that she could only hold one piece of watermelon in each hand and should eat what she had before trying to grab more. That was only somewhat successful, but I've apparently become one of her favorite people, second only to Paul. When she wasn't sitting on my lap she was busy splashing around in the kiddie pool or trying to help her mom feed Maya, the nearly one year old. Besides the time playing with the little tiny people, I did manage to have real conversations with the adults too. I even got to talk to Paul for a while. Sarah tried as hard as she could to get us to go watch the fireworks, but that didn't work since he seemed unwilling to offer me a ride and I was too shy to ask for one. So after everyone else had gone home, Sarah, Ronen, Paul and I all stuck around and chatted until almost midnight. I found out that they play Settlers and other board games, so maybe there are board game nights in the future. I think the BBQ thing is starting to get old, so Sarah's going to have to come up with other ways to try to throw Paul and I together.
Saturday: Lot of grocery shopping, a pathetic attempt at homework, and then headed over to Katherine's house for a Wii party. I'd never played on a Wii before, so this was very exciting. Turns out I'm a very good Wii boxer and have excellent balance on the Wii Fit, but can't hula hoop to save my life. Wii Fit is really fun. It's a questionable workout, but it at least gets you moving and is very well designed. There's even a little step aerobics game that works like DDR. After we'd had our fill of the Wii, we baked some cookies and watched SNL. Then we all found beds to sleep in (it was a sleepover Wii party) and were out for the night.
Sunday: I woke up and got to watch the second stage of the Tour de France live. It was pretty good, though nothing unexpected happened. Then we went to the kitchen for breakfast and about halfway through my bagel I started to feel really light headed and nauseous. I had to go lie down for a while before it cleared, and even then I couldn't move much without getting waves of nausea. I have no idea what was wrong. I'm feeling mostly okay now, so hopefully it was a weird fluke thing. I'm probably just fighting off a bug and all the stress from school was a little too much for me. If it happens again I might go get checked for anemia or something, because I've had some minor problems with low iron in the past. I ended up staying at Katherine's until about 5pm, working on my Nursing Science essay and a few other things. Now I'm sitting at Panera trying to finish that essay, but obviously getting a little distracted.
Here's what's in store for next week:
Monday: Review session for pharm test
Tuesday: Pharm test
Wednesday: Nursing Science test
Thursday: Health Assessment test
Friday: Nursing Science essay due
Next Monday: Genetics essay due.
I don't have any classes after 9am Thursday morning. And then my new class, Therapeutic Interventions starts next Monday. That means that if I can get my genetics essay done quickly, I can have the whole weekend free of homework. That sounds too good to be true.
Thursday: Be Lauren's patient for her final demo. She did a great job, and I managed to not giggle too much. Then I went to the gym, did some homework, baked some muffins, watched a movie, and just relaxed all day.
Friday: Went for a ride with Bernie and another friend of his. Can't remember the friend's name, but it was a nice long ride. I was pretty tired by the end, since I had done a lot of riding throughout the week. Post-ride I took a little nap and then went out to Sarah's for a 4th of July BBQ. It was almost all people that I'd met before, including Paul, the tall geeky guy. Everybody had a great time, and I spent most of the evening with 2 year old Yasmine on my lap trying to convince her that she could only hold one piece of watermelon in each hand and should eat what she had before trying to grab more. That was only somewhat successful, but I've apparently become one of her favorite people, second only to Paul. When she wasn't sitting on my lap she was busy splashing around in the kiddie pool or trying to help her mom feed Maya, the nearly one year old. Besides the time playing with the little tiny people, I did manage to have real conversations with the adults too. I even got to talk to Paul for a while. Sarah tried as hard as she could to get us to go watch the fireworks, but that didn't work since he seemed unwilling to offer me a ride and I was too shy to ask for one. So after everyone else had gone home, Sarah, Ronen, Paul and I all stuck around and chatted until almost midnight. I found out that they play Settlers and other board games, so maybe there are board game nights in the future. I think the BBQ thing is starting to get old, so Sarah's going to have to come up with other ways to try to throw Paul and I together.
Saturday: Lot of grocery shopping, a pathetic attempt at homework, and then headed over to Katherine's house for a Wii party. I'd never played on a Wii before, so this was very exciting. Turns out I'm a very good Wii boxer and have excellent balance on the Wii Fit, but can't hula hoop to save my life. Wii Fit is really fun. It's a questionable workout, but it at least gets you moving and is very well designed. There's even a little step aerobics game that works like DDR. After we'd had our fill of the Wii, we baked some cookies and watched SNL. Then we all found beds to sleep in (it was a sleepover Wii party) and were out for the night.
Sunday: I woke up and got to watch the second stage of the Tour de France live. It was pretty good, though nothing unexpected happened. Then we went to the kitchen for breakfast and about halfway through my bagel I started to feel really light headed and nauseous. I had to go lie down for a while before it cleared, and even then I couldn't move much without getting waves of nausea. I have no idea what was wrong. I'm feeling mostly okay now, so hopefully it was a weird fluke thing. I'm probably just fighting off a bug and all the stress from school was a little too much for me. If it happens again I might go get checked for anemia or something, because I've had some minor problems with low iron in the past. I ended up staying at Katherine's until about 5pm, working on my Nursing Science essay and a few other things. Now I'm sitting at Panera trying to finish that essay, but obviously getting a little distracted.
Here's what's in store for next week:
Monday: Review session for pharm test
Tuesday: Pharm test
Wednesday: Nursing Science test
Thursday: Health Assessment test
Friday: Nursing Science essay due
Next Monday: Genetics essay due.
I don't have any classes after 9am Thursday morning. And then my new class, Therapeutic Interventions starts next Monday. That means that if I can get my genetics essay done quickly, I can have the whole weekend free of homework. That sounds too good to be true.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Happy Canada Day!
So far my favorite quote from any professor: "If you can't handle the hands-on stuff, go to medical school."
Not a lot is happening besides school. Next week is basically finals week. We're finishing up all the current classes and switching to Therapeutic Interventions and clinicals. I'll also be starting my Fuld Scholar project next week. I may be going to help with a focus group session on the 11th, and will otherwise be working on transcribing the sessions and possibly recruitment for the sessions.
I've only got one more day of real class this week and then I'm done and can work on my final papers and studying. Thursday I only have to be a patient for Lauren's final demo. I'll probably get a lot of riding in since I have so much time off. Except that I'll be going to another BBQ with Sarah's family, this time at her house, and a Wii party at Katherine's house. Such a busy social calendar.
Right now I'm exhausted and need to fall asleep. Good night!
Not a lot is happening besides school. Next week is basically finals week. We're finishing up all the current classes and switching to Therapeutic Interventions and clinicals. I'll also be starting my Fuld Scholar project next week. I may be going to help with a focus group session on the 11th, and will otherwise be working on transcribing the sessions and possibly recruitment for the sessions.
I've only got one more day of real class this week and then I'm done and can work on my final papers and studying. Thursday I only have to be a patient for Lauren's final demo. I'll probably get a lot of riding in since I have so much time off. Except that I'll be going to another BBQ with Sarah's family, this time at her house, and a Wii party at Katherine's house. Such a busy social calendar.
Right now I'm exhausted and need to fall asleep. Good night!
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Weekend report
Saturday was sort of a non-day for me. I slept in, a lot, got myself up and moving way too late to go to the public market. Puttered around doing nothing, cleaned my room, finally got home from my shopping at Wegman's around 6:30, and then sat around and polished up my clinical paper for Pharmacology before going to bed.
Today, on the other hand, was a little more eventful. I went for my first ride with my new heart rate monitor. There's a post about it on my other blog. After I got home I went out to a BBQ with Sarah and family at the house of some of her friends. The original purpose of the event was to have me meet Sarah's friend Paul, but that luckily got somewhat diluted by the fact that today was the final of the European soccer championships and all of the men invited wanted to watch the game.
Sarah and Ronen picked me up around 2:30 and we arrived at the friends' (Eric and Nancy) house about 15 minutes into the game. Sarah and Nancy quickly disappeared with all the small children (there were three of them) to the backyard and I stayed with the guys to watch the soccer. It wasn't a terribly exciting match, but it was still fun to watch. By the time it was over we were all really hungry, so Eric cooked up the burgers and we got all the food laid out. The difference between a BBQ with my friends in Portland and a BBQ with this crowd is quite striking, and entirely the fault of the three girls. Everything revolved around the kids, which doesn't make it less fun, just a completely different experience.
I actually got to talk to people a little bit more over dinner, including Paul. He's an interesting guy, and fun to talk with. Obviously a little bit socially awkward, but not too shy so between the two of us I managed the social graces and he managed to keep the conversation going. He's an optical engineer, currently has a torn hamstring, and seems to play every sport known to man. He's also well over 6 feet tall, probably late twenties, a total geek, and completely adored by the three little girls (he makes remarkably good animal sounds and they love him for it). Basically, he's exactly my type. Except for the Catholic thing, but that didn't come up at all today.
Since Sarah is the most blunt and direct person I have ever met, she of course asked me on the way home what I thought of him. I'm sure she will be asking him the same thing about me as soon as she gets the chance. It'll be interesting to see what, if anything, happens next. I can tell that Sarah is loving her role as matchmaker and I am sure that if she gets any encouragement from him at all she will make sure I meet him again.
Regardless of the whole Paul thing, I had a really good time playing with all the little kids and meeting some more friendly people today. Tomorrow I will be going for a bike ride with another classmate, Elspeth, and taking a pharmacology test. I'll have to try out my heart rate monitor again. Yay for new toys!
Today, on the other hand, was a little more eventful. I went for my first ride with my new heart rate monitor. There's a post about it on my other blog. After I got home I went out to a BBQ with Sarah and family at the house of some of her friends. The original purpose of the event was to have me meet Sarah's friend Paul, but that luckily got somewhat diluted by the fact that today was the final of the European soccer championships and all of the men invited wanted to watch the game.
Sarah and Ronen picked me up around 2:30 and we arrived at the friends' (Eric and Nancy) house about 15 minutes into the game. Sarah and Nancy quickly disappeared with all the small children (there were three of them) to the backyard and I stayed with the guys to watch the soccer. It wasn't a terribly exciting match, but it was still fun to watch. By the time it was over we were all really hungry, so Eric cooked up the burgers and we got all the food laid out. The difference between a BBQ with my friends in Portland and a BBQ with this crowd is quite striking, and entirely the fault of the three girls. Everything revolved around the kids, which doesn't make it less fun, just a completely different experience.
I actually got to talk to people a little bit more over dinner, including Paul. He's an interesting guy, and fun to talk with. Obviously a little bit socially awkward, but not too shy so between the two of us I managed the social graces and he managed to keep the conversation going. He's an optical engineer, currently has a torn hamstring, and seems to play every sport known to man. He's also well over 6 feet tall, probably late twenties, a total geek, and completely adored by the three little girls (he makes remarkably good animal sounds and they love him for it). Basically, he's exactly my type. Except for the Catholic thing, but that didn't come up at all today.
Since Sarah is the most blunt and direct person I have ever met, she of course asked me on the way home what I thought of him. I'm sure she will be asking him the same thing about me as soon as she gets the chance. It'll be interesting to see what, if anything, happens next. I can tell that Sarah is loving her role as matchmaker and I am sure that if she gets any encouragement from him at all she will make sure I meet him again.
Regardless of the whole Paul thing, I had a really good time playing with all the little kids and meeting some more friendly people today. Tomorrow I will be going for a bike ride with another classmate, Elspeth, and taking a pharmacology test. I'll have to try out my heart rate monitor again. Yay for new toys!
Friday, June 27, 2008
Birthday, demo, and babies, oh my!
I had a very good birthday. At the beginning of class yesterday morning, one of my friends wished me a happy birthday, which the turned into a big exclamation of everyone sitting around me saying, "It's your birthday?" and, "You're doing your final demo on your birthday!?" The outburst was loud enough to make sure I was bright red and everyone in the class knew that it was both my birthday and my final demo day. At least they didn't all burst into song.
After class, my partner Lauren and I went over to the lab to do the demo. I didn't know who would be evaluating me until I walked in and when I saw my two favorite professors (both named Pam) there, I was extremely relieved. Then I picked my randomly assigned system and got musculoskeletal. Yikes. Anyway, I just went on autopilot and must have done a pretty good job. Apparently at one point during the demo one of the Pams looked over at the other and whispered, "She's really good!" and the other replied, "Yeah, she's my student." Lauren did a good job at not giggling when she saw that. She actually did a very good job of not giggling at all during the whole demo. I managed to finish in 20 minutes, which had me scared because I thought I must have missed something, but I don't think I did. After I was done the Pams went off by themselves to discuss and after what seemed like forever they came back and talked me through what I could have done differently and what I did particularly well. They were both very encouraging and assured me that as the first person to do one I had set the bar pretty high. I'm very happy about the feedback that I got, since bedside patient care is the one thing I have almost no experience with (at least with strangers).
After the demo I went back to the student lounge and got mobbed with congratulations, birthday wishes, and questions about the demo. Sarah, of my newly adopted family, brought me an angel food cake with strawberries and whipped cream and it disappeared in about 10 minutes. It was delicious, and really nice to have my traditional birthday dessert. I spent the next 2 hours in the lounge talking to people, mostly about the demo. It was eventually time to go to class, and we all reluctantly filtered out to listen to a lecture on renal disease and diuretics.
After pharmacology, I was planning to head home and just relax until the usual Thursday class pub night. But, Sarah invited me over to play with her babies (Yasmine is 2.5 years old, Maya is almost 11 months). I couldn't say no to that, so I went and we had a lot of fun just hanging out and talking and playing with the two adorable little girls. Eventually Ronen, Sarah's husband, came home and he joined in the fun. We had dinner, went for a walk to a playground, and generally had a great evening.
At that point it wasn't worth it for me to go home, so I just went straight to the pub to meet other friends. Once again I got bombarded with happy birthdays and final demo questions. A couple of others had done their demos that day too, so we were all being congratulated and interrogated.
I got home around 11:00pm and finally had the chance to open my packages that I'd been waiting to open so patiently. Inside I found a heart rate monitor (Yay!!!!), a really good bike light (which I've been needing), a 4GB flash drive (very useful for school), and a beautiful big poster of a bike race. I was so excited that I wanted to play with the HRM right away, but had to get up for lab the next morning and decided I could wait until the next day. Oh, I also got a voicemail rendition of Happy Birthday that was left while I was taking a shower. I think the performers could use a little vocal training, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and blame it on the phone.
This morning I went to lab, and offered myself up as guinea pig for Lauren and Laura to practice their final demo stuff on. I had to leave early to get to a meeting for my Fuld Scholar research project. I'm going to work on the study about condom use decision by young black mothers. Apparently these girls, when asked about their sexual partners and contraception, don't include their "baby daddy" among their sexual partners, even if teir still sleeping with him. For some reason, he is given a different status in their minds and their more likely to take risks, like not using a condom, with him than anyone else. So the study is done by the county health deparment and their getting these young mothers (age 15-19) to talk in focus groups about the decision they make regarding sexual risk-taking and why. I'll be mostly involved in transcribing the focus group sessions, which I think will be very interesting. I'll also have a chance to do some recruitment and maybe help with the logistics of the focus group meetings. I'm really looking forward to it, although it will add a fair amount of work and stress to my life.
Now that I'm done with classes for the day I'm trying to work on a paper for pharmacology. It's not really started yet, but I should be able to get most of it written this afternoon if I don't procrastinate too much. I'm at my coffee shop, which usually helps me focus on schoolwork. Now that I'm finished checking email and updating everybody on my exciting life, I can get back to it. Thank you to everyone that sent me cards, presents or happy birthdays!
After class, my partner Lauren and I went over to the lab to do the demo. I didn't know who would be evaluating me until I walked in and when I saw my two favorite professors (both named Pam) there, I was extremely relieved. Then I picked my randomly assigned system and got musculoskeletal. Yikes. Anyway, I just went on autopilot and must have done a pretty good job. Apparently at one point during the demo one of the Pams looked over at the other and whispered, "She's really good!" and the other replied, "Yeah, she's my student." Lauren did a good job at not giggling when she saw that. She actually did a very good job of not giggling at all during the whole demo. I managed to finish in 20 minutes, which had me scared because I thought I must have missed something, but I don't think I did. After I was done the Pams went off by themselves to discuss and after what seemed like forever they came back and talked me through what I could have done differently and what I did particularly well. They were both very encouraging and assured me that as the first person to do one I had set the bar pretty high. I'm very happy about the feedback that I got, since bedside patient care is the one thing I have almost no experience with (at least with strangers).
After the demo I went back to the student lounge and got mobbed with congratulations, birthday wishes, and questions about the demo. Sarah, of my newly adopted family, brought me an angel food cake with strawberries and whipped cream and it disappeared in about 10 minutes. It was delicious, and really nice to have my traditional birthday dessert. I spent the next 2 hours in the lounge talking to people, mostly about the demo. It was eventually time to go to class, and we all reluctantly filtered out to listen to a lecture on renal disease and diuretics.
After pharmacology, I was planning to head home and just relax until the usual Thursday class pub night. But, Sarah invited me over to play with her babies (Yasmine is 2.5 years old, Maya is almost 11 months). I couldn't say no to that, so I went and we had a lot of fun just hanging out and talking and playing with the two adorable little girls. Eventually Ronen, Sarah's husband, came home and he joined in the fun. We had dinner, went for a walk to a playground, and generally had a great evening.
At that point it wasn't worth it for me to go home, so I just went straight to the pub to meet other friends. Once again I got bombarded with happy birthdays and final demo questions. A couple of others had done their demos that day too, so we were all being congratulated and interrogated.
I got home around 11:00pm and finally had the chance to open my packages that I'd been waiting to open so patiently. Inside I found a heart rate monitor (Yay!!!!), a really good bike light (which I've been needing), a 4GB flash drive (very useful for school), and a beautiful big poster of a bike race. I was so excited that I wanted to play with the HRM right away, but had to get up for lab the next morning and decided I could wait until the next day. Oh, I also got a voicemail rendition of Happy Birthday that was left while I was taking a shower. I think the performers could use a little vocal training, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and blame it on the phone.
This morning I went to lab, and offered myself up as guinea pig for Lauren and Laura to practice their final demo stuff on. I had to leave early to get to a meeting for my Fuld Scholar research project. I'm going to work on the study about condom use decision by young black mothers. Apparently these girls, when asked about their sexual partners and contraception, don't include their "baby daddy" among their sexual partners, even if teir still sleeping with him. For some reason, he is given a different status in their minds and their more likely to take risks, like not using a condom, with him than anyone else. So the study is done by the county health deparment and their getting these young mothers (age 15-19) to talk in focus groups about the decision they make regarding sexual risk-taking and why. I'll be mostly involved in transcribing the focus group sessions, which I think will be very interesting. I'll also have a chance to do some recruitment and maybe help with the logistics of the focus group meetings. I'm really looking forward to it, although it will add a fair amount of work and stress to my life.
Now that I'm done with classes for the day I'm trying to work on a paper for pharmacology. It's not really started yet, but I should be able to get most of it written this afternoon if I don't procrastinate too much. I'm at my coffee shop, which usually helps me focus on schoolwork. Now that I'm finished checking email and updating everybody on my exciting life, I can get back to it. Thank you to everyone that sent me cards, presents or happy birthdays!
Friday, June 20, 2008
End of Hell Week #1
I survived and did well on all my exams. Now I get a little bit of breathing room, supposedly. Except I need to stay on top of the written assignments so that I don't have to deal with them during hell week #2, which is coming up after the 4th of July weekend. Current assignment list:
- Nursing Care Plan (ugh, but shouldn't take too long)
- Clinical Paper for Pharmacology (this one will be fun!)
- Comprehensive Health History (ridiculously detailed, will take forever)
- Health Assessment Final Demonstration (I get to do this on my birthday. Yay?)
Notice the complete lack of exams for this week. I'm very excited about that.
Today was the class picnic. We had a lot of fun and I got to meet and play with many small children. Mostly Sarah's kids, because I have been officially adopted into Sarah's family. I even hung out with her at their house and played with her dog this morning. And she asked her two year old if I could come over and play again and the answer was yes. Apparently that's all it takes to get adopted. Oh, and she still wants to hook me up with her friend Paul. So I should expect an invite to a BBQ any day now.
Anyway, the picnic was good, and the ride with Bernie after the picnic was good, and tomorrow I'm meeting a guy that might be renting me a room within a 2 minute walk of school and down the street from Sarah's house. I'm really ridiculously excited about that. I'm sure I will write up a full report about it tomorrow. Oh, and my new roommate finally moved in tonight. I've barely met him, but I'm sure I'll write about him once I get to know him a little more.
Oh! One very exciting development on the landlord front. The oven broke this week, so I emailed Jon about it. He actually called me back the next day to tell me that he would have a new one ordered. This afternoon we got it arranged so that the delivery will be next Wednesday. I'm so impressed with his handling of this after the dryer fiasco. Maybe he's learned that he actually has to hold up his end of the bargain if he doesn't want to lose money. I sure hope so, even though I probably won't be living here beyond the summer.
I think that's all the news of the week. This is going to be a crazy weekend of writing, researching, and cycling. I think that's a perfect way to spend a weekend.
- Nursing Care Plan (ugh, but shouldn't take too long)
- Clinical Paper for Pharmacology (this one will be fun!)
- Comprehensive Health History (ridiculously detailed, will take forever)
- Health Assessment Final Demonstration (I get to do this on my birthday. Yay?)
Notice the complete lack of exams for this week. I'm very excited about that.
Today was the class picnic. We had a lot of fun and I got to meet and play with many small children. Mostly Sarah's kids, because I have been officially adopted into Sarah's family. I even hung out with her at their house and played with her dog this morning. And she asked her two year old if I could come over and play again and the answer was yes. Apparently that's all it takes to get adopted. Oh, and she still wants to hook me up with her friend Paul. So I should expect an invite to a BBQ any day now.
Anyway, the picnic was good, and the ride with Bernie after the picnic was good, and tomorrow I'm meeting a guy that might be renting me a room within a 2 minute walk of school and down the street from Sarah's house. I'm really ridiculously excited about that. I'm sure I will write up a full report about it tomorrow. Oh, and my new roommate finally moved in tonight. I've barely met him, but I'm sure I'll write about him once I get to know him a little more.
Oh! One very exciting development on the landlord front. The oven broke this week, so I emailed Jon about it. He actually called me back the next day to tell me that he would have a new one ordered. This afternoon we got it arranged so that the delivery will be next Wednesday. I'm so impressed with his handling of this after the dryer fiasco. Maybe he's learned that he actually has to hold up his end of the bargain if he doesn't want to lose money. I sure hope so, even though I probably won't be living here beyond the summer.
I think that's all the news of the week. This is going to be a crazy weekend of writing, researching, and cycling. I think that's a perfect way to spend a weekend.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Crazy weekend fun
Last night was the East End Festival and a night out with the main social crowd from school. We were celebrating Jessica and Eric's birthdays, or at least that was the excuse for the outing. I managed to get a ride into town with a group of girls that I'm getting to know pretty well, including a Sarah from Portland. You guys might get to meet her between semesters, I think she'll be going home too.
Anyway, we met at a British pub called the Old Toad. I sadly didn't get the chance to see much of it, since we were running late and whisked off to the festival. The festival was all local bands playing on several different stages. Think loud, crowded, lots of beer and greasy food, people cheering for no reason, etc. It was a lot of fun, except for the 90 degree heat with extra humidity. Every time a breeze picked up there was a lull in the noise as we all stopped to make the most of it.
While standing in line with the group for beer, a random guy I'd never seen before (clearly very drunk) put his hand on my shoulder and said, "You are so..." and then couldn't finish the sentence. So Kristina, who was standing beside me offered some help, suggesting "Beautiful, gorgeous, ravishing, lovely..." and on and on. He decided to agree with "all of the above," I was bright red at this point and wanting to go hide in the crowd, but couldn't figure out a graceful exit. He probably noticed this and then stalled me by asking if I would like a beer. I was so surprised I didn't answer, but Kristina answered for me, saying that I would absolutely like a beer. She also told him what kind. So I ended up getting free beer, having hardly said a coherent word since the moment he accosted me. Of course, when he handed me the beer he asked if I had a boyfriend. The answer was an emphatic yes. I don't think he was too disappointed, since he promptly turned around and bought beer for the next girl in line.
I think the highlight of the East End fest was a country-ish group with an enormous man in overalls doing the worm across the stage to Sweet Home Alabama. It was definitely a sight I will never forget.
The festival ended at 11, so we went out to a place called the Blue Room afterward. They were playing music from when most of us were teenagers, so we danced like idiots and did a lot of giggling. I got home around 1am, completely worn out, drenched with sweat from the heat and dancing, and feeling quite happy with my Friday on the town.
When I woke up this morning it was only slightly cooler outside. But, I had to get food, so I went to the market and Wegmans and did my grocery shopping. I tried to convince myself to get on Paris and do a workout, but it just wasn't going to happen. So I tried to convince myself to work on my Nursing Science paper, but that was almsot impossible with sweat dripping off my face onto my keyboard. According to the thermostat it was 80 degrees inside the house by about 2pm. It only got hotter throughout the day. So I fled to Muddy Waters for air conditioning and caffeine to get me through my paper writing. It was remarkably successful, and I'm now pretty much done with the assignment and have caught up with my Pharm reading. I also managed to put together the two videos in the previous post and spend a lot of time joking around with the barista.
This barista was very funny, sarcastic and inappropriate. For most of the day (I was there from 2:30-9:30 except for a short dinner break) I was the only other person in the shop. A few examples of his (funny) inappropriateness: We complained about the weather and he suggested starting a commune in the shop and invited me to join the commune because, "I'll need women to help me populate it." Then, when I got back from dinner and said something about the weather not being nice he said, "Like Mormons at your door trying to convert you not nice, or the people who throw the Mormons out not nice?" Oh, and my personal favorite was when I bought my second drink from him he gave me 50% off just for hanging around all day. But he said, "I'm only giving it to you half price because I put something special in there just for you. *wink* If you start feeling a little woozy, let me know, it means the rufies is working." We then went on to describe an advertising campaign for the shop that included, "It's a great place to bring a date! Free rohypnol with every drink!" I blame all of this on heat stroke.
So, things I have learned this weekend:
1. Keep your mouth shut and you might get free drinks.
2. Get used to a constant layer of glistening sweat, since it reappears immediately after showering.
2a. Sunscreen only works for a little while, since the glistening layers of sweat get rid of it pretty fast.
2b. Sweaty sunburnt skin should not come into contact with a leather couch. If it does, it hurts a lot when removed from the leather.
3. Air conditioning is one of the best inventions ever.
4. Become a coffee shop bum and get free barista entertainment plus cheap coffee.
5. Chocolate peanut butter blended iced coffee is right up there with air conditioning.
Oh, and maybe some stuff about pharmacology too. By the way, I got a 96% on my last pharm test. And I have no exams this week, which is a small miracle unto itself. Tomorrow I will do a workout on my bike, I promise. I ight also go shopping for more summer clothes.
Anyway, we met at a British pub called the Old Toad. I sadly didn't get the chance to see much of it, since we were running late and whisked off to the festival. The festival was all local bands playing on several different stages. Think loud, crowded, lots of beer and greasy food, people cheering for no reason, etc. It was a lot of fun, except for the 90 degree heat with extra humidity. Every time a breeze picked up there was a lull in the noise as we all stopped to make the most of it.
While standing in line with the group for beer, a random guy I'd never seen before (clearly very drunk) put his hand on my shoulder and said, "You are so..." and then couldn't finish the sentence. So Kristina, who was standing beside me offered some help, suggesting "Beautiful, gorgeous, ravishing, lovely..." and on and on. He decided to agree with "all of the above," I was bright red at this point and wanting to go hide in the crowd, but couldn't figure out a graceful exit. He probably noticed this and then stalled me by asking if I would like a beer. I was so surprised I didn't answer, but Kristina answered for me, saying that I would absolutely like a beer. She also told him what kind. So I ended up getting free beer, having hardly said a coherent word since the moment he accosted me. Of course, when he handed me the beer he asked if I had a boyfriend. The answer was an emphatic yes. I don't think he was too disappointed, since he promptly turned around and bought beer for the next girl in line.
I think the highlight of the East End fest was a country-ish group with an enormous man in overalls doing the worm across the stage to Sweet Home Alabama. It was definitely a sight I will never forget.
The festival ended at 11, so we went out to a place called the Blue Room afterward. They were playing music from when most of us were teenagers, so we danced like idiots and did a lot of giggling. I got home around 1am, completely worn out, drenched with sweat from the heat and dancing, and feeling quite happy with my Friday on the town.
When I woke up this morning it was only slightly cooler outside. But, I had to get food, so I went to the market and Wegmans and did my grocery shopping. I tried to convince myself to get on Paris and do a workout, but it just wasn't going to happen. So I tried to convince myself to work on my Nursing Science paper, but that was almsot impossible with sweat dripping off my face onto my keyboard. According to the thermostat it was 80 degrees inside the house by about 2pm. It only got hotter throughout the day. So I fled to Muddy Waters for air conditioning and caffeine to get me through my paper writing. It was remarkably successful, and I'm now pretty much done with the assignment and have caught up with my Pharm reading. I also managed to put together the two videos in the previous post and spend a lot of time joking around with the barista.
This barista was very funny, sarcastic and inappropriate. For most of the day (I was there from 2:30-9:30 except for a short dinner break) I was the only other person in the shop. A few examples of his (funny) inappropriateness: We complained about the weather and he suggested starting a commune in the shop and invited me to join the commune because, "I'll need women to help me populate it." Then, when I got back from dinner and said something about the weather not being nice he said, "Like Mormons at your door trying to convert you not nice, or the people who throw the Mormons out not nice?" Oh, and my personal favorite was when I bought my second drink from him he gave me 50% off just for hanging around all day. But he said, "I'm only giving it to you half price because I put something special in there just for you. *wink* If you start feeling a little woozy, let me know, it means the rufies is working." We then went on to describe an advertising campaign for the shop that included, "It's a great place to bring a date! Free rohypnol with every drink!" I blame all of this on heat stroke.
So, things I have learned this weekend:
1. Keep your mouth shut and you might get free drinks.
2. Get used to a constant layer of glistening sweat, since it reappears immediately after showering.
2a. Sunscreen only works for a little while, since the glistening layers of sweat get rid of it pretty fast.
2b. Sweaty sunburnt skin should not come into contact with a leather couch. If it does, it hurts a lot when removed from the leather.
3. Air conditioning is one of the best inventions ever.
4. Become a coffee shop bum and get free barista entertainment plus cheap coffee.
5. Chocolate peanut butter blended iced coffee is right up there with air conditioning.
Oh, and maybe some stuff about pharmacology too. By the way, I got a 96% on my last pharm test. And I have no exams this week, which is a small miracle unto itself. Tomorrow I will do a workout on my bike, I promise. I ight also go shopping for more summer clothes.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
A lot happening this week
I'll post more when I can. My laptop charge cable died, so I've been without a computer at home since Sunday. That has sort of derailed my efforts at posting more consistently. Anyway, the quick and dirty update for today is that things are looking up. I had a rough beginning of the week, but everything seems to have been sorted out now.
I'm starting to get tests and assignments back and am doing well, which is encouraging. I have another Path/Pharm test this afternoon and need to finish up and turn in my SOAP notes for Assessment tomorrow. After I'm done with school stuff tomorrow I'll be heading to the East End Fest for a celebration of all the June birthdays in our class.
I didn't race Tuesday night because of all the stuff going on and a general feeling of exhaustion, but I've been going to the gym regularly and feeling so much better because of it. I might even learn to like lifting one of these days.
This weekend I'll be doing homework, shopping, and riding my bike (hopefully with a friend from school or the UR team guys). Once my computer is back I've got a video and some pictures to post, too. I should be getting the replacement cable today.
Oh, and I found out that I'll be doing Adult/Home Health/Psych clinicals in the fall and OBGYN/Peds in the spring. This summer is Long Term Care/Acute Care. I think that's a good schedule, I like that I'll get the adult stuff in before doing pediatrics. My Fuld Scholar research will be starting up soon too. Always lots to do. Will try to post more, including cycling posts, later tonight or tomorrow.
I'm starting to get tests and assignments back and am doing well, which is encouraging. I have another Path/Pharm test this afternoon and need to finish up and turn in my SOAP notes for Assessment tomorrow. After I'm done with school stuff tomorrow I'll be heading to the East End Fest for a celebration of all the June birthdays in our class.
I didn't race Tuesday night because of all the stuff going on and a general feeling of exhaustion, but I've been going to the gym regularly and feeling so much better because of it. I might even learn to like lifting one of these days.
This weekend I'll be doing homework, shopping, and riding my bike (hopefully with a friend from school or the UR team guys). Once my computer is back I've got a video and some pictures to post, too. I should be getting the replacement cable today.
Oh, and I found out that I'll be doing Adult/Home Health/Psych clinicals in the fall and OBGYN/Peds in the spring. This summer is Long Term Care/Acute Care. I think that's a good schedule, I like that I'll get the adult stuff in before doing pediatrics. My Fuld Scholar research will be starting up soon too. Always lots to do. Will try to post more, including cycling posts, later tonight or tomorrow.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Long Weekend
Three day weekends are great, but only when you have a way to fill them beside reading textbooks. So far this weekend I have:
1. Found my study coffee shop. Turns out it's called Muddy Waters, but it is more than a block away.
2. Bought myself a printer and a clothesline, although the printer is missing a USB cable. The clothesline works great, and my sheets smell all nice and fresh.
3. Met some classmates for bagels. Decided that Bruegger's bagels are far inferior to Brownstein's bagels.
4. Went grocery shopping, bought myself a doughnut and iced capp on the way home. Discovered that I can ride with an iced capp wedged into my baskets and not spill any of it.
4.5 Tried to go buy fruits and veggies at the public market, but found out that Sundays are flower days, so no food available. Luckily the market is open again tomorrow for Memorial Day and should have the regular food vendors there.
5. Read 13 chapters and 5 papers, written half of an assignment, done my math homework (dosage calculations), and watched 3 instructional videos on health assessment.
6. Procrastinated a lot.
Tomorrow, after I go to the market, I will meet some classmates at school to practice taking vitals, mostly blood pressures. Then I will finish the other half of my Nursing Science assignment (discuss whether nursing is an occupation or a profession) and maybe go for a short ride.
What does this list tell me? I need to make some friends.
1. Found my study coffee shop. Turns out it's called Muddy Waters, but it is more than a block away.
2. Bought myself a printer and a clothesline, although the printer is missing a USB cable. The clothesline works great, and my sheets smell all nice and fresh.
3. Met some classmates for bagels. Decided that Bruegger's bagels are far inferior to Brownstein's bagels.
4. Went grocery shopping, bought myself a doughnut and iced capp on the way home. Discovered that I can ride with an iced capp wedged into my baskets and not spill any of it.
4.5 Tried to go buy fruits and veggies at the public market, but found out that Sundays are flower days, so no food available. Luckily the market is open again tomorrow for Memorial Day and should have the regular food vendors there.
5. Read 13 chapters and 5 papers, written half of an assignment, done my math homework (dosage calculations), and watched 3 instructional videos on health assessment.
6. Procrastinated a lot.
Tomorrow, after I go to the market, I will meet some classmates at school to practice taking vitals, mostly blood pressures. Then I will finish the other half of my Nursing Science assignment (discuss whether nursing is an occupation or a profession) and maybe go for a short ride.
What does this list tell me? I need to make some friends.
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