True Life: I'm a NURSE.

So I promised an "I PASSED THE NCLEX" post and here it is! On October 13th, I passed my NCLEX, which is the exam that makes me an official Registered Nurse. Since then I've started my new job at Butterworth Hospital on an oncology unit and I'm working full time as a registered nurse. It seems unreal that these past five years of school are over and that nursing school is behind me now. All of the doubts and fears and tears and work to get here all suddenly seem worth it. It was definitely a long road, but now that I'm here it doesn't seem to matter how hard it was to get here. I'm so happy with my job and with how much I am learning everyday. I feel more like a nurse all the time and I love it :)

It's kind of sad for me to say that this post officially concludes Lindsay's Nursing School Adventure. Thanks for coming along for the ride! I know it wasn't always as exciting as I promised it would be, but I enjoyed writing it. I hope my real life nursing adventure will be even more exciting :)

DRUMROLL PLEASE.....

I GOT A REAL JOB.

The update is coming a little bit late, but truth be told I kind of forgot about my blog since school has ended. Anyway, I have been job hunting for about 2 months now and after two phone interviews finally had an in person interview with the nurse manager at Butterworth Hospital in Grand Rapids for an adult oncology (cancer) floor. I know what you're all thinking. "DONT YOU WANNA WORK IN PEDS?!?!?!" Yes. Yes I do. However, if I could pick any dream job in the whole world it would be pediatric oncology, so working on an adult oncology floor? AMAZING OPPORTUNITY. I will learn so much and I know I'm going to love it. The nurse manager that I interviewed with was very nice and seemed like she will be a great boss. In each two week period I will be working 7pm-7am for 4 days and 3pm-11pm 3 days, which included every other weekend. I feel so lucky to have been able to get such a great job for my first job! I'm definitely looking forward to starting :)

The last part of my nursing journey is coming in about a week. On October 13th I will take my nursing state boards, called the NCLEX. Once I pass this exam I will officially be a Registered Nurse and be able to start my job! The human resources person that I have been talking to says that I will probably be able to start on Monday, October 24th, so it's coming up VERY quickly.

Stay tuned for my hopefully happy NCLEX update next week, which will officially complete my NURSING SCHOOL ADVENTURE.

The waiting game.

Yep, waiting is pretty much all I have going on these days. The week after graduation me and about 40 people from my class took a four day review class to essentially cram all of nursing school into four days and help teach us how to pass our boards that are coming up. So since the review class ended three weeks ago I have moved back home, had my tonsils out, and not studied even a little bit for the NCLEX. I have had a phone interview with Spectrum and talked with a recruiter and now I am just waiting to hear back from them about a second interview. And if I don't hear anything by next week I will call and see what the deal is. So pretty much the next few weeks I am going to be studying for boards (for real because I will probably be able to take them in about 3 weeks) and continuing my job hunt! So stayed tuned for hopefully some blog entries titled something along the lines of "OFFICIALLY A REGISTERED NURSE" and "GOT A REAL JOB." Hopefully these posts will be sooner rather than later. I'm ready to get this real life thing rolling.

It's still crazy that Grand Valley started classes this week and I didn't! For the first time in 17 years I am NOT starting school in the fall. Still super weird.

But GREAT.

[Please enjoy the funny (but entirely unrelated) pictures I found when searching for "waiting" on Google images.]

Officially a college graduate :)

So as you know, I "graduated" in April from Grand Valley with the cap, gown and the whole shebang, but then I still had one more semester of the nursing program. So last Saturday I ACTUALLY really finished the nursing program. This ceremony was really great because it was just for the nursing program, so it was like 64 people in my class plus about 15 Master's students that were finishing this semester. So it was very personal. We all got to write a little thank you to be read as we walked across the stage and we had a slideshow play full of pictures of us. We got to pick the songs we wanted to walk in and out to but due to some technical issues, they never got to play. Overall though the day was really nice, and it was nice to get to spend it with all of my nursing friends as well as my parents and Dan. It was kind of sad to be done, but the following week we had an NCLEX review class so I still got to spend another week with my friends :) It still feels a little bit surreal that I'm actually done with college. It seems like it wasn't that long ago that I was moving into my dorm. It definitely doesn't feel like it's been five years since then. The nursing program part of college was my last five semesters. I NEVER thought that I would get there. I cried all the time. I wanted to quit, change my major, do something easier. I hated so many of my classes, but I knew that if I stuck it out and could get there, it would all be worth it. Now that I'm done, I know that it was worth it. I have a degree that's actually useful. I love being a nurse. And I am so excited to get a job and start real life. So here's to the end. I NEVER thought it would come and I am SO excited to see what comes next!

Future Me

If you've never heard of FutureMe.org, it's a website that let's your write emails to yourself and set the date that you want them sent to you. Once you write them you can't read them again until the date you set them to be sent. So about two months before the end of the semester when I was majorly lacking motivation (obviously because I was procrastinating on this website) I wrote an email to send to myself the day of my pinning ceremony, which was last Saturday. Here it is! I HIGHLY recommend you check out the website :)

Dear FutureMe,

Today you made it! You are officially done with nursing school. I know how hard it has been to stay motivated this summer, but it has paid off. Right now you haven't even started your capstone paper, and are just about to finish your leadership rotation. Pinning still seems so far away. I don't know how you are going to find the motivation to finish everything, but I know you will do it, you always do. Today is the end of college. Five years and today it is all worth it. The tears, the frustration, the doubt and the fear. It's all worth it because today it is over. It is bittersweet. I hope you enjoy every second of this day. The people you are spending it with are amazing and they have been there for you for the past year and a half, and I hope you treasure spending this day with them. I'm sure you will cry, but that's okay. Take it in because after today everything is going to change. But you will figure it all out. Remember to thank mom and dad today, you wouldn't be here if it wasn't for them. I hope this day is everything you hoped it would be. Don't stress out about what the next few months will bring, everything will work out :)

Congratulations! YOU MADE IT.

Smile today,
Me.

Paper chain progress!

One of my classmates also has a nursing blog and he took all of my paper chain pictures and put them next to each other so I wanted to do the same thing to show how far we have come! The paper chain started at 250 days, then the next pictures are at 150 days, 100 days, 50 days, 6 days and 1 day! Today was my last final EVER of college, and even though I didn't study for it, it went fine and I PASSED. Tomorrow is my pinning/recognition ceremony which is really the end of nursing school. It all still feels so surreal. I can't even believe it :)








NO MORE DAYS OF SCHOOL!!!!!!!! :):):):):)

KRISTIN GOT MARRIED!

On an unrelated note, Kristin got married this weekend! Kristin is one of my bff's in the nursing program and I have known her since our first nursing class last January. On Sunday she married a man that she has been with for TEN YEARS, and myself and five other girls from my class got to be there to share the day with her. This group that went to the wedding is the same group from the "Friends for Life Christmas card." I love these girls so much and I am so glad that we were all able to be together for Kristin's wedding. Also, Kristin is having a baby in October (hopefully on my birthday) and I cannot WAIT :)Enjoy some pictures of us at the wedding! It was beautiful <3

Four days until the real world.

Yep, I feel like the little girl in the picture because in 4 days nursing school will be OVER! Last week we finished up our community health rotation at the health department. Tuesday was our last day at Core Health and I got to go out and shadow the nurse on her enrollment visit. The visit took about 2 hours and I got to see how the nurse enrolls a new client and all of the information that she needs to collect. It was kind of a cool way to wrap up my time at Core Health. I really didn't love our involvement in the program just because we only had time to go on usually one or two visits each day and we never got to see the same clients more than once. So because of this we really never got to build any kind of relationship with the clients or really teach them much of anything. It was nice to see all of the things that the program does and in that was it was a good experience, I just don't feel like we really got a whole lot out of it. So after that I had a visit with one of my health department clients buuuut she no-showed and both of the phone numbers I had for her were disconnected. So that was a bust. So we spent the rest of the day working on our teaching/learning presentation.

Thursday we presented a timeline of our LEI (elderly) clients that we have been working with for the past five semesters. It was actually kind of cool to hear everyone talk about their clients and see how different all of them are. Then we ran through our presentation a few times, did our evaluations with our instructor and left at noon to go to lunch :)Overall the health department was an interesting experience. I don't feel that I really got a ton out of it, but I definitely did learn some things. I learned to consider the environment that people live in, the resources that they have available to them and what they are going home to once they leave the hospital. I also learned about TONS of resources in Grand Rapids that I never even knew existed. I also got to see many different areas of the health department, like the TB clinic and the STD clinic. It did open my eyes to a lot of the problems that people in lower socioeconomic status have to cope with in order to care for themselves. So although it wasn't my favorite rotation, I did gain a lot of insight and I think I was able to get something out of it that I can apply no matter where I work in the future.

So moral of the story, I'm glad that community health is over because it means we are one step closer to being done!

Also today we presented our teaching/learning project and got a 99% on it :) Win.

BOOM.

91% on my Capstone paper???

Don't mind if I do.

I will now dramatically throw away all of the research articles that I used to write it :)

Also, took the HESI exam today (predictor for the NCLEX, which is our licensing exam). Did I rock it? No. Do I care that much? Not really.

Still calling this day a WIN.

Teaching/Learning Project

Today my clinical group did our Teaching/Learning project at the Children's Center. We taught them about summer safety, including helmet use, hydration, water safety and sunscreen. I did all of the teaching with the kids and had fun seeing everyone :) Then we did four different stations for the different areas. We also got water bottles donated for each child and we got 10 bike helmets donated to the center. The kids really were into it and had a lot of fun. It went really well and I'm so glad that everything worked out! I'm also glad it's done. We still have to do a presentation on the project on August 2nd but we are mostly finished with it already! My group is very on top of things. It's wonderful.

The pictures above are of the front and back of the poster we used with the kids and one of us getting trained on how to properly fit bicycle helmets! :)

This is my now.

I know my blog updating skills have been horrible lately, but it's because the past few weeks have been absolutely crazy it seems. Since the last update I have had two LEI visits, finished my entire LEI binder and turned it in, finished and turned in my Capstone paper, learned how to get my RN license, applied for jobs, and had 6 more days of community health. Phew! A lot of happenings. Here's a quick summary to catch you up on some of things that have been going on lately!

The most notable thing in the past few weeks has been my CAPSTONE. My Capstone paper ended up being about 19 pages of fun, which I was still finishing the night before it was due. Typical. But I actually feel really good about it and I found out my clinical instructor is the one that got my paper to grade so I'm hoping I will do well on it since she has said she's a fairly easy grader. I will get it back a week from today so stay tuned for that! *Cross fingers* The capstone was the one really big thing standing between us and finishing school and it has been the sole source of everyone's never ending stress for the past 9 weeks. We are all so glad it's over. I have never felt more relieved to have something taken out of my hands as I did when I handed in that paper.

Community Health has been going pretty well. It's really boring and kind of frustrating because we never really know what's going on and it's all very flybytheseatofyourpants when we get there in the morning. It's okay though. I have been going on a lot of visits with my community health worker in the mornings and getting more involved in the teaching during those visits, but it's difficult since most of the people I see it is my first time meeting them so it's hard to build any kind of relationship. I also got to spend a day observing in the Tuberculosis clinic and another day observing in the STD clinic. Both of them were really cool experiences and I feel like I actually got something out of being there. In general though, I am not sure how much I am gaining from this rotation. I know that I am learning about the community and about resources that are available to those that can't otherwise afford them. I'm sure I'm getting more out of it than I realize. Tomorrow we are doing our Teaching/Learning project at the Children's Center, which I think I talked about earlier. But we are teaching the kids about summer safety, including water safety, hydration, bike and helmet safety and sunscreen use. It should be a good time, I'm excited to see my kids and for everyone in my group to meet them. I think they're kind of great :) We only have three more days of community health and then I am done with clinical forever. Crazy.

Last week we learned about how to get our LICENSE!!!!! It's kind of a big deal. We also learned how to send in our application for testing, get fingerprinted, background checked, etc. Pretty much everything we need to do to become real RN's. It was the most useful lecture we have had all semester. Sadly I'm not joking. So probably next week I will get that all filled out and sent in and then go and get my fingerprints and background check done! I also applied for JOBS today! I applied for a few at Spectrum for adult Med/Surg, about 5 at Helen Devos, one at Metro and one at Zeeland, so hopefully I will hear back from someone in the next few weeks. I hate the waiting game.

I am amazed at how fast this semester has started going. Starting about 3 weeks ago the semester just started FLYING by. We only have 16 days left. Two weeks from Friday we will take our last final. I feel like it's going so fast that I am forgetting to take the time to enjoy these last few weeks. These are the last few weeks that I will spend with all of my nursing friends. The last time I will be in the CHS building. The last time I will do so many things. So I am trying to take it all in and stop trying to wish it away. The photo is of my tattoo. It says "This is my now" and it is my reminder to myself to appreciate the moment that you are in because right now is all you have and it's the only "now" you will ever get. So my goal for the next two weeks is to enjoy every second of it and every second of my time with my friends. I can't believe 5 years of college ends in 2 weeks.

Core Health & Home visits

Okay, it took two more days, but I finally feel like I actually know what is going on in Community Health. So half of our rotation is with Core Health. Core Health is a Spectrum Health program that uses community health workers to follow people with congestive heart failure and diabetes. The community health workers (CHW) visit the clients in their homes for the entire year that they are in the program, usually once every two weeks. So every morning from 9-12, we go over to core health and follow a community health worker on all of their home visits. The idea is that the first week we follow them and just watch, the second week we do vitals and some teaching, and then the weeks after that we keep taking on more responsibility until we are leading the visits on our work and the CHW just kind of watches. It's pretty cool I guess. My CHW follows all patients with diabates. It's definitely different to follow someone that isn't a nurse, but I think it provides a different perspective and I'm hoping to learn a lot.

The other half of our day is spent at the Health Department. At the health department we have three of our own clients that we have to go out and do home visits with, so I called today and set up all of my appointments for next week. Hopefully everyone shows up and things go well! I also got the official okay from the children's center for us to do our project there so I'm very excited about that :)

ALSO Core Health is right across the street from Ferguson (where I did my Mental Health rotation) so I went over today and talked to some of the residents that I always hung out with there. It was really cool to see and talk to them again! :)

Below is just a summary of the Core Health Diabetes Program:

Our Diabetes Program
The Core Health Diabetes Program helps individuals with diabetes, or those at risk for diabetes, improve their health. Working with your doctor, we will:

Educate you about your disease and how to access care
Motivate you to live a healthier lifestyle

Our Services
You will receive one-on-one visits from a registered nurse (RN) and community health worker (CHW). Depending on what you need, our services will help you:

Set personal health goals
Learn about your diabetes and how to better manage risk factors
Connect with community resources

How Our Diabetes Program Benefits You
You will benefit from our program by:

Understanding how to take care of yourself and your health condition
Becoming a self-empowered diabetes expert
Building your confidence and personal strength
Improving your long-term health

Eligibility
Participants of the Core Health Diabetes Program must:

Have Medicaid insurance or are uninsured
Be 18 years or older
Live in the Grand Rapids area
Be able to perform everyday activities such as bathing, dressing and eating on your own
Be at risk for, or diagnosed with diabetes

Your doctor may refer you to this program, or you may call 616.391.6135 for enrollment information.

Cost
There is no cost to participate in the Core Health Diabetes Program. Call our office at 616.391.6135 to find out if you qualify.

What You Can Do
The safest and best way to prevent or treat your disease is to make healthy lifestyle changes, such as:

Be active
Eat right
Lose weight
Quit smoking
Take your medicine as recommended by your doctor
Know your numbers
Understand your disease as much as possible
Keep scheduled doctor appointments

Should be a good time! Only 38 days to go!

KCHD Day One..

So I started my Community Health rotation started today at the KCHD, Kent County Health Department. I was not excited but tried to go into it with a good attitude. I didn't get lost getting there or getting into the building so at least that was a good start! Then I thought that today was just going to be orientation type stuff, the tour, going over the syllabus and assignments and all that jazz. Nope. We had two speakers come in and talk to us, one about safety when doing home visits and the other one about Healthy Kent, a county program based on Healthy People 2020. Then our instructor tells us that we are just jumping right in today and following public health nurses on home visits. Some people followed nurses while others followed dieticians and social workers. All of the people that we went out with though were part of a program that works with pregnant moms and their babies up until they are one year old. So I went with my nurse on four different home visits around Grand Rapids. It was actually kind of informative but definitely not something I am really interested in as a career. So moral of the story, I still don't entirely know what I am going to be doing in Community Health but I know a lot of the stuff we are going to be doing is with the CORE Program, and we have that orientation tomorrow morning so then I will know more. Also, we have to do a "Teaching/Learning Project" this semester and last semester they did it at a daycare program at the YMCA. Before I knew this though, we all said where we work and I was talking about working at the Children's Center and long story short, we are going to do our project at the Center as long as it's okay with them. Which I'm sure it will be :) So I'm really excited about that. I love my kids and I love when my friends get to meet them, so it should be fun.

Hopefully I will know more tomorrow!

End of Leadership and half way done :)

I know, I know, I said I would be better at updating. Yet here we are...ten days later. Haha I guess it's better than the 20 days I went between the last two entries! So I promised a more thoughtful reflection of my time in my leadership rotation and here it is. Leadership was such a great experience. I really enjoyed feeling like I actually knew what I was doing and being somewhere long enough to get comfortable there. This experience on the other hand, makes me just want to be done with school that much more. Once you spend 6 weeks in one place, getting to know the floor, the daily routine, the medications and ALL of the staff, it really sucks to just pack it in and leave. Leadership also made me see that I am ready to be a nurse. I am able to work with other nurses, physicians, techs, and families and really do well at it. This also makes me just want to be done with school and have a job. Somewhere that I can put it the work to learn all about and then once I finally get the hang of everything, I can just STAY there. On my last day a bunch of the nurses that I was in a room with asked my instructor if I could just skip community health and stay with them the rest of the semester. I wish. We are at the point now where we are starting to job hunt and I'm working on some networking with people I know in the hospitals and getting ready to start emailing people and applying. SCARY. I'm hoping that with the help of my preceptor (who has worked in almost every area of the children's hospital and knows EVERYONE) and other nurses that work down there, they will help me get in touch with some of the managers on the floors to send in my resume. Networking. Boom. I hate playing this game....Stay tuned for the job hunt updates.

Also this week, my group did our evidence-based practice presentation on Tuesday. It was about the effectiveness of transitional interventions to prepare families to move from the acute/critical care setting to home. Super exciting stuff. 30 minutes of fun to be exact. But I'm glad it's over and that we did well on it. I also had my final evaluation for my leadership rotation. Don't worry, I passed. My instructor thinks I'm awesome and continued her semester long goal of peer-pressuring me into going to grad school. Not gonna happen, but I appreciate that she thinks I should.

I also finally picked a capstone topic for SURE. I'm doing "Reducing hospital emergency department visits for asthma in school age children." Sounds exciting right? I've determined that nursing is not even remotely exciting this semester. So yay capstone paper. I already have 21 articles for it and I'm super pumped to start reading them. Bleh, so over this.

In other news, had our first exam today, worth 20% of our grade. Studied for literally less than an hour. 95%. Damn I'm good.

44 days! The picture of the paper chain is when it had 50 days left, it's getting so tiny :) Oh, and the semester is half way over.

And I start my community health rotation. I literally could not be less excited.

5 weeks down and 50-something days to go

I've been a big slacker lately on the blog, which I regret because I don't want to quit updating this close to the end, but I think it's just because honestly, I am getting tired of talking about nursing school and kind of ready to be done. I haven't been meaning to neglect it, I just don't have tons to say! Leadership has been really great, for lack of a more eloquent way to say it. Last time I updated I had only gone to three days of Leadership (in the pediatric sedation unit, if you forgot), and now I have been there a total of 11 days and have only two left to go! In the last few weeks I have learned so much about communicating with families and talking with doctors, nurses, techs, and just a whole lot of people. The department that I am working in is just incredible. I really enjoy all of the nurses and nurse techs that work there and it has really made this rotation a wonderful experience. I have gotten very comfortable with telling families about the medications we use, what is going to happen before, during and after the procedure, and giving discharge instructions. I am getting much more independent and able to take on more responsibility each day that I am there. My preceptor is wonderful and we get along really well. She is great at answering all of my questions and letting me take on more responsibility, but not in a way that pushes me into anything she doesn't think I can handle. While sometimes I am out of my comfort zone, it's in a way that pushes me to be better, not in a way that scares me. Honestly, it's just been really great. I am really enjoying it and I feel that even though I may not be working on a floor and getting that kind of experience, I am still learning so much about working with other people and about communicating with patients and families. I can't believe it will be over on Tuesday!

I promise to write a more thoughtful and reflective entry later this week when I have more time! This week I am preparing for my Evidence-based practice presentation that my group is presenting next Tuesday, finishing up all of my evaluations, journals and paperwork from Leadership that is due on Wednesday, and continuing to work on my capstone paper, so it has definitely been busy! I am looking forward to finishing Leadership on Tuesday, having class on Wednesday and then taking 5 days off before my presentation and the start of my next and LAST rotation next week!

When I went to google "Leadership" I brain-farted and typed "Leader fish" and whelp, got the picture of just that. A Leader fish. I like it. Leader fish it is.

I also almost forget the not obligatory countdown update at the end of each post! What was I thinking?

**DRUMROLL PLEASE**

53 days to go! :)

(New paper chain picture soon!)

Leadership fun!

I have been telling people about my leadership rotation all week so this post should be pretty easy :) I started my leadership rotation on Monday last week, then went Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. Leadership means that instead of doing clinical in a group, you do clinical all by yourself and you have a "preceptor" which is a nurse that you work with everyday. You work around her schedule, and she is solely responsible/in charge of you. The goal of the rotation is that by the end of 6 weeks, you should be doing about 90% of your nurse's job all by yourself. My nurse has an AWESOME schedule. She works Monday-Friday from 8-5 (or some really close variation of that, i.e sometimes it's 730-430). This is great because of a few reasons: a) I don't have to get up at the legitimate crack of dawn like I have for other clinicals that I had to be at by 630 b)I have no problem getting all of my hours in c)I can get all of my hours done in 5 weeks. So basically it's a really good deal for me. Everyone is fairly jealous of my schedule. And I'm okay with that.

So what am I doing for my leadership you ask? I am at Helen Devos Children's Hospital (by far the coolest hospital in Grand Rapids and essentially my dream place to work once I graduate). I am working in the Pediatric Sedation Unit. So basically what we do is sedate kids for an procedure that would be be painful or that requires the kids to lay perfectly still. They do a lot of lumbar punctures, bone marrow aspirates, biopsies, scopes (egd's and colonoscopies), castings, MRI's and other scans, central line insertions and port insertions and removals. I've gotten to see a TON of really awesome things. The role of the nurse in all of this is to very similar to the role of the OR nurse, except they do much more teaching and assessment than an OR nurse. The patient comes down to the room and meets the nurse there. She then tells them all about the procedure and teaches them about the medications we will be using, how fast it will put the child to sleep, how long the procedure will take and what to except after. She then gets the child all prepped and hooked up to the heart monitor, gets a pulse ox on and lets them pick a bandaid for after we take their IV out. Then she starts the IV (I can't do this because students aren't allowed to do IV's in pediatrics. At all. Ever). I do however get all the supplies out to start the IV, help the nurse start it, then as soon as its actually in the vein I do everything else. So I guess it's okay that I can't actually start them. So then during the procedure the nurse records vitals every 3 minutes and monitors the patient, and helps the doctors with anything they need. Right after the procedure the nurse is the one that stays with the patient as they wake up, takes all the leads and tape off, removes the IV and then talks to the family about what to expect for the rest of the day. She also gives all of the discharge instructions. So the nurse is DEFINITELY very busy during procedures. She also gets and draws up all of the medications, that's sort of a crucial thing I forgot. The medication we use to sedate is called Propofol and it puts kids to sleep in about 15 seconds, which is actually pretty funny to watch sometimes. It is jokingly called "Milk of Amnesia" because it has an amnesiac effect and after you come out of it you have no memory of the procedure. Fun Fact: It is also what Michael Jackson used to "sleep" and what killed him. When I Google-Imaged it I found mostly pictures of MJ, including a whole series of really hilarious by insensitive shirts that say "GOT PROPOFOL?"

So this week I started doing all of the vitals, getting the patient hooked up to the monitors, and doing discharge instructions. Next week I will add drawing up meds to the list, as well as all of the teaching at the beginning of the procedure. By the end of next week I'm hoping to be doing at least 50-75% of what my nurse does, with her supervision of course. I really like the unit that I'm in. We get to travel all over the hospital to do procedures sometimes, and I get to see so many different things and work with doctors, PA's, NP's and lots of other people. It's very cool and I'm very happy with it so far :) Next week I am going on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday then heading home for a long Memorial Day weekend!

76 days to go.

The Beginning of the End!

At the end of NUR 315, my first nursing class, I got all mushy at the end of my post and talked about how nursing school would never be better than it was then and how it would never be the same as it was with my friends in that class. I said that it wasn't the end, but it was "the end of the beginning." Well here we are now, and I was completely wrong about things not getting any better. In the past 3 semesters since then I have made so many more great friends, gotten to know almost everyone in my class, and had so many amazing times. That brings me to today. The beginning of the end. Today was the first day of our LAST semester of nursing school. It feels so surreal that we have come this far. Yesterday I volunteered to go into NUR 320 (The hardest semester of the program and the semester everyone panics about) to talk to the students about the class. Basically the professors leave the room and let a few of us just take questions and give advice on how to get through it, what they should and shouldn't do, if they can work during clinical, how to study, is it really that bad, etc. It's kind of fun and kind of funny to think that it's already been a year since we were in their shoes. Today was my first day of class. This semester, well for the first 6 weeks, I have seminar from 8-920, which is a group of only 5 of us that meets to talk about clinical and all kinds of stuff. Then we have theory from 9:30-11:40, then a break, and then theory again from 12:30-2:40. It's a lot of class in one, but then I remember that it's still not even close to as bad as NUR 320 was. Haha. I spent a lot of time today just getting organized (shocker) so that I can feel like I have some control over my life. Everyone in my class makes fun of my obsessive organization but I think secretly they're just jealous. First days are just always so overwhelming that if I don't get organized then I feel like I can't handle it. As far as first days go though, today wasn't that bad. We had a med calculation test due today, which was 20 questions of calculation IV drip rates, flow rates, how long it will take IV's to run, etc. And we had to get 100% on it. I did. Boom. And it was nice to see all of my friends again. The worst part of this semester will probably be that we have to write a Capstone paper. 16 pages. Minimum 25-30 references. Not looking forward to THAT. But hey, such is life! I think this semester is gonna go by super fast. I start my leadership rotation on Monday, so stay tuned for that.

Picture is of the paper chain when we had 100 days left, but now we only have 86 days to go! :):):)

I GRADUATED today.

Yup, even though I still have one semester left until I am officially done with the nursing program, today I got to rock the cap and gown and walk across the stage. Last week was my last week of class and I only had class on Monday and Tuesday because clinical was done the week before, so it was a really quick and easy week! Then I got to go home for a few days for Easter and to spend time with my family. This past Monday was my final exam, which was cumulative and I stupidly spent approximately four hours studying for because I was home for Easter and voted that time with my friends and family was more important. I don't really regret that decision though. Ended up getting an 80 on the final and a B+ in the class, so I'm pretty happy with that overall. So that's the end of Nursing 420 and now we are in our FINAL semester. Awesome.

Which brings me to today which was GVSU GRADUATION! Because there is no graduation ceremony in August, students that are finishing up in August can either walk early in April or come back and walk in December, so we all voted for April :) So Thursday my friends Cheryl and Kathryn and I got together to decorate our caps so that they would say "RN" on them so our parents could see us during the ceremony. They are adorable. Mine has rubies and pearls on it so represent the sorority. I figured it was a good way to mesh together my two worlds in college: Alpha Sigma Alpha and The Kirkhof College of Nursing. Then Friday my mom, dad, brother, aunt, uncle, cousin and grandma ALL came up here for graduation. We went out to dinner at Carrabas and just hung out until late. My parents got me real pearls for graduation. How fitting if you know me. I love them. Then this morning I met up with Kathryn and Cheryl (And Matt and Casey) so we could all take pictures before graduation. The nursing students also got to have a whole room to ourselves while we waited to go into the arena so we had plenty of times for pictures and chatting. And we all got to sit together during the ceremony. No one fell on the stage, and the ceremony went really quick for having 1200 people (there were another 1300 at the 3pm graduation!!) It was an amazing day. Then we went out to dinner at Logan's and then the fam headed home already! Fortunately I have all of next week off so I will be heading home probably tomorrow to spend some time at home before I start the Spring/Summer semester.

I can't believe that I graduated today. Five years later. It still feels very unbelievable that we are SO close to being done and to being nurses. I loved being able to spend today with some of my favorite people, both family and friends. I am so thankful to have such a caring and wonderful family, and for the amazing friends that I have made in the nursing program. What an awesome day :).

So Long Saint Mary's Part 2

Today was my last day at Saint Mary's! I know I already had a post that was titled "So Long Saint Mary's" but I didn't know that I was going to end up back there for another rotation. Don't worry, this time I'm really sure though. So this rotation, wow. This rotation was a little crazy for me. I spent the first two weeks on 6 South, the third week in the ICU and the OR, missed the fourth and fifth weeks entirely because I was sick, then came back the sixth week after we had moved to 3 Lacks. Crazy. This week was kind of a struggle for me just because I hadn't been on the floor for 3 weeks and it was also my first day on Lacks when the rest of my group had already been there for 3 days. Everyone helped me out with finding things though and everything went fine. It's just hard to get back into the swing of things after being gone for so long. 3 Lacks is an AWESOME floor though. Like I said earlier, we moved to Lacks after 3 weeks because it wasn't even open yet when we started our rotation. So it's BRAND NEW. And it's just really awesome. It has a lot of the little things like they have at the new Children's Hospital like thermometers, blood pressure cuffs and supplies in the room. So anytime you need extra linens, gowns, alcohol wipes, syringes, IV tubing, etc, it's all in the room. Which is nice because the floor is HUGE so anytime you need to walk to find things, it takes while and it's usually quite a walk. I wish I would have had more time on that floor, but it was nice to at least have two days.

Today I had the same patient that I had yesterday, minus the GoLYTELY. There was much less poop, so it was a win. She's actually a really sweet lady and I spent more time talking with her today. Then we had our evaluations with our instructor, which went REALLY well. Our instructor is GREAT. She writes us very thoughtful and personal evaluations and she always gives us positive feedback. She also gave us all of her contact information and told us that she is always available to write us a letter of recommendation or a reference. And she offered to help us with resumes and interviewing as we get closer to graduation. Needless to say, I passed :) Then we went to lunch at Olive Garden. Moral of the story, I am now TOTALLY done with NUR 421, including seminar, lab and clinical. And all of left of NUR 420 is a final exam! We also get our papers back in class on Tuesday. I'm very excited to be done with clinical because it means we are almost in our last semesters. SO CLOSE TO BEING DONE!!!!! :)

I'm pretty sure...

THAT MY CLINICAL INSTRUCTOR WAS PUNISHING ME TODAY FOR MISSING THREE DAYS OF CLINICAL. Haha today was my first day back at clinical that I actually made it through the whole day! I only had one patient today since I haven't been on this floor since we moved from 6 South and still didn't know where a lot of things are. Usually having one patient is a breeze, however, my one patient was being prepped for a colonoscopy, meaning she needed to drink approximately ONE GALLON of GoLytely,which is a laxative that is given in order to "clean her out." This wouldn't be so bad if she wasn't also incontinent. And if I didn't need to put the GoLytely in through an NG tube. What this all means is that I spent 8 hours today alternating between pushing GoLytely into her NG tube and changing her briefs, pads and sheets every 20-30 minutes because she was going to the bathroom NON-STOP. In her bed. What a lovely day it was. I kept joking with my clinical group that this was my clinical instructor's way of passive aggressively punishing me for all of the days of clinical that I missed. Really she was trying to pick a patient that was having a procedure that I could go see, unfortunately the colonscopy got pushed back to 3:00 and I didn't even get to see it.

Lovely. But I survived. And tomorrow is our last day :)

My valient return to real life.

So my last entry was the "I have Bronchitis" Edition. Since then there was also the "I almost passed out in clinical" Edition AND the "I now have a sinus infection" Edition. So when I said that I was hoping to be at 100% by last Monday, I was clearly getting ahead of myself. Last week I had Seminar on Monday, and we had a chiropractor and a massage therapist come in and talk to us. It was kind of interesting,and the chiropractor was very knowledgeable and really knew her stuff. She also offered us a free consultation and thermal scan if we wanted to come in. I may take her up on that because who turns down a free consult? Monday and Tuesday we had theory and we talked about closed head injuries, coma, concussions, CVA, Parkinsons, and other brain and head things. It was actually pretty interesting, since the professor that was lecturing is one of my favorites because she tells a lot of stories and keeps us interested. Also on Tuesday our third and final paper was due. It was an 8-9 page paper bringing together the other two papers we wrote this semester and adding a compare/contrast section and making a decision about the ethical situation. I started it on Saturday and finished it up over Sunday and Monday. I feel pretty good about it, especially since I got a 94% and a 93% on the first two papers and they are all graded by the same person. We get them back next Tuesday so stay tuned! Then Wednesday we had clinical. Thursday this week we had the day off because we always get one day off during Med-Surg to make up for the time we spend doing our LEI visits. So I was feeling pretty good and ready to get back to clinical on Wednesday. Unfortunately my body was not. I got really light-headed and felt really sick all of a sudden, then I started sweating and got really nauseous. So I ended up sitting down and feeling like I was going to pass out for about an hour before my instructor finally told me to go home. I was home by 8:30. I did have to do a make-up assignment this time, but it wasn't anything too hard. I then went to the doctor and was diagnosed with a sinus infection and started on ten days of Amoxicillin. So here's to hoping that THIS week I will be back to normal and able to completely return to the functioning world. This is my last week of clinical so Thursday is only a half day and we get our evaluations done and then we all go out to lunch! Then next week is our last week of class and on Tuesday of next week I get to go HOME for Easter :)

Also last Friday I had my last LEI visit of the semester and I turned in my completed LEI binder this morning so that's done for the semester! Today was our last seminar for the semester and I finished all of my quizzes, medication modules and case studies for seminar also. I love the end of the semester when everything starts wrapping up! 15 days left of the semester, 115 days left in nursing school :)

The Dan in Real Life picture doesn't really have anything to do with this entry, but it came up when I typed "real life" and also it's one of my favorite movies...So it's a WIN.

The "I have bronchitis" edition

So I realized that in all of the freakishly prompt blog entries that I've written in the past two weeks, I failed to mention that I have been pretty much dying. I got a bad cold the last Friday of Spring Break, which was March 11, and it basically just kept getting worse for about a week. Then just when I thought I was getting over it, my awesome asthma kicked in and decided that I didn't really need to be able to breathe. So after about a week of wheezing, I start doing my nebulizer on Tuesday. Finally last Friday the 25th, after having a hacking, barking cough for a few days, I cave and go to the doctor to get prednisone. The doctor tells me that it's just asthma, gives me the prednisone and that's the end of that. Until it keeps getting worse. And the cough gets worse. And the breathing gets worse. Tuesday I leave work after 2 hours because I sound terrible. Luckily I have a great boss and work with people who are flexible and understanding. I call off from clinical on Wednesday since I knew I would feel awful, then I cave again and go to the Emergency Room because NOTHING that I am doing is helping me breathe and I'm starting to get worried. So I go to the ER and get 2 nebulizers with Atrovent, which helps a LOT, and a chest x-ray to rule out pneumonia. When all was said and done, they diagnosed me with viral bronchitis, which sucks because there is basically nothing that they can do. I got Tylenol 3 with codeine to help with my cough and let me get some sleep, and they told me to keep doing the breathing treatments and my Symbicort inhaler, and taking the prednisone and that it may take a while to resolve. Four hours for a whole lot of nothing. I guess the bright side was that there was nothing seriously wrong with me. I didn't go to clinical Wednesday or Thursday because A) I sound awful, B) I feel awful, C) I'm contagious, D) We are on a floor with people over 65 who are already sick. My clinical instructor was AMAZING about the whole thing (she heard my cough on Monday so she knew I wasn't lying), plus I have a note and my paperwork from the ER. She let me stay home and told me not to stress about missing the days because I was doing fine. That made me feel a million times better. So today is Friday, I still don't feel great, but I'm definitely on the mend. Still doing breathing treatments at least 3-4 times a day, which I gotta tell ya, I'm really ready to be done with since this is day ELEVEN of treatments. UGH. But my cough is improving and hopefully I'll be able to stop the treatments soon. I can't wait.

This definitely wasn't in the plans, but I'm thankful for a great clinical instructor, friends, family, and co-workers for getting me through this past week and a half-ish. Hoping to be back to (almost) 100% by Monday! :)

If you don't know what bronchitis does to your lungs, the pictures will give you a pretty good idea! Basically you feel like your lungs are full of crap and your chest rattles when you breathe. And you have a deep barking cough. It's really glamorous.

Things I wish I knew then.

Last night I went to a round table event for the "Pre-nursing Club" at Grand Valley. The club is for mostly freshman and sophomores that are taking all of their prerequisites and waiting to apply to the nursing program. They have approximately one million questions and they are basically panicking around getting into the program, what classes they should and shouldn't take together, how high your GPA needs to be, how hard the program is, what you do in clinical, etc. A million questions. It seems so unreal that we have come so far from being these students that are freaking out. It was so weird to be the older nursing student, already in the program, and actually almost ready to finish the program. I LOVED talking to the students though. The goal of the night was to get all different types of students to come and be at the event (male students, student athletes, student parents, Honors, Second Degree, Direct Admit, and Traditional). When I introduced myself I just said I was a Traditional Student and was also in a sorority if anyone had questions about that. I didn't really think much about it until they had the students move to the person that they wanted to talk to and whole flock of girls came up to my table that were all traditional and/or in sororities. So I ended up with a table of 7 girls by myself to answer questions and just talk about the program. Luckily, I love the program and have lots of things to say. I tried to answer all of their questions and convince them that it really will get better, and the classes will get to more so much more fun and more practical and more hands on and that they just need to get through it to get there. It was very cool to pass on all of things that I've learned in these past 4.5 years and all of the things that people told me when I was a freshman and panicking. We talked about how to balance the classes and a social life and a sorority and also how to deal with the stress. They also were just really excited to hear about the program and how cool it is and all of things that we need to do. I remember how much I loved hearing about the program before I was in it because it just made me want to work so much harder to get in. I remember thinking that I couldn't WAIT to be at the CHS building all the time (the picture for this entry is the CHS building and basically my second home during the week). It just felt so strange to be sitting there giving advice. I gave the girls my email and told them to email me if they have any questions because I remember how it felt to be completely lost. I hope they actually take me up on it. Oh and I was shamelessly recruiting for ASA in the process. Obviously. Cheryl came over to my table and was talking with the girls also near the end of the night and was making fun of my recruitment director schpeel that I was giving. Once a recruitment director, always a recruitment director. But in all honesty, I feel really weird that I'm old enough to mentor younger students, but it's really awesome to pass on all of things that I wish I knew when I was a freshman.

And it also made me realize how happy I am to NOT BE IN THEIR SHOES, anymore :) I never thought I would get here, and now looking back and talking to them I remember all of the awful exams and classes and tears I went through to get here and it just makes me appreciate it so much more.

Oh, and I did not fail my exam yesterday. Despite my lack of studying, I still got a solid B. Hanging onto my A- in the class for now :)

AND this is the 75th blog entry that I have written in here! Crazy right???

Surgery Take 2 and LEADERHIP PLACEMENT!

As part of this rotation we got to spend one day in surgery! I've been very fortunate to have both of my med-surg rotations at Saint Mary's because that means I've been able to spend a total of three days in surgery, while people who have been at Spectrum haven't been able to spend any time in surgery. So the operating room I was assigned to was an orthopedic room and I got to see two surgeries. The first was a total hip replacement and the second was a total knee replacement. The surgeon I was with was really great (and his last name was Kane. Win.) and he had two other ortho residents with him that he was teaching (who were both pretty easy on the eyes, so I was a fan). My nurse was a little bit intimidating to say the least. He was older and had been doing working an a nurse in the OR for 30 years. He wasn't mean or anything, he was wasn't overly warm or helpful. He didn't really explain much to me during the surgeries, but luckily there was a surgical rep in there that explained everything to me. During the total hip I couldn't really see anything because of how the leg was positioned and because there were 4 people doing the surgery, but during the total knee I was able to see a lot more which was really cool. Mostly I just followed the nurse around as he went to get the patient from the pre-op holding area, brought them into the OR, got them all set up and prepped and then just hung out in the OR and watched the whole surgery. I really like surgery, but i definitely don't think that it's for me. One of the things that I love most about nursing is the one on one face time that I get to spend connecting with and caring for patients. With surgery, 90% of the time you are with patients, they are unconscious. So while I do enjoy watching the surgeries, I don't really think surgery is for me. I'm glad that I got the chance to spend some time in surgery though because it's been enough time to give me a good idea of what it's like and whether or not it's something that I would be interested in.

Also yesterday we got our assignments for our LEADERSHIP rotations! Leadership is a 7 week rotation where we are assigned individually (meaning not in a clinical group like we usually are), to a specific unit in a hospital and to one nurse. We follow that nurse for the entire 7 weeks and work when they work. We got to request the top three areas of nursing we wanted to work in so I picked Pediatrics, Pediatrics ICU and medsurg, in that order. And I got PEDS! At Helen Devos, which is exactly what I wanted. I am in peds sedation, and I wasn't really sure what that meant so I looked on the website and this is what it says:

[One-Stop Sedation Procedure Rooms
Sedation services are organized around the patient and family. The goal is to remove the discomfort or anxiety of painful or invasive procedures, or diagnostic or radiology tests that require the child to lie still. Children are prepped, sedated and have their procedure and recover in the same room, rather than moving for each phase of care. Family members may accompany the child during both the preparation and recovery phases.]

So I guess that's what I am going to be doing! I'm really excited about it! We also found out where we will be doing our community health rotation and I will be doing that at the Kent County Health Department. I'm happy about that too and I think I will learn a whole lot being there. Life is good :)

3 weeks left of clinical and we MOVE TO OUR NEW UNIT NEXT WEEK! 4 weeks left in the semester! Done for the semester in 30 days, and done for good in 133, time is flying!