Shots (not the inebriating kind)

In our nursing skills lab Monday it was shot day, (not the day when we all kick back and reminisce about our youth over a couple of shot glasses.) The result of this? We were all hyperventilating and pre-hypertensive watching our instructor brandish the inch and a half needle like it was a spear. We all put on our brave faces, acting like it didn't matter to get punctured but it showed when she asked for a volunteer. Suddenly the tiled floor became much more interesting and all eye-contact was abandoned. When one of us poor suckers submitted ourselves to be the dummy, she stepped forward as a soldier to battle while we all looked at her in awe. The most interesting part was the deltoid shot. Our instructor jammed that needle in with such gusto I was sure that it would never be removed from her arm and the dummy would forever been stricken with the disability of dreaded "permanent-needle-in-the-arm". As we partnered off and I looked at my partner nervously, hoping she had practiced proper sterile technique on the solution prepared, I couldn't help but chuckle to think of what an anesthetist's school was like and what they had to practice. Can you imagine giving a shot in the femoral vein...which is located RIGHT next to the groin? I guess that's how friends are made in any health care profession. Therefore, I will always look back on Jessica Gibbs, my friend, who gave me a shaky but powerful shot right in my backside.

Nursing (not the kind with a baby)

Well folks I did it. I got into the nursing program and am in my second semester which is focused on Gerontology (the older population). I have learned mounds of information about the human body and continue to compile an inhumane amount in my brain. A few experiences that I have had:

Being the "dummy" for one of my labs and having my nursing instructor percuss (tap) over my abdomen to find that I was full of gas. Big shocker there.

Buying my scrubs and sewing my patch on myself to save about $3. Of course one sleeve is now shorter than the other but who ever said adding a personal touch was bad.

Taking blood pressures and heart rates of boys and feeling their pulse quicken once I touched them, making them all pre-hypertensive and tachycardic.

Listening for, no joke, five minutes straight to my partners heart and blood pressure trying to figure out why I couldn't hear a darn thing and then realizing the end of my stethoscope was in the "no sound" position.

On a more serious note: Wiping away the thick, discolored mucus from my patients mouth while stifling the urge to vomit, telling myself to remember that this woman had been a teacher for 30 years and loves her sister as much as I love mine. Trying desperately to remember that just because her Alzheimer's causes her to not remember me in 5 minutes doesn't mean I should treat her like she doesn't matter. Each time I visit her I am reminded of how quick and emotionally draining it is to watch, and I'm sure experience, human deterioration when the end of a long life approaches.

Sometimes I wonder if in 50 or 60 years I won't remember who my children are and there will be some student nurse wiping my face, dressing me and telling herself over and over again that this woman was once a nurse herself.