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. :-)