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!