mrrrraaw

I am tired. So tired. My eyes are burning out of my face. I try to study or read something and it's like all I'm doing is reading it. There is no cognition. Maybe I should just to bed now and wake up at 4 am and study. Today is long. Every day will be long until november... oh ... 15th or so. this is my schedule monday -friday until then



monday: wake up 5:50am

walk to hospital 6:50 am

try to make up some of the time that I will be missing during the time I leave for class.



1:30 leave hospital on bike to make it to class ontime

2-3 class

3:30 get back to hospital.

330-5:30/6 Orientation stuff with the education lady.

(whom I feel sorry for. I'm sure she's on salary and isn't getting paid extra for all this extra time she has to spend with me. I take stuff home, but some stuff I can't. like the Iv poles with stuff...)

6:30 get home. Eat dinner.

7pm-try to gather thoughts. Remember when you sat in the same chair in that orientation room without windows and only getting up to pee and then eat lunch? Remember how your brain is fried when you go to class, and paying attention is 5 million times harder? Remember how you didnt' understand anythign in class but you don't have much time to study if because when you get done with class you will have to go back to work, and then when you leave work you will have more hours of modules to do at home that will take 2-3 hours.



Oh devil. ooohhhh devil. I don't know what we are doing in chemistry now. Somethign about acids and bronstead thingies. I don't know if I spelled that right. But I am really nervous abotu missing class tomorrow. However, this other kid in my lab class... he's nice .. and nerdy. Helps me study. He told me he would take good notes and pay extra attention the days that I can't make it. Apparently his dad is a teacher... so maybe he'll be a good person to study with. So far so good. We got through the assignment and 2 pages of the lab manual.
This is a straight up boring blog. Really boring. I also think think that maybe I just dont' like the whole medical profession. I keep thinking of everything we do that is pointless... and how there are so many protocols for everything. Like, just incase you weren't sure. you could probably look up the protocol for 'how to take a shit.' at the st cloud hospital, and they would have one. Thousands upon thousands of protocols. Maybe I just have a bad attitude. (ding ding ding!!!)
But my bad attitude reveals the truth about the situation. Like today we talked about how to waste all the different drugs and where to put the empty vials or bags etc. Three of the stupid things I learned:

If you have a bag of Morphine, you dump the morphine down the drain, and you can throw away the bag.
However, if the morphine is in a vial, you have to dump the morphine down the drain (witnessed in both cases of course) but then you have to ziplock baggie the morphine vials and put it in the pharmaceutical waste bin.

Makes a lot of sense. IT also makes sense that we pour the morphine down the drain first. If it's pharmaceutical waste... wouldnt' you leave the morphine in the vial and then baggie it and put it in the bin? You do that will all the other meds, like you can't pour insulin or dopamine down the drain.... so why can we dump all our narcotics down the drain? Makes no sense.
Then there is charting about everything. Anything and everything. It's like the nurses just get pooped on. Especially in the ICU. You have to do everything. The doctors have their couple jobs.. see the patient, write orders. The pharmacy bring the drugs. The nurses do EVERYTHING ELSE. (and I mean everything) Like in brainerd if one of the meds werent' correct on the record, the pharmacy would just put a note on it like circle it in red, and write, 'incorrect dosage.' They wouldnt' actually call the doctor themselves. They just circle it and then make you do the actual work. Then nurses have to worry about which tubing and needles to use, and in the new 'needle-less system' which things poke holes in which vials which you can only use certain syringes for. you have to know how to program all the pumps, deal with the family for 12 hours at a time, chart everything that you do.. in 19 different places, get blood sugars, (in the ICU) every 15 minutes, check the md orders online every 30 minutes because physicians can write them from home.. or the office, order all the needed labs, check all the labs, notify the appropriate people for these if they are off, start all the protocols for different things dependign on what your patient is dying of, know how to use the vent, the bed, the tube systems, the med dispensers, give meds like every 20 minutes, bring people to their MRI's.... it never ends. I want to just come to work and use my brain as to what is going on with them, write what I want to do with them, and not have to do all the extra crap. I don't care if I know how to use an IV pump, or do other various tasks. You have to be very organized to be a nurse. I don't know how I do it, because Im not organized at all. People have these neat little pieces of paper they use with graphs and columns labeled with the correct things, like intake/output, vitals etc...
I usually just scatter anything I need to know anywhere on a corner of a sheet of paper or a post it note, which I usually lose halfway through the shift. Which in brainerd, I usually didnt' even need this sheet if I worked in ICU, because I could print out all the vitals from the computer. Which will be in st cloud ICU as well. (good to go)

Lately, intsead of thinking about the actual patient I will be using this tubing on and what they are going through, I am thinking of all of the plastic and meds I am wasting. It kind of makes me sick. Like this person just produced 40 pounds of garbage and waste, adn they aren't even conscious. They really should be dead. They're 92 and in a coma... on a vent.. wasting our medicare dollars. (huge surprise there... probably 70 percent of medicare dollars are wasted dollars) I obviously have no compassion. But really, if you think about it, there is a time and place to die. Dragging out someone's death when they will be brain-dead when you take them off the vent .. I don't see the purpose of the10,000 a day fee of staying in the ICU. Instead you could be buried in like .... a golden casket. Or have somebody make you a sweet diamond grill. (the kind for your mouth)
I guess if you dotn' give a rats ass about the earth you wouldnt' mind being a nurse. When she was talking about where you throw all the crap in orientation I asked if there was a recycling bin. I was actually kind of serious, but everybody thought it was super funny.

Wow, I just re-read that last paragraph. I am a huge jerk. I will have to make sure when I am dying, I have a hilarious advanced directive.
Such as:

If I stop breathing, make sure you keep me on a vent. Forever. Until my heart stops on it's own. I would like all the drips possible to keep my heart going. Whatever it takes. During this period, I would like to have MCHammer playing in the background. Also possibly some backstreet boys. I'll just give you my I tunes library and you can hit the 'shuffle' button. I would also like to be smothered in lotion every 4 hours. Make sure to lube in any areas of friction. Please high-five me QD. I would also like to go horsebackriding. Hopefully by this time vents will be smaller and more portable. I realize if I'm unconscious this will be difficult, but you will have to duct tape me to the horse. (Please prevent any skin breakdown though... I dont' want a rash .. that shit's ugly..) I would also like to watch indiana jones. If my eyelids wont' stay open you'll have to hold them open. .. but blink me at least 3 times a minute. During my long stay at your hospital or long term care facility of vented patients, I would like to have a big pile of puppies come visit me at least once a month. Just throw them on my bed and let them crawl around. I would also like for you to pour chocolate into my mouth. Maybe just swab it in so I don't aspirate. If for some reason, my heat starts giving out, make sure you put me on a emergent transplant list. Thanks.
Sincerely, Annie wyman