Two "Praise God"s

I can't find any way to write the title that looks both grammatically correct and non sacrilegious. The point is that two very important things have happened.

1. I have internet
For the past three weeks, which is since I came to college, I haven't had internet in my dorm room. If I wanted to find out what was going on in the worked I would have to use the computers in the nursing A/V lab. There are 34 second year students and 41 first year students and I don't know how many pre-nursing students all for 4 computers in the lab. Translated that means not a lot of time.

At first I (thought I) just needed to fill out a form and the IT department would allow internet access to my room. I dutifully got the form and filled it out. It asked for a MAC number. That's ok, I had gotten directions for how to find that when I picked up the form. I return to my room and wait for my computer to magically go on line. It doesn't

I try again to get the MAC number, maybe I did it wrong. There are two MAC numbers. I write both of them out and present them to the IT department and wait for my computer to magically access the internet. It doesn't. I give up.

When I go home I get a brand new computer. Get computer set up (except for the internet) and bring it home with me. Wait two days for the IT department to be open and carry the box up to them. There will be no mistakes! Come back to pick it up...and wait half an hour to talk with them. Miguel is very popular today. I finally get my turn. "Sorry, I didn't have an USB keyboard, just a mouse." Run to the dorm, get keyboard, run back to IT. Wait again for my turn. When I come, lo and behold it works! Praise God, and glory halleluiah!

Please remember that in all of the above I was in class for an average of six hours a day, generally when the IT department was open. It was a very tight juggling act of time some days. Everything happened with at least a day in between.

2. I survived my first day back at clinicals
This is such a miracle! I can't even tell you. I not only went to sleep within half an hour of going to bed (which is unheard of for anyone on the 1st day back, and very rare in any of the subsequent days), but I did well!
(Pause for a Nap)
(Return after a nap and a meal)
Sooo, where was I? Oh, yea. Clinicals went well. We are on a telemetry floor/vent floor and we had two students per patient today. One person is responsible for medications and the other for patient care. I don't know if it will be like that for the whole time and I don't know if I want it to be. It's easier to get things done that way but at the same time it will hardly be like that in "real life" and it seems almost too easy.

I was in charge of patient care and I had every thing done and was just hanging around the floor from 11 until 12 when I took the noon vital signs and gave report to the nurse. I then hung around for another half hour waiting for everyone else to do that. The pt. I got was the only one not on a ventilator and I think that might have something to do with how quickly I got everything done. I had a lot of time to talk with the pt. He led an interesting life and seemed quite willing to talk if someone would listen. Not all that crotchety at all when you have the time to listen.

When we left we found out that he had told the nurse when she came in to see him that he enjoyed having students take care of him and that we did a very good job. It isn't often that a pt. tells the nurse that a student did a good job. Maybe the instructor but not the nurse! The nurse also told me that students leave the floor not being able to give report as well as I did on the first day.

I thing today is good to make up for yesterday being awful. I don't want to go into that a lot but just to give you an idea I'll tell you one then that wasn't so good. Well, it was the 1st day of Pharmacology but that's not it. For departmental forums we watched a video about shaken baby syndrome called "Elijah's Story". It was about an 18 month old boy who was shaken to death by his father and it had all the family, including the mother and father (who is now in jail), telling the story. It had videos of Elijah a few months earlier and the video of the father reenacting what happened for the police after he admitted what happened. It was heartbreaking.

Public health announcement: Please, please folk if you are taking care of a child and you might lose your temper get out of the room or house. Call for help. Anything is better than having to deal with the pain and knowledge that one moment of temper you took the life of a child. This can happen to anyone parent, babysitter, or nurse! (Yes, there was story in out textbook about a nurse that shook a baby to death.)

Anyway, that story set the rest of the day off for me. Worry upon worry: anxiety on anxiety until I was walk around campus crying by the end of the day. I don't think I would have ever gotten to sleep if I hadn't gone through each thing I was fretting about and just given it over to God to deal with. I was asleep in twenty minutes. And today was better.