Giving thanks

This week we only had class on Monday and Tuesday because we have Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off for Thanksgiving, which was WONDERFUL. It was so nice to not have clinical this week and be able to take a break and relax. We had our third exam on Monday so it was kind of stressful to study for that but Cheryl and I tried to be really pro-active and study throughout the week so we didn't have to cram the day of the exam. But don't get me wrong, I still crammed the day of the exam. Totally paid off though, got a 94%. Happy Thanksgiving to me :)

On that note, this week has made me (along with the rest of the country) think about all of things that I am thankful for in my life. On the subject of nursing/school there are so many things that I am thankful for. First of all I am thankful for the opportunity that I have to even be in college. There are so few people, and even fewer women, around the world that have the opportunity to go to college at all, let along go to college for five years. I am also thankful for my grandparents and aunt, who have all passed away but provided me with enough money to help pay for a substantial amount of my first few years of college. Without their help, paying for college would have much more of a burden on myself and parents and I am so grateful for them. Which brings me to my parents, who have been constantly supportive both emotionally and financially. My parents have helped me to not have to stress about money throughout my time in college, and they have been supportive when I thought I wouldn't make it in nursing, and when I told them it was going to take me five years to graduate. They have always been there to tell me I could do it and that things were going to work out. They are always interested in what I am doing and just generally always there for me. I am so so grateful for everything that they do for me. I am also thankful that I am going into nursing because it gives me the opportunity to touch the lives of the people I care for. I think that being a nurse is the greatest job in the world because we get to be there for people when they desperately need someone to be there for them. I can't wait to graduate and be a real nurse. The nursing program at Grand Valley, though frustrating at times, is amazing and wonderful and provides us with so many great opportunities to grow and learn and get real world experience. The final thing that I am thankful for is my FRIENDS in the nursing program. The people that I have met in the past 11 months are so incredible and have become such a huge part of my life. They are all just genuinely kind and nice people and I am so blessed to have met them and have them in my life. I am so thankful that I have gotten to know them and that they are there for me when I need them.

Moral of the story, I am so lucky to be where I am right now. There were so many times when I never thought that I would make it into the nursing program and thought I would never be able to become a nurse. Now that I am here I feel so blessed that I have made it this far and that in less than nine months I will graduate and be able to finally be a nurse. I am so thankful for all of the people that have helped me to get to this point (my bestie/roommate Courtney for putting up with my crying and frustration for two years) and I am thankful now for all of the people helping me along this journey. So thank you thank you thank you to everyone, I love you all.

Phase 10-ed OUT.

At the of last week I was feeling pretty renewed and excited about being at Ferguson for two more weeks, but after this week I'm feeling much more ready to be done. It's not that I am not enjoying getting to know more about people, it's more so that we only spend time with the SAME 8-10 people every single day. I am just getting sick of sitting around and playing card games all day. And sometimes there are only one or two residents down in the conference room so most of us just sit and play card games with each other. I know there are still things that I am learning, but I just wish we were able to meet more residents and get to know new people. Some days I literally play 3-4 hours of Phase Ten, which, though it's my favorite game, I can only play so many hours of it before I start to go crazy. Especially when I play it with a resident who takes 5 minutes for each turn and also can't hear what's going on. It makes me a little nuts. So I'm at the point now where I'm about ready to move on to something new, so I'm glad we only have one more week left. I think I'm also just ready to be done with this semester, which is how I always feel when we are nearing the end. I have really enjoyed my time at Ferguson though and I definitely have learned SO much about working with and communicating with people who are mentally ill and I have seen my biases and opinions change so much in the past five weeks that it amazes even me. It's funny how you don't realize how many stereotypes and biases you have until you are actually forced to confront them. Honestly, spending time at Ferguson should required to graduate from the nursing problem, because it will forever change the way you will look at people with mental illness. It's unbelievable how much I have changed my outlook.

In other news, we have our third exam next week so I'm trying to actually be productive and study for it ahead of time. A group of us from class got together on Tuesday to start studying for it, and then Cheryl and I went out for breakfast this morning and studied for about an hour and a half so I'm feeling like I'm already ahead of the game since usually I don't start studying until the day of the exam...Haha so hopefully I will do well on it. AND we only have two days of class next week and then we are off Wednesday-Friday for Thanksgiving break! Then only two weeks and one final until the end of the semester. I can't believe how fast it's going :)

Group Therapy

If you haven't figured out by now, instead of trying to focus on the mundane details of everything I do all week, I'm trying to pick out the most significant things and talk about those. I'm doing this because I feel like by picking out the most important things I will end up with a more genuine blog to look back on at the end of this nursing shenanigan.

So that being said, this week we had seminar for the first time in well over a month. The topic of this seminar was "Mental Health Topics," so we didn't really know what to expect. It turned out to be a seminar about therapeutic communication, which is something we actually talk about every day in my clinical rotation. Therapeutic communication in a nutshell, is when you have a conversation with someone with the intent of digging deeper and finding out how they are feeling. It is not focused on you, you don't use any self-disclosure, and you focus on how they are feeling and ask questions to learn more. So we talked a little about therapeutic communication and then our instructor asked for a volunteer to come up and help her demonstrate what we would be doing later when we broke up into groups to practice. One student volunteered, and though we had scenarios that we could choose to use, she chose to talk about her real life (another option she told us we could use). Within a minute or so or her talking, we realized that she was genuinely having problems in her life and she got really emotional in front of the whole class. The instructor kept going with the demonstration and at the end, the entire class was absolutely silent. So then we broke up into groups and took turns being the nurse and the patient. Since the student who had gone up in front of the class was in my group, I felt that it was only fair that all talk about real life when it was our turn to be the patient. So we did. Megan and Cheryl were the other two people in my group (two of my best nursing friends), so it was pretty easy to just talk to them. It was such an awesome day though. All of us got to talk about our stuff that was going on, and it made it much easier to have a genuine therapeutic conversation. I love group therapy so it was great :) It's so amazing how these people that I didn't even know a year ago have become some of the people I relate to the most and have come to trust more than a lot of people in my life. Love them.

Sticking with talking about therapeutic communication, we talk with residents in Ferguson all day during clinical. Most of these people have really serious mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, bipolar, depression, OCD, etc., and they have a lot of issues and problems in their lives. Over several years of students coming in, they have learned that the students are "safe" and therefore they tend to cling to us and want to talk with us about the things they are feeling or the things that are going on in their lives. So we spend all day trying to use the things we have learned about therapeutic communication to help them to feel better, and help us dig deeper into what they are feeling. It's really interesting as we are starting to learn more about them both from figuring it out on our own, and by talking with our instructor during post-conference. Some of them have just had such hard lives. Being abandoned by friends, parents, siblings, spending time in jail, spending time in rehab, being hospitalized frequently, and so many other things. It's been such an incredible learning experience to spend time getting to know these people and learning so much about their lives. Earlier this week I was sort of feeling like I was getting bored with clinical and not really getting anything more out of it, but now I've sort of had a renewed sense of wanting to learn more from the residents. Which is good because I still have two more weeks there :)

Friends for Life ♥

In my first blog entry I talked about how I already felt like I was making friends that I would stay friends with for the rest of my time in the nursing program, and as it turns out I was right. I have met so many people in the nursing program that have honestly turned into my family over these past ten months. When you spend as much time with people as we spend with each other, it would be impossible to not get close. So my friend Jenna decided that the group of us that it really close should all get together and take a Christmas card picture of our "Nursing Family." I am in love with the pictures. And these people. They really do get me through the program, keep me on track and keep me sane. I can't imagine what my life is going to be like in ten more months when we all go our separate ways. Jenna was also the one that on our very first day of lab in Nursing 315 asked us if we thought we were all going to be friends for life. At the time we all thought that she was crazy, but now I wonder if we really will all stay friends down the road. I am so lucky to have met so many amazing people that have become some of my best friends. It's cheesy, I know. But if you look at the pictures you should understand that we are just really cheesy kind of people :)

Also, clinical was really uneventful this week and we only had one day! I got my clinical placements for next semester and I am at Helen Devos Children's Hospital 9C for my pediatrics rotation and back at St. Mary's on 3 Lacks (which is BRAND NEW and not even open yet) for my second Med-Surg rotation. I will update more on those next semester though.

BINGO!

As I said at the end of my last post, I had my second exam on Monday. I really didn't study at all the entire weekend before the exam because I went home on Wednesday because I didn't have clinical. So I was freaking out, and only studied the day of the exam for about 5 hours with some friends from my class. As it turns out, the multiple choice Gods were on my side on Monday because I ended up getting a 94%. Awesome. That totally made my day. Even though I was "that guy" that everyone hated because I did that well without studying...

Tuesday I had my second LEI visit with my elderly client, which went well. Then I had theory and we talked about mood disorders like depression, bipolar, and suicide. It was pretty interesting since a lot of the residents at Ferguson have these issues.

As usual, the most exciting part of my week is clinical, which was Wednesday and Thursday. Wednesday was fairly uneventful. We hadn't been there the week before, some of the residents were really excited to see us and were eager to hang out. Another student and I walked with one of the residents to get coffee in the morning, then came back and played cards and hung out. In the afternoon I went for another walk with a resident to the grocery store. At the end of the day I worked at the "Lucky Bucks" store in the apartment building. This store has necessities like toilet paper, paper towel, soap, shampoo, combs, razors, towels, sheets, etc. The residents earn "lucky bucks" by having good room inspections, helping with chores, volunteering with projects, etc. They can then use this money to buy the things that they need. It was very interesting to see how excited the residents are to get into the store and see if there are any new things (sometimes they get things donated), and how happy they are to just get the necessities that they need.

Thursday was a really fun day. In the morning I learned how to play dominoes, which is surprisingly harder than I had previously thought. The guys that were teaching us were SUPER into dominoes and were really funny about teaching us. It was a lot of fun learning though, and by the end I was beating all of them :) It's hard to win sometimes though because some of the residents take these games very seriously and don't take it well when they lose. We also played BINGO on Thursday with the residents, which was also an experience. We had probably 15 or 20 residents that came to play, so we were happy about that. A few of the girls had gone out that morning to buy BINGO prizes for the games. They bought things like gloves, hats, toilet paper, soap, deodorant, body wash and more. So then we started playing BINGO, and with each person that won, there were 10 other people that got upset about it. We heard every reason under the sun that they were losing. We were rigging the game, we wanted them to lose, we were playing favorites, the balls weren't mixed up, people were cheating, they had unlucky cards... you get the point. Paranoid schizophrenics are not the greatest BINGO players, but they all still enjoyed it and had a good time. We all had a good time also, and it made the day go by really quickly. All in all a pretty good week! Just busy since this week I also babysat 4 days and worked at the Children's Center! Looking forward to the weekend! :)

Half way!!

So as the title implies, this week marked being half way done with not only the semester but also exactly half way done with the NURSING PROGRAM! The program is five semesters long and we are currently 2.5 semesters into it. I can't believe how fast it's going and it's so nice to think that we are kind of in the downhill half of it now :)

This week was only a two-day week for me because my group started clinical last week while everyone else had the week off, so we got this week off instead! Monday we had a skills practice day in lab for the entire three hours to practice for our final test-out that was on Tuesday. The test-out was over either NG tube insertion (a nasogastric tube that is inserted through the nose into the stomach for decompression/suction or feeding) or central line dressing change (easier than NG tube insertion BUT has to be a sterile procedure which is harder). We had to be ready for either of the tests and the instructor picked which one we had to do. I really hate this nerve-racking-don't-know-what-you-are-going-to-have-to-do test-out crap. That being said, I did the central line dressing change and everything went fine, and I passed. The picture is of all of the things that are found in the kit for the dressing change. Bonus: Tuesday was our last day of lab for the semester, and now I only have theory class on Mondays and Tuesdays, which is awesome because I can sleep in :) BOOM.

The bad news is that we have our second theory exam on Monday and I have ZERO motivation to study for it. Blah.

Ferguson Fun :)

I apologize for the three cheesy rhyming titles in a row, I'm not sure where these are coming from. None the less, this week was my first week of my new clinical: Mental health. Going into this rotation I was NOT excited about it. I already had the idea that mental health was definitely not in my options of things that I would ever want to do. So I admit I had a negative attitude about starting this clinical. Also we are in an apartment building that doesn't have any nurses, so I wasn't seeing how nursing was going to fit into this place. I had heard that the majority of this rotation was just talking to residents, playing cards and hanging out, which sounded like fun but I didn't think I was going to get anything out of it. I also was feeling very nervous about talking with the residents, since most of them do have a mental illness. After three days I have a totally different opinion of this clinical and the things that I am going to learn from it.

First I guess i'll give a little overview of my clinical site. Ferguson Apartments is a building with 101 single-resident apartments. The building used to be a hotel until it went out of business and was purchased to be used as a place for the homeless to live. There is a whole lot of interesting history of how the apartments came to be, but I will spare you the details. In order to live at Ferguson the residents have to have a disability (either physically or mentally) and be otherwise homeless. The majority of the residents there, probably 75%, have mental disabilities, and even many of those with physical disabilities also have some kind of mental problems. So on Wednesday we met our clinical instructor and got an introduction to Ferguson and all of our assignments, started learning about some mental illnesses, and other fun things. Then we went out and met some of the residents. We sat in their big conference room and played cards, games, riddles, etc, and just talked with them. It was uncomfortable at first, but as the day went on and we started getting to know them it got better. It was very "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" because it was raining and we were in this big room with a skylight, while residents were wandering in the lobby, some having conversations with themselves.

Thursday we went on a scavenger hunt around the neighborhood near Ferguson to find resources that the residents can use. Some of the places were Good Will, soup kitchens, missions, shelters, grocery stores, the library and more. One of the residents came with us to show us around. It was awesome to see all of the resources that are available for those who are homeless, struggling with drugs and alcohol, or just need help. A couple of us took a tour around Mel Trotter, which is a shelter and program for people with drug and alcohol problems. They can house up to 180 men each night. It's an incredible place and it was amazing to see all of the things that they do. Later in the day we took another walk, with a resident who took us around downtown and told us about his life being in and out of jail, losing his family, and ultimately ending up homeless on the streets of Grand Rapids and how he ended up in Ferguson. It was so interesting to hear him talk about all that he has been through and how happy he was to have a home. We went to see the Fishladder, which is something I will probably take anyone who comes to visit me to see. Also the walk made me realize how absolutely beautiful Grand Rapids is. We also took the picture of us in the giant button :)

Friday we went bowling with the residents! We took the bus to the bowling alley and bowled a few games with them. There were I think 7 residents that came with us. It was so much fun to spend time with them. We had two students and two residents on each lane so we got to really get to know the people that we were on a lane with. Most of the residents that we are spending time we with have schizophrenia and many of them have a variety of issues that go along with that. But I'll tell you, they are changing so many of the stereotypes that I have about mentally ill people, and I now have no doubt that I will probably learn more here than I ever thought I would.