"Nursing Students do not palpate for thrills!!!"

So as you may have gathered, my nursing lab section has bonded quite a bit in the past seven weeks. Though I don't know how other nursing sections are, I know that ours is probably different than others because of how close we've gotten. So last week we started planning a nursing sleepover. My friend Jenna and I started planning and really hoped that everyone would get into it and want to come. The sleepover was last night and it was SO much fun. 14 people out of the 16 in our lab section came and I think we had a great time. We ate a TON of food, played Catch Phrase and Apples to Apples, played nursing Bingo, got prizes and had a good time. Also, as you probably saw from the picture, we made a giant pyramid in my living room. Yes, we are this cool. It makes me really upset to think that we won't all be together next semester because of how much I love hanging out with everyone. But as Jenna says, "we will be friends for life." haha. It was a great night with some of my new favorite people :)

The day I almost died.

Okay, not really. But today I was driving to the parking garage to catch the Dash, when I realized that I forgot to bring shorts with me. We needed shorts because we were doing an assessment of the Peripheral Vascular System, which included the legs. So I'm already halfway down Fulton, near that Polish Falcon building that I'm fairly certain is a cult, when I turn left to cut to Lake Michigan to turn around and go get shorts. Well this road that I turn on is clearly not plowed, and may have actually never been plowed in the last week, way to rock it Grand Rapids. So I'm trying to go super quick since I'm trying to calculate in my head how late I'm already going to be when I realize that this road sucks a little too late. I go to stop at the stop sign to turn onto Lake Michigan drive and my car has other plans. So since I am not lucky enough to be at a 4-way stop and cars are coming down Lake Michigan and I realize that if I don't stop I will get hit from possibly both sides of oncoming traffic. Super. So I decide that the better solution would be to drive into a four foot tall snow bank at the corner on the right side of the road. Clearly this stops my car. I don't know how I got to be such a chill driver, because this whole incident has almost no effect on me. So I slowly back off the snow back, and decide to just turn right and head back to the parking garage...without shorts. I figured it was probably a sign anyway.

My mother will not appreciate this post as much as other people may.

Also I hope everyone likes my really over dramatic picture of how snowy the road was.

Who does this?

So today in seminar, our professor told us a story about a group of nursing students at a university who were doing clinicals in a hospital. Apparently she said the students were text messaging on their phones WHILE checking in patients, WHILE charting, and actually WHILE walking a post-op patient. We then had a mini-lecture about all of the reasons that this was a poor life choice. Umm, duh. Honestly, most of the things that we talk about seem to be common sense, and I honestly feel that it tends to be a waste of time. But I guess it's nice to be able to have a class to just talk about different things. In other news, I can't believe we are already in our 7th week of class...When did that happen?

Edit from an un-named source: I find it humorous that your seminar instructor (Dr. Washburn, I assume) told you that they were students at another university that were texting during clinicals. This is a lie... they were GV students. We were told the same story only she o...wned up to it being some of our super cool fellow KCON students :) Be proud ;)

Haha knowing this makes that story so much funnier.

Sports bras & breath sounds

This week we learned how to do an assessment of the thorax and lungs. Well, you may be wondering "But Lindsay, how can you do a proper lung assessment over someone's shirt?" Answer: you can't. Hence the sports bra portion of the title. In case my nursing class isn't already bonded enough, add a lack of shirts to the mix and that was our day on Friday. The assessment part was pretty cool, but it just added to the mountain of information that continues to overwhelm me. We have also continued planning our Nursing Lab sleepover for this weekend, which now includes: a pajama runway show, pillow fight, hair braiding, back-rub train, lots of trashy food, tator-tot casserole, and games. It going to be ridiculous. My class is amazing. This was apparently a pretty uneventful week in my nursing life.

♫ Say ahhh (ahhh) Say ahhh (ahhh) Say ahh (ahhh) NOW SPIT! ♫

If you've even seen and/or been in "Little Shop of Horrors," the title of this entry will make sense to you. If not, just trust that it's from a musical and go with it.

This week in nursing lab we learned about HEENT, which is head, ears, eyes, nose and throat (I know, look at all the cool acronyms I'm learning). Friday in our lab we learned how to do an assessment of the ears, mouth, nose, neck and lymph nodes. For ear assessments we got to use the otoscopes (those cool things they use to look in your ears) to look in our partners ears and then everyone else in our class' ears. It was actually really cool to see how different everyone's ears looked and what the inside of the ear should look like. We also did a nasal assessment (Yes nursing really is this glamorous). We had to look in our partners nose with a penlight, make sure it was symmetrical etc. Then we did a quick assessment of the mouth, where we pretty much just rooted around our partners mouth with a tongue depressor. We had them say Ahhh (Hence the title, because during this part of class all I could think of was the Dentist song from Little Shop). We also had to feel around in their mouth for any pain, tenderness, etc. Again, other majors wish they were this glamorous. The last thing we learned was how to check a patient's lymph nodes. This was actually really cool also. We learned the ten places that you are supposed to feel for the lymph nodes and how to feel for them in a routine motion so you don't miss any when you do the assessment. There was a TON of information that we had to learn for this week, about 130 pages of reading's worth of information, followed by an overwhelming amount of extra information given to us during class. Luckily we have a skill's practice day next Thursday so we will get a chance to try to put together our general survey and mental status assessment with the two days of HEENT assessment stuff. It's just so much that I'm not sure how it is all going to fit together, but I guess that is why we practice! Also, my partner had 2 AMAZING "That's what she said" jokes in class today that I feel morally obligated to share.

(When putting the otoscope in my ear and trying to see my eardrum) "Am I going too deep? I feel like i'm always going too deep."

(When going to feel inside my mouth during the mouth assessment) "Okay if you can open up I'm going to stick my fingers in there."

Seriously, I couldn't make this stuff up.

Cupcakes and eye exams

Today I brought cupcakes to my nursing lab, because I'm like a 12 year old and so is everyone else in my class. Let's talk about how much I LOVE the people in my nursing class. On the bus today we made plans to have a nursing shananigan in a few weekends. But really, I love my class a lot. It's ridiculous.

Also today in lab we did head, face and eye exams. So we examined and palpated our partners head, face, hair, etc. We also learned how to do a basic eye exam, which was pretty cool. But mostly this entry is about how much I love my nursing friends. I hope I have really driven home that point, seeing how I've mentioned at least four times in the last 3 minutes.

Meeting my LEI client and wanting Yesterdog

So as part of the nursing program, each nursing student is assigned to an elderly client through a program called the Longitudinal Elder Initiative. This LEI client is someone that we will meet with 14 times throughout the next 5 semesters of the program. In NUR 315 we only meet with them once, and I met with mine for the first time last night! I was suuuper nervous and almost rescheduled until after I could talk to my professors and feel more prepared, but I decided to just go for it. When I was getting directions to my clients house I realized I had to go past YESTERDOG to get there, which then made me want to go to my client's house LESS, and go to yesterday way more. Look at the picture, you will agree. Anyway, I went over to my clients house to meet with her and ended up staying there for about 2 hours to get done with all of the assessments and diagrams that I needed to get done. BUT it was really comfortable and I really wasn't nervous at all. My client was super nice and made me not feel so nervous. This LEI experienced pushed me so far out of my comfort zone, but i'm really glad that it did. There have been a lot of things so far that I have done in the nursing program that have pushed me outside of my comfort zone, which is something that I tend not to do for myself if I'm not pushed. I'm glad that the nursing program is pushing me because it makes me think that I will be able to rise to the challenges that I'm going to be up against in the next few semesters. Good thing I'm tough shit :)

♫ It's the start of something new ♫

Yes, I did title this entry after a High School Musical song. A close second title choice would have been "Start all Over" by Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus. Sometimes I really feel like my musical tastes would fit in better with a group of sixth graders. This week has definetely had its ups and downs.

First the downs: I've been feeling a little frustrated lately. I think it's because a lot of my friends are graduating after this semester and i feel like I'm starting all over. The nursing program is almost like its own separate college (yes I know, it's the Kirkhof College of Nursing, duh) but I mean that it almost feels completely separate from Grand Valley. In this way, just starting the program this year makes me feel like being a freshman all over again, at 22. Not the greatest feeling in the world. On the one hand I feel like even if I could graduate I wouldn't be ready. It's not that I'm in a giant hurry to get out of college, but it still is frustrating to see all of the people my age finishing up and graduating. Everyone also keeps asking me when I am graduating. My response? NEVER. Because really its still such a long time away.

On a positive note: This week we got to practice health assessments on standard patients. Standard patients are people from the community who get paid $12 an hour to let a bunch of nervous nursing students ask them about their life goals, bowel habits and sexual satisfaction. Good gig right? I really had a lot of fun with the standard patient experience though. I felt like I did a really good job at being comfortable with the patients and asking all of the questions well. I wasn't really nervous or anxious about it and both of the people that I did assessments with were really great. It was really cool to be in a room with a real person, not a classmate, and actually get to interact with them one on one in a real nursing situation. While I was observing my partner I got really excited thinking of all the new things we have already learned. I am so cheesy. But really, in the four weeks in the program I have been pushed out of my comfort zone and thrown into situations a few times and every time I've been super nervous and uncomfortable but ended up doing fine and enjoying it. Oh nursing program, you are one crazy lady.

Also, today we talked about interpreting body language, which totally made me realize that sorority recruitment is ALSO the reality of our lives. BOOM CITY.