Summer down time?

Well, so far my summer has been spent in the hospital as a patient, and it's not fun at all. WHen I first checked in to the ER this round, my o2 sats were at 78%. It took a bit to get them up over 85% consistently, but now I'm finally almost back to normal and 95%. I went ahead and let them do the open biopsy in hopes of getting some results and being able to have some kind of normalcy in my life, but so far it's been more than a week and there are no results yet. I'm waiting patiently.

Truly I've been through quite a lot this past week or so, but I blog about it elsewhere and don't really want to repeat myself. At the same time, I didn't want to abandon my spot here so I thought I'd drop by and give a minimal update so that anyone who cares knows I didn't just fall off the face of the planet. I'll be back here at the end of August, when I have something school related to blog about. For now it's all about me and my health, and how sick I am of being sick. Truly.

Summer down time

I finished my last final exactly one week ago. I got my grades, Bs all the way around. I'll take it! And I spent half of this week back in the hospital again, ugh. Turns out I had adrenal insufficiency from the steroids I was on so long. I'm much better now.

I got Bs in all my classes, and survived year 1. Looking forward to year 2, but not before enjoying my summer break!

Clinicals are DONE!

Today it's official; clinicals are finished for this year! And today, on my last day of clinicals until August, my pants got initiated and I wore some poo home that didn't belong to me. I had a LOL patient today who desparately needed the tap water enema I gave her. And the poor little thing just couldn't get to the BSC fast enough. Only a little got on my pants which is surprising considering the major blowout that occurred. Ah well, they're washable and I'm sure it won't be the last time. Poo actually bothers me far less than certain other things... like sputum. Maybe I'm desensitized from changing so many poopy diapers?

At any rate, I'm so freaking happy to be done with clinicals for the summer! I can't believe I actually survived this quarter with all the stuff I had going on. I felt such relief today when it was time to come home. Now I just have to survive the written part, with a whole slew of tests coming up over the next couple of weeks. I have 2 papers due for a psych class tomorrow, a psych nursing test on Friday, med-surg test Monday, psych lab final Tues., HESI for med surg Wed., psych test Thurs., then med surg final the following Monday, psych nursing HESI Tues., psych final Thurs., and psych nursing final Friday. Sounds like a crazy couple of weeks, huh? I'm not worried about this part at all. If I survived these clinicals with my severe lack of oxygen I kind of feel like I can do anything!

Yesterday's psych nursing clinicals were... interesting to say the least. I got to see security in action, and saw a guy bad enough to get kicked out of the psych ward. That's pretty bad if you ask me. He was a voluntary admit for detox, opiate dependency, who had a complete outburst at group complaining of nicotine withdrawal and being generally pissed because he couldn't smoke. I'm sure it wasn't very fun for him, but he was arguing that two withdrawals at once was too much, and they (the facility) should allow patients to go outside to smoke. But this is a Catholic facility, completely non-smoking, and of course psych patients can't just leave and come back. The cursing and yelling weren't so bad and nothing I haven't seen before both on the psych unit and the regular floor, but when he started picking up chairs and throwing them at staff members, I have to say I did get a little nervous.

Luckily there's not much on a psych unit that a patient can use to do damage with, and once the chairs were thrown there weren't many options left for our poor withdrawing patient. Security quickly responded to the page (wow, will wonders never cease!) and physically restrained the guy until he calmed down. Then he got kicked out, no more detox for him. Oh well, I guess he's smoking again now. :-)

A slow ER?

Today we went to the ER for our clinicals, and would you believe that when we arrived, there was only one lonely patient in the entire ER? CRAZY! I've never seen it that slow! We're no trauma center or anything, but this ER serves a four county area and is typically very busy. Usually there are patients in the hall beds, fast track, and the other 45 beds are full but today... one lonely patient. I couldn't get an IV on her, it took a more experienced nurse, but I didn't feel bad given the state of her veins. I did get to start a foley and push some IV meds, so it wasn't a total loss! And eventually more patients did show up.

After clinicals, I went to see my lung specialist and see what he had to say about the current state of my lungs. My ABGs were all out of whack in a scary way, but my chest xray is looking better. He wants me to have an opn lung biopsy if I'm not improving in about 3 weeks. My family dr is setting me up another consult, though, as I'm thinking another opinion is not a bad thing in this case. I'm not a fan of surgery.

At any rate, one more set of clinicals to make it through, and a bunch of finals. Think I can...

Quiet time

With five kiddies and a hubby, I don't get much quiet time. In fact, alone time is a premium commodity in this house. But, this weekend, the older three went to their dad's house and hubby went out of town and took one with him... which leaves me home alone with just the baby! Woohoooo! Of course, this is not absolute alone time as I'm still responsible for another human being, but it's probably about as close as I'm going to get for a while so I'm trying to enjoy it. He's nearly six months old now, old enough to enjoy some tummy time rolling around in the floor while mommy surfs the web and blogs... er, I mean, studies for her pharm quiz on Monday...

I've only got a few more hours really, as I have to leave to go pick up the older kidlets this afternoon, but man oh man the house sure is quiet this morning! It's nice because it's novel, but honestly I'm not sure I'd know what to do with myself if I woke up to this quietness every morning. I'm accustomed to chaos I guess.

Tomorrow I go for a pulmonary function test, and Wed. I go back to see the pulmonary specialist. I suspect he'll say the same thing he did last time. Your lungs still sound like crap. We still don't know what's wrong. Stay on the prednisone and let us know if you get any worse. That'll be $350 please. I'm so very frustrated and really wish they could just find something on some test somewhere, anything, just to know what's wrong! I don't know if I'll ever get better, and I've been trying to make adjustments so that I can at least live my life like this, but it's hard as HELL. When you can't breathe, nothing else matters, that's the bottom line! I can't go hiking or walking with the kids, can't chase them around the yard, play baseball, soccer, run up and down the stairs for the stuff they've forgotten, etc. It is very frustrating to say the least. It's affecting me mentally despite the fact that I fight it and try to convince myself that i'm a little better today than I was yesterday... I'm still feeling the depression, the apathy, the don't-give-a-shit attitude. But I'll keep fighting for now, it's all I can do. Hope they find something...

Cancelled clinicals

Okay, this never happens, but my clinicals for today are CANCELLED!!! Woohoooo! Of course, rumor has it that clinicals are cancelled because our CI was in an accident on the way to clinicals, which I really hope is just a rumor. I'd hate to think I was celebrating her misfortune. So I hope everything is okay. Now I have a free day... I've already arranged childcare for the day, since I'm supposed to be gone until early afternoon. I'm already awake, fed, and dressed... All of my homework is done for the week (imagine that!)... I could go back to bed! Or read (for pleasure)! Oh the possibilities are endless! It's not often that a nursing student mother of five finds herself alone for the day with nothing that HAS to be done.

First things first. A new health food store opened up downtown, and I'm going to take advantage and head down there and see what they have. Until now, I've had to order any and all vitamins online because the only thing we have here is a GNC. I like a lot of herbal teas and such, and there's just no where to buy that stuff here. I'm hopeful. There's also a new cafe that opened up which is rumored to serve baklava, so I'm going to stop there for an investigation. Hubby will be most pleased if in fact I do find baklava, so this stop is for him mostly.

Then I think I'll browse the antique stores in the neighborhood. I mean, I'll already be there anyway, might as well see if I can find anything interesting. For me.

And then the guilt will hit and I'll start thinking about my next test and how I should be taking advantage of this time and studying and I'll have to head home and drag out my yucky nursing books and actually read or something productive to alleviate some of the guilt. But only a little, and not before I go enjoy my morning off. :-)

Three more weeks

Three more weeks until summer break! I can hardly wait! That means only 6 more lectures, and 6 more clinicals. And about the same number of exams. Ah well, small price to pay. I had three exams this week, I'm glad it's over. I passed them all, what else can I say? This has been one stressful week to say the least, and my breathing has been getting progressively worse since Tuesday or so. Tonight it was bad enough that I almost took myself to the ER. But I decided the heat brought it on and turned on the A/C, and that seems to have helped significantly so I'm home for now. Have to hang on for three more weeks.

Clinicals

I am beat after two days in a row of clinicals. As a matter of fact, I came home today in tears. Today was a horrible day, and I hope to never repeat it. I have to preface by saying that my three-year-old was up all night with vomiting and diarrhea, and as such I'm operating at less than optimal performance today. I was falling asleep on my feet tired, but forcing my eyelids open. On top of that, I'm having a LOT of pain lately (yesterday and today) no doubt related to my activity level and clinicals. I probably shouldn't be doing clinicals, but I'm not about to drop out now with only a few weeks left in the quarter/year. I'm sure my potassium levels must be low again, as I've been having that same crampy all-my-muscles-are-in-a-bunch feeling that just makes me want to curl up in the corner and cry.

At any rate, I almost almost almost made a big boo-boo today, but thankfully caught it before it was too late. My CI missed it too. I almost made a med error and almost gave a guy double the dose of solumedrol. Scary how close I was to giving that med, and something made me look again. A little later I had to stand there and apply medium pressure to a wound dressing that was still bleeding on a guy's sternum for 10 minutes, and by the time the 10 minutes were up my back and lungs were hurting so badly I had tears in my eyes. But I made it. I'm paying for it now.

The little guy is still sick and hanging out on the couch, so I'm off to tend to him. Today can only get better.

Surviving Monday

I'm still surviving school! I passed my endocrine test today with an 85%, I'll take it. Funny because I've been a 4.0 kind of student until now, but now I'm thrilled with Bs. 76=RN. I have two more tests this week, it's going to be interesting for certain. Thurs. evening is my stupid psych class test, and Friday morning is my psych nursing test. I won't study much for the stupid psych class one, because it's stupid and a complete waste of my time, but I'll be ready for the psych nursing one.

No change as far as my breathing goes, just hanging in and hanging on. Just a few more weeks...

Barely Breathing

I don't think I'll ever recover from this 100%. I still can't walk very far, run at all, or otherwise physically exert myself if I hope to stay over 90% on my sats. I still get down ~85 during clinicals. And all of my tests are still normal. My primary doc says I'm like an episode of House, except the part where I'm not dying yet. Ah well, if I can breathe through the day, I'm a happy camper!

This will be hell week, three exams this week. Med surg Monday, psych nursing Friday and my other stupid class that is a complete waste of my time on Thurs. Wish me luck!

Oh my head

I have a horrible headache at the moment, yuck. At least I'm breathing for the moment even if a bit more labored than normal. I survived my psych clinicals today, so one more week of those out of the way! Tomorrow is med-surg.

I don't think I'll ever work psych, it gets to me. It will bother me not knowing what happened to my patient from today. She was depressed, suicidal, diabetic and noncompliant so many, many medical issues to boot... But we had a good rapport, and she was sad to see me go, and I'll never know whether she really got the help she needed or not. I can hope, but our mental health system really leaves a lot to be desired.

I have a care plan to work on for tomorrow's clinical, not to mention a little last-minute studying for the psych test I need to make up tomorrow afternoon. Oh, and at lunch tomorrow I get to squeeze in an appointment with my lung specialist and see how I'm sounding these days. I could have saved them the time and told them I'm still full of crackles and rales, but I guess he wants to hear it for himself. Ah well, who needs lunch anyway. I usually don't have much of an appetite, but the steroids must be affecting me because I've been eating like a cow lately! So it won't hurt if I have to skip one meal tomorrow, I don't think my nutrition will suffer too terribly because I'm quite certain I'll find a way to make it up before 1600.

Okay, really, I'm going to go do that care plan while the baby naps. Really. Truly.

Home - back to life

I escaped my inpatient prison yesterday afternoon, and I'm back to class and lab today. Oh joy. Actually class wasn't much because lecture was cancelled, and lab was just on finger sticks which I've covered quite extensively and done quite frequently in clinicals already, so really it was a pretty easy day as far as intellectual stimulation goes.

On the health front, I'm still out of breath and I think it's worse since I came home. I am so frustrated at the moment, just not knowing what is WRONG with me. One of my instructors recommended a great allergist, so I'm going to give him a call tomorrow and see if they can get me in. Someone has to have an idea, right? As it stands, I'm doing okay and I'm functional enough for now as long as I don't get worse again. Just keeping my fingers crossed. Maybe I'm allergic to my husband or my kids?

Sleep, glorious sleep!

Last night, I slept all night from roughly 2300 until 0600! This is the first time in at least a month that I've been able to sleep all night uninterrupted, and what's even more incredible is that I did it in the hospital! My nurse came in this morning and said she was in to check on me but I was sleeping so peacefully and the previous RN told her I was exhausted so she didn't wake me for all that middle-of-the-night bs vitals and such that they usually do. I am so grateful. She also kept RT out of my room all night, and I woke up this morning really confused as to why no one had bothered me!

They did a trending on my o2 sats while I slept to see if I can go home today, and she said it looked like I passed with sats in the 90s on RA all night. Funny thing, they did a walking desat with me, and I started at 89%. After walking the hallway twice, while talking with the RT, I was at 94%. I'm backward. Sitting still makes my sats worse ha ha. At any rate, this doctor doesn't start rounds until noon so I'll be here a few more hours but the end is in sight and I should make clinicals on Tuesday! No getting kicked out of nursing school this week!

Post #1

How to survive nursing school? I don't know if I will actually succeed in this endeavor, so if you're really looking for advice on how to survive it perhaps you should look elsewhere. This is more for my own personal benefit, to remind myself to keep a sense of humor when all else fails, and to chronicle my journey through the system.

Now, if you're looking to get kicked out of nursing school - I can help! I almost succeeded in that just this quarter, and might still if I play my cards just right. You don't need bad grades, I have a 3.5 or so GPA and do quite well in clinicals too! I love my clinical instructors, understand most of the concepts (so far), and am quite proficient (mostly) at critical thinking. Why, then, was I almost excused from school? Well, I'm sick. At the end of last quarter, I caught something from somewhere (probably my last clinical if you ask my opinion) and was hospitalized with pneumonia. And if I can't breathe then I can't make clinicals. And if I can't make clinicals then I can't be a nurse. So I almost got kicked out, and am holding on by the skin of my teeth right now while I sit in the hospital again trying to breathe.

At first, it didn't seem that abnormal or atypical and the doctors weren't that concerned. But then I kept getting worse instead of better! I was here the first time for three days, and improved greatly. They assumed bacterial or viral pneumonia, assaulted me with antibiotics, sent me home, and wished me well. I took a turn for the worse a few days later and came back in with o2 sats of 77%. This time they did a bronchoscopy and biopsied some lung tissue. The only thing that came back + was mycoplasma, so they treated me with zythromax and crossed their fingers. I got better, slowly, and went home after another 9 days as an inpatient. Took up my whole spring break (oh joy).

This time they sent me home on prednisone, to be tapered off, and I did fine for a week or two. Then this past week I started feeling that elephant on my chest again, and in clinicals on Wed. my o2 sat was back to 84%. Reluctantly, I went back to the family dr, who sent me back to the hospital, where I'm now an inpatient again for the past 3 days. My kidney function was all whacky when I got here and they thought I was going into renal failure, but after one day they are normal again. The good news is that I've tested negative for everything that they tested for. Or maybe that's the bad news... It's good news, because they tested for a lot of serious things and I'm glad that it wasn't lupus, RA, HIV, hepatitis, or a big long list of other things. They're saying my kidneys were probably off because of a new bp med that I started last week, and my lungs are messed up because they took me off the prednisone too quickly.

SO, this time, I'm going home tomorrow on a high dose of prednisone again, to be tapered off more slowly than before. I'm also on a new bp med which hopefully will not mess with my kidneys. And I'll be patched up enough to make psych clinicals on Tuesday, woohoo! If I should happen to get worse again (although they swear I won't) then I'll have to go to the university hospital 2 hours away and be a guinea pig for a while. I really don't want to do that, and prefer to stay here in my small town hospital where I do my clinicals, know everyone, can read my chart when I get bored (very informative and educational by the way), and can have my hubby bring over the baby so I can breastfeed.

Well, that's about enough for an introductory post, and I hope I can find this again tomorrow so I can post some more!