Bye Bye Fundamentals - Here we come Maternity Newborn/Med Surg!!

Today was my clinical groups last day in clinical - Yay! Don't get me wrong, I've loved every minute of it and I've learned so much, but any break from school is a welcome break. This semester we got to experience what it is like to work in a care/rehab center.

It has been interesting (especially for me who has never had experience with direct patient care) to assist the wonderful people I've met with their daily living tasks. One thing I have decided is that I'm not going to get old - but other than that LOL There are things that may or may not happen to you as you age. Sometimes we play a role in our health and other times we are along for the ride. I saw a lot of people who were along for the ride. Life is a chain of events and all I can hope to do is take care of my body (which I am so blessed to have) and pray for help with the rest of it :)

Like I said I learned a lot. I was able to assist/do many things from showers and helping people eat to administering meds and injections and changing a wound bandage on a stage 3 (almost 4 pressure ulcer). I was going to post a pic of what the wound I saw looked like, but then I was thinking not everyone may appreciate or be facinated by those types of things like I am. All you have to do is google "stage 4 pressure ulcer" and you can see what I'm talking about if you're interested. As for the showers and bathroom visits - before I had done it I was really worried about it being awkward and uncomfortable, but from the very first clinical day it was easy to see that when you are helpless to do things on your own those feelings go out the window. I was so glad I could help these people do these things they couldn't do. The best was when they would look at you and say "Thank you so much for helping me."

Today was really fun. One of the ladies there loves to sing. If she's in a grumpy mood all you have to do is get her started on a song like one of her favorites (I'll be loving you) ALWAYS by Patsy Cline. Today she got started on that one. She and this other lady (suffering from dementia) started singing together at the top of their lungs. Usually we (me and fellow nursing students) will chime in when we know it, but today they were singing to each other and we just watched and listened. It was probably the cutest thing I've ever seen. They would change the words or add words in where they saw fit - One lady sang "I'll be loving you Always - Curly" because she kept calling the other woman Curly since she can't remember people/names. She was being so funny.

It is hard work! I am exhausted and my back is sore, but I can tell I am definitely going into the right career. For every bad experience (like the day I got spit on as I was trying to get blood sugars, or the woman who screamed bloody murder as I was trying to give my first injection on a human, just to scare me) there are a million good ones. I just need to go write them all down! Anyway, this summer is our Maternity/Newborn class/clinicals and our Med Surg class/clinicals. I am very excited and can't wait to have more stories.

Here is my clinical group - Left to right/Back Row: Josh, Debbie (clinical instructor), Linda, Sharon, Cammie, Vanessa, Katherine, Diana, Katie. Front Row: Me and Jonelle

Same order But just being goofy. We have a lot of fun together (unimportant side note/observation - I have the same funny face I pull in every funny face pic...weird, I'll have to change that!)