Happy Halloween folks!

Apparently the school nurse (who wears a bright orange wig and is a little odd) has a large, black spider with flashing eyes residing in "her" hair today. I haven't seen it myself. I just saw the other nursing students doubled over with laughter. It was quite a show.

Saturday night was the barn party. It was pretty fun, if you like lots of people and lots of noise. There was fresh donuts and hot cider and a hayride and bonfire. I have picture that I'll share later.

I'll be in class until 3 this afternoon because there isn't clinicals today. Isn't that fun? But Mrs. Diller is very generous with breaks. 2 hours for lunch!

No trick or treating for me. I haven't heard of anyone going and if there was I don't have anything to dress up in and I really should study for the pharmacology exam tomorrow. Yes, that's the one that was postponed.

I've been saying this for about a month, but I really want a masquerade. Just like trick or treating but without the pagan symbolism! Well, or the candy, but something's gotta give.

Hi!

I'm hyper. Really, really hyper. I've been in the nursing department from 8 in the morning until now with only a half hour break for lunch. It's 4:30 now. I'm going to be here until nine tonight because I have to work from 6-9. I can't sit still. I can't study any more because I can't focus. Really, really hyper. Tried jumping jacks but that needs too much discipline. People keep asking me where I have been for the past I don't know how long. The answer? Here in the nursing lab, studying. All day.

This is my seventieth post. Did you know that?

I'm not crazy. Really.

Caught up?

I feel a little bit at a loss as to what I should do. I have gotten use to a sense of urgency, of "Oh no! I have five projects due this week and half that are due tomorrow! I must stay up all night! The sleep I get must be fitful and unrestful! I must get a stress ulcer!" I got use to that in the past month to month and a half that now I don't know what to do.

I have a quiz tomorrow, a test next Tuesday, two more videos to watch, and Bib card due some time soon but I don't know when and that's all for this coming week (that's not for clinical, which doesn't quite count because I can't work on that stuff)

I could study for the quiz but I've been watching videos all afternoon about the same things in the chapers, and all morning going over those chapters in class. I can't watch any more videos because the lab is closed. I already choose my article for the first bibliography card and the Pharmacology test isn't until next Tuesday. I can't get too worked up over something that's a week away.

This is a very odd feeling. I used to always be caught up with my school work, but that slowly slipped away from me this semester for many reasons such as, but not limited to...

1. Books not coming on time at the beginning of the semester
2. Group projects that you had to work on when everyone could be there, and some people wouldn't come
3. Massive amounts of reading, so much so that I didn't even know where to start
4. It's nursing! Hellooo! Insanily, huge amounts of really big, hard concepts to comprehend with insanily, huge amounts of work to go along with it!

Yeah, that's pretty much it. So, I'm caught up in work with the Med-Surg/OB switch. Or I think that I am. For the next 2 months I will be living in fear that I've forgotten something vitally important. Sometime when I'm not overly tired I'll tell you about OB and Mrs. Diller. Later.

Praise the Lord!

Some how a miracle happened today. Ms. Pusey postponed the Pharmacology test. It was supposed to be today at one and I guess that enough people ask for a postponement that she took a vote and it passed with only 3 nays. I wasn't one of them. I finally figured out one of the reasons I have been having a hard time in class and what I need to do to understand the medications.

The new OB group, which is now me, are also having our first OB test that day. I think I can handle it though. I still have a lot to do but I'm not completely freaking out like I was last night. Fernan seemed very worried about me. She lead me back to my room and ask me, gently, to go to bed.

I still have a lot to do but I have hope, which was in hiding last night.

But still pray for me.

Introducing...

My teacher, Mrs. Eleanor Pusey-Reid, the terror of nursing students everywhere. She really is great though, an excellent teacher with a wicked sense of humor. She's just very demanding and expects everyone to be the genius that she is.

Yay, yay, home!

I'm home! I haven't been home since the second or third week of school. This is particularly sad as I only live two/two and a half hours away. I have just been so, so busy that I daren't think about it before now. Jeremy had to drive home again. This is the 3rd week in a row that he's had to drive home and he probably will next week also. So... I decided that I would keep him company for the first half of his trip as our way lies together and because it's parent's weekend and my parents couldn't come down and I'm actually finished with Med/Surg.

I hear you ask "Did I hear that right? Will I finally stop reading all this angst about Ms. Pusey and Med/Surg? Oh joy! Oh bliss!" Well, yes. And that was my reaction too. It actually didn't sink in that I was really, truly done until I was at my sink washing dishes an hour after I had finished my final. I could feel weight rolling off my shoulders.

And I'm home. You always hear about kids who hate home and never come back after they leave for college or the kids who say that they don't like their parents because it's not cool to like old people or whatever. Well, I will tell you straight up, I love being home! I would have never left if I could have gotten away with it. It's probably a good thing I didn't as I really have grown up so much over the past year and a bit, but I still love being home.

And Sabbath is coming. Life is good right now.

Happy, happy, Joy, joy!

Teachers are cruel

Cruel, I tell you!

I am in the nursing lab working on the 8 pediatric workbook chapters that I have to have done by Monday. I'm not studying for the Med/Surg final I have no Friday because I have all tomorrow to review and my brain is dead today and at least I'm doing something useful. So... I was just starting my fourth chapter when there was a funny scratching on the lab door. It was after six so the front doors were locked and people have to enter and exit through the tutors' office. When I glance up I see Ms. Pusey

My heart stops for a second. I'm the only current Med/Surg student in the lab. Is she coming to see me? Is there something wrong? Will she torture me for not studying for the final? She walks toward me, stately. I quickly and rather nervously turn to face her, hoping to block her view of the traitorous workbook.

Pusey: "Debbie, are you sure you copied down the answer to your test correctly?"

Me: "Ummm, yeah, I think so.... Why?"

Pusey: "I was looking at your test and your test looks like you did well but your answer sheet...doesn't."

Me: "...."

Pusey: Looks

Me: "Well, uhhh, yeah I think I did copy it down right."

Pusey: "Well, right now it looks like you have about 64%. It's in my office on the chair if you would look it over for me."

We walk briskly to her office. I see the paper. I pick it up. It's the score sheet. I look. I do not comprehend. I look for my test.

Pusey: "The score is on the bottom." Helpfully.

Me: light breaks through "Ohhhh! I didn't think it was possible! And I was warned too!"

At the bottom of the score sheet was a tally of numbers added together that I might understand how they all added up if I studied it for half an hour. The total at the bottom of the page wasn't 64%. It wasn't even 94%. I got the unachievable. I got 100%. In a class taught by Ms. Pusey. In Med/Surg. I. Am. In. Shock.

I was warned about her sense of humor, too! Last year's bachelor's students told me how she took them one at a time into her office and told them that they had failed their NCLEX exam. She got every single one of them. They told me about her. And she still got me!

She, of course, thought that this was the funniest thing ever. My story just made it better. The awful part is that if it wasn't for the fact that she played her joke of me I would find it hilarious. Life is cruel. So are teachers.


Not that I mind, mind you...



EDIT: This test was the first one whe had today, the Med/Surg Unit 3 exam. The one in the afternoon was for the NLN (national league of nursing). That one is a standardized test given to all nursing students after they finish Medical-Surgical Nursing II. It doesn't affect my grade, it's an indication on how I'll do on the NCLEX.

*silence. dead, blank silence*

I'm numb. Really, really numb. I just had my unit test in medical/surgical nursing. It was big. And long. It started at 8 this morning and I finished at 11:30. Most of the rest of the class is still working on it. I don't know how many hours that is, you'll have to figure that out for yourself because my brain died the moment I set down the score sheet. At least it waited to liquefy until I was done. Don't think of asking me how it went. I will ignore you. The real kicker is that we have another test at 1:30. At least we have Thursday off before the final. I can't think beyond Friday. I don't want to. I'm going to go nap now.

Worn

I’m so tired. I could spend the next 2 weeks in bed and be very happy. It’s not so much that I’m sleepy, but that I’m weary. This semester school had drained me dry; physically and emotionally. I want to stay in my room and hide until it’s all over. The work isn’t hard, it’s just all consuming. As soon as one thing is finished and I think that I have some breathing room, something else comes up. This week is Med/Surg finals. Next week I start OB.

I have clinical today at noon and then I’m done. I’m worried how I will do. I’m not exhausted like I sometimes am, but I just don’t care. I don’t care how I do, I don’t care particularly about the patients, I don’t care about anything but just being done. That isn’t right, but I can’t call up any indignation about it. Just let me be.

I’m also worried about why I’m doing this. Why am I putting myself through this? I don’t know. I haven’t found any area that I really want to working. The thought of having to virtually go to clinicals every day is not a good thought. I don’t want to. I don’t know what I will do when I finally graduate.

I think I must be anemic. I have so little energy. I’m so tired.

DONE!!!

I am so much less stressed than I was earlier. On Monday I was completely hysterical/skitosophrenic/hyperventilating because today was the day for my care plan/case study presentation and I wasn't ready. My Med/surge class has seventeen students in it out of the 34 students total in the second year class. Each student had to present a patient with linking together past medical history, home medications, and the current diagnosis. Then we had to compile a complete assessment and list all nursing diagnosis, picking the three priority diagnosis to talk about in depth. We also had to have collaborative care diagnosis and explain the pathophysioloy for the major disease processes.

This doesn't sound too bad when it's all written out neatly but it isn't so much. Especially when you were never really taught how to develop nursing diagnosis in the first place. Last year the first year teachers told us to write them and, when we ask how, told us to copy out of our books. This year we are chastised if we try to do that. It makes more sense to do it the way that Ms. Pusey wants us to do it now, as the old way had nothing to do with what we were doing with the patient. However we didn't know how Ms. Pusey wanted the diagnosis to be until today, in class, while we were presenting, when she pretty much taught us what we were supposed to be doing.

I figured out that just over Monday and Tuesday I spent 20 hour working on the presentation and I probably spent at least 10 last week. And that was just me, not counting all the time the other two members of my group spent on it. The good new? We got 90% on our presentation! I think I failed to mention it but this project is fifty percent of my clinical grade! Yeah, I'm glad to have this finished.

Noteworthy part 2

Sooo, I got my grades for pharmacology. I did pass and I didn't have the worst grade in the class. I got a 83% which is a B-. Not a stellar performance but if I study more and more effectively I should be able to pull myself up to at least a B+ if not an A-. It will take work, but I've dealt with that before.

So yesterday I wrote that it was noteworthy, and that was before I realized out of the blue that I have to drop out of choir. So when I went to choir yesterday night I talked with Frank and explained what was going on, how I was so busy and stressed that I couldn't put the time into it that the choir deserves. He was very understanding and said that he would miss me and maybe next semester would be better and I would be back. I hope it is.

I also got a new savings account at Workers'. This is the bank that just about all the students at AUC bank at because it's so close to the college. I'm going to try to get my check direct deposited to Workers' as I am lazy. In 2 weeks I will be getting my ATM card so that will be fun. I'm also picking up 2 extra hours of work today as Alnie can't work at all today. More money for studying it good with me!

Don't want to talk or think about school. As in what I am doing or what I need to be doing. There's a lot.

A day of note

One noteworthy thing that happened today was that there was a fire alarm in the girls dorm at 2 in the morning and I had to get up for clinical at 4:30 in the morning. That resulted in a very tired me working in the hospital on the floor taking care of a patient today. Mrs. Pusey grouched/yelled/chastised me for not being up to my best performance today and for not writing clearly enough on the chart. I was almost in tears at the end of the day. I had a really nice patient though, to make up for the horribleness of the rest of the day.

Another noteworthy occurrence is that when I got back to my room after dinner I had a message from one of the other students that I past the patient off to at the shift change. She was requesting that I give her a call and answer a question about my pt's output over my shift. She gave me the unit ext. but not the hospital number. I looked up the number, called them, got transferred and spoke with her all without any panic attacks. This might not sound like a very big accomplishment to most of you but I am phobic of two things: needles and phones. I've been working on the needles with some success, but phones don't like me and I don't like them. It is s red-letter day when I can call someone without having to calm and psyc myself up to dial. Sooo, yaah me!

Testing, testing

I just, just got done with my first ever pharmacology exam. I don't feel too hopeful right now. I didn't study the right things at all. I guessed on more questions than I am comfortable with. (Never mind that one is more than I'm comfortable with.... *grin*) I really felt like I didn't know what I was doing. I'm not talking with other nursing students. I don't want to know how people thought they did. I don't particularly want to know how I did. There might be a miracle and I passed well. I think I did pass; I'm just not sure by how much.

I don't think that I ever said how I did on the Med/Surg exam I had on Thursday. I told most people on the phone, but I'll say it again in cause I missed someone. I got the 2nd highest grade in the class at 96%. The whole class did really well and the head of the department congratulated us all.

It's almost time for class to start back now so... bye
I'll let you know how I really did when I find out.

"And the walls came tumbling..."

I was doing so well today. I got up at 8 this morning and studied. This is after I was up way to late last night. I was alert. I was focused (mostly). I was on the ball! And the I came to work.

Mrs. Diller wasn't there. I sat in the hall waiting for her for 10 minutes. That's fine, I know that things can come up. It is dead here so far. One person called with a question and one person stopped by with the same question (the answer was no) and that was all. Jeremy stopped by to say hi on the way to the cafe and I got to talk with Mom and Melissa. I then decided to try to get work done.

I need, need, to work on the major case study. I have a patient and a group to work on it with. I have all the books and resources. I even have the time to work on it today. What I don't have is the patient's past medical history. The other students have that and neither of them are answering their phone. See, we have to understand the disease process for everything this guy has. It took me 10 hours to do the research for the mini care plan. I have six hours today and I can't do it!

And on top of everything else something happened that has me completely wigged out. I am so confused and bemused and I don't understand what is going on. It's probably nothing. I'm imagining it. My period hormones must be affecting my mental status. No, maybe it's chronic O2 deprivation and high CO2 levels from my cold, although *that's* getting better. Thank God!

I suppose it's just that, except for a few bright spots (like seeing Melissa) last week was the hardest and worst I've ever had for school. And that's not just college. In 15 years I've never had it's equal. I need a really, really big rock to hide under for 8 months.