I'm beat...

... I was up at 4:30 this morning to go to clinicals. Not just clinicals, but pediatric clinicals. Not my favorite.

I had two patients, one of whom was an adult. The other was a 5-year-old boy who really got hit by the side effects of Albuterol. Adults just get nervous from it. Kids, evidently, go a tad wild.

He was a good kid, overall. It was just a really busy day, since at clinicals I can't get into the med cart without my instructor and things just take FOREVER to get done.

Anyway, I'm pretty pooped. I've taken a break for a couple of hours after getting home.

Now it's wood-splitting time...

Blogging's been light...

... well, OK ... I haven't blogged in weeks. Sue me. I've been busy.

I'm in the last semester of my RN program, and it seems like my instructors have piled on every ounce of work they could come up with ... and it's a short semester. Our final exam is scheduled for March 3. Before that date, we'll have a total of 6 exams, 15 online clinical "simulations" to do (each of which takes an hour to an hour and a half to complete,) another community resource assessment project (we did one last semester) and an "educational poster" project.

I'm also lining up preceptors for the 120 required hours to complete the course of study. And I work part time.

On the bright side, I've been out of class all week for snow. It's been so bad north of here that my Mom is staying with us because she and Dad don't have power at their house, and don't expect to get it back for over a week. Dad is staying at the house because he's afraid it'll be burglarized.

I have the first of the 3 clinicals of the semester tomorrow. It's a Pediatric clinical. Man, I hope there are no peds patients, in which case we get to go to ER ...

Nearly there...

Spring semester classes start today -- it's the last semester of the RN program. Classwork ends March 5, so it'll be a super-concentrated semester. I'm dreading the workload like a beating, but at the same time I'm excited to get it over with. I can't remember what it's like to just have to work and having nothing else taking up time.

Our instructors are busy facilitating more tree killing ... I've printed of a stack of PPTs for class today...

Proportions

If Hamas is able to maintain a smuggling network capable of bringing in enough rockets to lob over 40 a day into Israel ...

... wouldn't it stand to reason that, if they really wanted peace, they'd smuggle in food and medicine instead?

I mean, in terms of sheer metric tonnage, how much rice and antibiotics can you bring in if you put an equal amount of effort into it, instead of smuggling in rockets?

That doesn't sound to me like the actions of an organization that wants peace ... it sounds like an organization willing to sacrifice the people it claims to represent in the name of generating propaganda and maintaining an endless war to in order to cling to some power...

The haul...

I hate to see Christmas go. Christmas has been more of a chore for the past couple of years, because of school and work. I hate that. Christmas is, hands-down, my favorite time of year. I feel like I haven't had time to take it in & enjoy it.

This year, the New Year was no different. I rang in the new year administering Stadol 2mg IV and Phenergan 25mg IV. Yay.

Aside from the fact that Christmas - at least the lead-up to it - was a chore, I enjoyed it once I had time to spend with family (never mind the fact that I had diarrhea for several days and I slept alot...)

Like every child, I got some cool presents:


Miss Fluffy got me the Alien Quadrilogy, which I didn't have on my list, but is one of the gifts I liked most. The Alien films (except for ...Resurrection, which sucked) are some of my favorite movies. The original Alien is one of the scariest movies I've ever seen. I'll probably watch it tonight.

I also got Ted, White and Blue. Nuge is always a fun read. You have to get past the way he writes, but once you do, you'll enjoy the read.


By brother got me a set of guitar lessons on DVD, and I've worked my way through most of the 1st DVD already. Man, my fingers hurt ... and it's not like my guitar just sits in the corner to make me look cool. I'm excited about learning to play it like an instrument.


The mighty HODAR got me a Gerber Suspension multi-tool (among other things). Completely awesome. It stays in a pocket, in it's pouch on my belt or even in my bag at work all the time. Multi-tools are gold.


I also got some helpful medical resources:


It was a good Christmas overall.