Still enjoying my time off. Just thought you should know.

Random story time!

As a kid (and throughout most of my adolescence) I was in love with Stephen King. Well, not him, exactly - I think he's a little scary - I was in love with his characters. My all-time favorite book is still The Stand. I've read it probably a million times since I was 10ish. I have several versions of the book which seem to crop up in my house every now and then. I think they are getting busy in the bookcase because I can't otherwise figure out how new copies randomly crop up. My favorite character has always been Stu Redman because he is just soooo amazing. I swore that my male children would - of course - bear the first name Stuart. All of them.

Anyway, if you haven't read the book I won't spoil it for you, but basically the initial premise is about a government-engineered superdisease that gets out of control and wipes out most of the population. The bug appears harmless enough with mild cold symptoms at first, escalating into delusion and suffocation, and death within 4 days.

I have always had these elaborate daydreams about what I would do if I was one of the survivors. What kind of crazy fortress I would build myself out in the bush and how I would eke out a perilous existence. That kind of thing.

Part of me has always harbored a teeny tiny paranoia that it could happen for real, that someday a laboratory could lose control of its creation. No, no, don't laugh. I'm absolutely certain that out in the desert somewhere the US government is playing with bacteria as a warfare contingency. And China, and Russia, and the other big players. I'd say Canada, but have you seen our military budget?

Anyway sometimes, when there's a particularly nasty bug going around that everyone seems to get (like now), a little part of my brain slips into that daydream of what if...

No, I don't lie awake wondering about it or listen for a phone tap or anything. No tinfoil hats here. I'm just sayin'!

how absolutely lux being off from school could be. I mean, I've looked forward to (and enjoyed) Christmas break before, but I have never felt SO weightless before. It's like I am 50 lbs lighter. Maybe not in dress size (darn!) but certainly in spirit!

A year ago today I got my acceptance into nursing school and what an incredible journey it's been so far. I was really depressed and felt like garbage for several months at the beginning of this year as my job was on the rocks (and I was subsequently laid off along with 1200 other people) and I hated everything. I was practically climbing the walls in frustration. September was the beacon at the end of that very dark tunnel and nursing school has more or less saved me. I didn't like who I was a year ago. I had no motivation to get out of bed, much less make an effort at achieving something. Life held no mystery and nothing was interesting. It was a "live until I die" feeling. Maybe you've been there. It sucked!

Anyway right now I feel awesome. I'm so excited for so many things! In a few weeks I will find out about my placement (OMG I can't wait) and in my Nursing Practice Foundations class we will start doing real practical stuff - putting all that theory into practice! I'll get to learn baths and transfers and bed-making, and perhaps most interestingly I will get to learn vitals and more medicalish applications after the spring break in February. I'm sure the nurses who read this (or maybe even those nursing students who are further ahead than me) are rolling their eyes at me being excited over bed-making. I'm sure I'll feel the same way after I've done two or ten, but from where I'm standing right now, those are going to be the first concrete experiences of my nurse education. Enough with the theory and models and concepts. Time to get my hands dirty!

Er, preferably not dirty dirty. My level of comfort re: nurse-patient skin-to-skin contact is pretty low. A friend of mine had a testicular examination and the doctor didn't wear gloves. That's a little TOO intimate, in my opinion....

As for previous semester, all of my marks are in and I got A- in all my courses. That puts me on the Dean's list for this semester which is an extremely UNEXPECTED surprise! I don't expect this achievement to last for long. I'll be happy with First Class Standing on my degree (above 3.4 GPA I think).

Of pure bliss.

This might be TMI (warning, very graphic photos of a cervix). I found it amazing to see the changes in the cervix throughout a woman's cycle. Who knew!

I am a 25 year old woman who has never given birth.

My intention with this project was to better understand my cycle and the changes in my cervix throughout the month. As a doula and student midwife, I used this project to help me see how a cervix might look different throughout the cycle in the absence of vaginal infections and to understand speculum exams. You may notice on the right side of some photos, some jagged looking skin, which is the remnants of my hy me nal r ing. [UgRN in: I've broken up this phrase to hopefully help slow/stop the amount of creepy traffic I get from it]   My os (opening to the cervix) is round because I have never given birth; the os becomes more of a slit after childbirth.

Each photo was taken at approx 10:00 pm every day starting the first day of my menstrual cycle. I re-used a plastic speculum and macro function of normal digital camera (and a very talented boyfriend with a headlamp). For the duration of this project, we used condoms as our birth control method so as not to introduce semenal fluid into the photoshoot. I did not use tampons or mooncups during my bleeding time either.

I had heart palpitations yesterday. You wouldn't even have needed a stethoscope. I think the prof could hear my heart beating from the front of the room.

Well, it appears I broke my own rule of 1 post every week. Sorry about that. I've been in a funk the last couple of weeks, wanting the Christmas break to come, exhausted from the work/school treadmill, and freaking out over tests. You know, the usual holiday stuff!

are just around the corner! Man, it's already been 12 weeks since I started nursing school. At the same time, it feels like way more than 12 weeks. Weird. It's a good feeling though because I'm still feeling really positive about my choices and about pretty much everything else.

Yesterday marked the two-week countdown until final exams start. I was studying hardcore all last week for my last Anatomy quiz, which was yesterday. It covered all kinds of things (as usual); this week's test was on the autonomic nervous system, the brain and cranial nerves, the spinal cord, and, um, the pelvic girdle. Seems a little illogical but whatev! It went really well I think, because it was only a few chapters the material was more manageable than the one before it. Plus, I started my new study plan of just sticking to the key concepts and I felt a lot more prepared.

So now a few of us are focusing on the Physiology final, which means I am back on material from the first week of September. It may has well as been last year because it's like I have never seen it before. Yikes!

This weekend I am helping out at a Christmas festival for children, in the "Hospital Room". I'm not exactly sure what will go on but basically kids get to play pretend in a hospital room, where we 'nurses' will help them hear their heartbeats, pretend to give them IV's, and put a little cast on their fingers that they can decorate with glitter and stuff. It sounds cute and kind of geared to helping kids become less afraid of hospital stays.

Other than that, I'm sorry for not posting more. I'm getting a little worn out between all the assignments. I'm really looking forward to the break!

Chief bylaw complaint of the day:

Somebody broke into my apartment and made their dog rape my dog! She's only 9 months old!

Response: comfort citizen who is hysterical over her immorality and ensuing canine abortion. Refer to police department.

Your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen.

Overheard in class yesterday while discussing cell phone use while driving:

I've been alive for 8,890 days, give or take. Of these, I can think of probably 100 that stand out significantly.

Today, I can tack on another. Probably almost the best day of my life so far.

Here's the story.

You may recall how a couple of weeks ago, I wrote a paper for my Discipline of Nursing class on the topic of Nursing Education. It wasn't quite a real paper but it was a fleshed out skeleton - outline, summary of the article, introduction, first body paragraph, and conclusion.

Well, my teacher started talking about those today. She was just ranting about how sub-par some of our writing skills are. She had them all in a pile and talked about them for about 15 minutes while we sat in fidgeting in our chairs. 15 minutes, gah!

So anyway, the class average was pretty crappy. 65% or somesuch. There was a huge spread in marks from 48% to 97%. So now we're all feeling REALLY scared. Just hurry up and give us the papers back, lady!

Mine was on top so I got to leave first. I grab the paper with the smiley face and she's like, uh, that one's not yours. Bummer!

So I grab it and I go out side to look and OH MY GOD I GOT 97% ON MY PAPER - THE HIGHEST MARK IN THE SECTION

I was ecstatic. I was shaking. I was speechless, although you'd never know it now! I would never ever have guessed that I would get a mark like that. Might I add, she was not giving those marks away! Some kids failed!

So some of you may remember how I've sometimes waxed poetic about how nice it is to finally be considered an 'achiever' instead of an I'll-take-70% passive slacker. How much I feel like I've accomplished more in the last year than I've ever achieved in high school. Well, I've also said how I feel like the competitiveness of nursing school means that only smart kids get in. So therein lies the source of my giddyness. Of the 'smart kids', I got the highest mark. Me. Too-cool-to-attend-school me. Jeebus, this is a big moment.

Sorry if my enthusiasm is turning your stomach. It's hard to express how stoked I am. I'm actually more excited now than I was when I got accepted.

So anyway, I'll just re-emphasize that this course is my favorite of the semester and my teacher is just awesome (and I'm not just saying that because of today). She's really vibrant and intelligent and loves to teach, that much is clear. She pulled me aside after class and said approximately, "Yours was the last paper out of 80 that I read, and I was so excited that you got it that I had to go and show all the other teachers, and we were all like, 'woo hoo!'" She also thought that I had a 'writing gift*'. Man, I was so honored to hear that from her. Today was just the best day.

At least until clinicals, when I can start actually being a nurse :)

*Probably everyone who reads this blog is like "WTF, writing gift? Have you SEEN how this girl abuses a comma splice?" And for that, all I can say is meh! :P

Somehow I got 88% on the anatomy test that I could swear I failed. OMG.

Yay! My research paper-slash-critique on Euthanasia is finished. I'm pretty proud of it. You know when you hit the zone and you just can't type fast enough? That was me.

Because I haven't had class all week, except Monday morning. My school coupled Remembrance Day with 2 professional development days and I don't have class on Friday. Sweet!

There are several blogs I subscribe to that haven't been updated in a l-o-o-ong time. So I am moving their links into this post and removing them from my sidebar. I'll link this post in the sidebar so they won't get lost. Just because they're old, doesn't mean they aren't worth reading! A Clinic RN and a Single Mom blogging through the depths of sanity. My life as I know it started with coffee and conversation in a smoky room. This is where I'm at now.

76%. Class average 64%. Not that great, but I'm stuck with it. I blame my all-encompassing study strategy... on the final, I will narrow my focus!

Because I haven't yet and I said I would. And because I read over my last post and probably everyone who visted today is wondering what the hell I was smoking. I should make a bumper sticker: "yes, you CAN be this tired!"

So on Sunday I was at the U until about 2200, and I came home and died until Monday morning. My Discipline class is the first one of the week and really interesting as usual, this week we talked about ethics. I love a good debate and there were many... i.e. ethical dilemmas, values, conflicts of interest. The best part of that class is how great my instructor is. She really loves to teach and she's really good at class management. Anytime we get off topic she smoothly brings the conversation back to the point, which I love.

After classes on Monday, I spent the rest of the evening cramming for Physiology.

Tuesday morning more of the same, and then I wrote the midterm at 1100. The questions that I knew, I knew very well, but the stuff I didn't know was awful. Specifically andrenergic and cholinergic receptors and their associated info... nicotinic, muscarinic, alpha, beta... WTF. So I was reasonably sure of 80% of the material and I made educated guesses on the rest (a careful deduction process by evaluating all of the answers, and picking the one that sounds most unlike the others)

I need to revise my revision strategies because I just don't have the time to study like I want to. Normally what I like to do is print off a copy of the slides to bring to class, write notes all over it, and then rewrite all of that into my notebook. Handwriting only, because after years at call centers, I have mastered the art of transcribing speech or notes onto the computer without really registering anything in my brain. Handwriting, I remember. So this strategy worked great for the last couple of years when the notes load wasn't so extreme. However, it's just not realistic anymore. By the time I finish rewriting all of the notes, I have a serious handcramp and I don't have time to actually study... hence my not knowing anything about cholinergic or andregenic receptors.

New plan. I am ONLY rewriting things that are on my "key concepts" list that the instructors hand out on the first day. This goes against my instincts since I like to know everything that was in the course but I think I'm going to have to start being more choosy about what I learn.

So, Wednesday afternoon while studying for Anatomy, I followed this strategy and it is working great. I actually remember where the sphenoid bone is. And what it looks like - yeah, sella turcica!

In regards to the presentation from last Thursday, the one on addiction that we got absolutely roasted for in the previously-unannounced critiquing part of the class, we got our mark back. 9/10! I'll take it. I was expecting way worse, from how the critique went.

We watched a bunch more presentations today (yes, I did go to class after all), and I brought an ice cream bar with me as comfort food because it is so frustrating. The instructor *gasp* changed her mind again: now we accentuate the positives and no more than 5 minutes giving feedback. Compared to my group's 15 minutes. I scanned the submitted feedback from the class: "maybe don't go so long", "no hands in pockets or GUM", "don't say 'um' so much", "maybe you should have handouts!". WTF, people, handouts? Are you going to pay for them? Alright, I'm biased, but everyone else's power points sucked ass in comparsion. Stretched clip art, 1000 fonts, not embedding media...

What I'm getting at here in an angry rant is that people made all kinds of great (ahem) comments on our presentation, but their presentations had the same problems if not more. One girl was so nervous I thought she might cry. 'Um' was the word of the day. I may have hand my hands in my pockets but at least I wasn't hiding behind the podium, you know? And I'm just pissed off about this whole thing because the point of the presentation was to MAKE A PRESENTATION ABOUT A HEALTH TOPIC. She didn't give a shit about our content after all our hard work. Her comments were made solely on our presentation skills. It was completely missing the point.

AND, here is my big point, she is fostering a completely negative attitude in the class. Instead of watching peoples' presentation and learning something about health issues, we are ignoring content and just staring at their flaws. Then she pinpoints someone and says "YOU: What could they improve on?" and all it does is make us pissed off at each other.

She is building the eat-your-young attitude. That is SO WRONG.

So I'm trying to formulate a scathing email to the dean but I can't seem to write coherently because I am so angry about it.

Anyway, quick change of topic, I also got my mark back on that awful paper I wrote for English. My strategy appears to be successful - I got one of the highest marks in the class and special mention! My nose is a whole new shade of brown. Also, I picked my English research topic. I'm going to write on euthanasia. If you have any good sources for further reading, let me know :)

My bed, of course.

Grouchy, brain-dead, and exhausted, that is. E may also stand for enthusiastic, because even though I'm all of these things, I still love the fact that I'm in nursing school.

Ahhh, at last.

Sorry about that. This past week has been back in the pressure cooker. 2 big assignments and a quiz were simultaneously due this week. One was a paper for Disc due this morning, the other is a presentation in Foundations due tomorrow morning, and last night after the paper I tackled the quiz. I was up until 0100 doing that, then up again at 0600 for class, and I'm working here until 2200. I hate Wednesdays, FYI.

My paper (my first nursing paper!) was on the topic of Nursing Education. The assignment was sweet. We had to go in the wayback machine and blow the dust off the historical Canadian Nurse periodicals, and pick one to write the paper. My article was rockin': "The Tragedy of Nursing Education" (Badgley, 1963).

I wish I had an at-home blood testing kit so that I could see just how much cortisol I've been producing over the last 8 weeks (holy shit, has it been that long already?! ...but on the flip side it already feels like forever)

Nursing school would all be about 1/3 as stressful if I didn't have to work 22.5 hours on top of everything. Damn you, rich kids with your no-rent-parent's-basement-homecooked-meals!

The presentation (Addiction) due tomorrow is pretty nice now that I've beat the hell out of it. I put in some shock videos like those found on methproject.org and Faces of Meth. IMO, sometimes having cool videos and transitions and doing fancy shit with my computer can make my project seem better than it is. Not my fault if the teacher gets caught up in the shinyness and doesn't notice that there might be content missing :)

No, no, I jest. I think we did a pretty comprehensive job. I might look into volunteering at a inner city health centre/needle exchange program... I really do need to volunteer on top of everything else. Scholarships are nigh unavailable unless you "show an interest".

Please, please, do not take any of my mumblecore too seriously. Yes, I am stressed. Yes, there are a lot of intense assignments, and very theoretical... but yes, I love every second of it!! Some of the instructors aren't that great, but some of them are amazing, and my classmates are just. like. me. It's definitely where I belong.

2 of my cousins are autistic and I did a lot of work with the mentally handicapped... this woman's video blew my mind. Completely and utterly. http://www.cbc.ca/national/blog/special_feature/positively_autistic/

and watching "17 Kids And Counting" in a state of morbid fascination.

Instructor takes basic concept and spends 10 minutes elaborating on it, saying the same thing in about 7 different ways.

Receives blank stares of boredom from class.

Interprets blank stares as not understanding the basic concept, continues to fumble with trying to explain it, muddying the point further.

Receives even blanker stares of boredom.

Interprets this, not as class-wide apathy, but as a personal mission for her to pound this basic concept into our heads with a half-hour explication complete with web searches.

Listen, lady, if you're going to just change all of the requisites for the group presentation a week before we present, I'm not going to be very sparing with the criticism.

To break free of my procrastination. Seriously, when I sit on the couch, I could sit for hours in a state of contemplation. It's comfort-induced paralysis.

On the whole military thing. I'm not going to get into it too much right now as I need to go to class, but suffice it to say that I'm not especially interested in going through nursing school and then losing all of my nursing skills in the army. Apparently they let those atrophy pretty bad. 

84%

Better than I expected - I'll take it!

I am confused by how my prof put the marks up on Blackboard, but I think I got 90% on the Discipline of Nursing midterm! Class average was high, 75% I think.

I will never, ever, forget how fast to do chest compressions again:

The Bee Gees' disco anthem "Stayin' Alive" from 1977 has 103 beats a
minute, close to the number of chest compressions needed for cardiopulmonary
resuscitation to work, according to a study at the University of Illinois
College of Medicine at Peoria.

Video here

Yes, it's true.

Here's the scoop: if I get selected, the Canadian Forces will pay for my tuition and books, and pay me a salary to go to school. During school, I don't have to do anything except school. During the summer they will fly me out to Quebec for military training. I can finish my education at my wonderful college and I will graduate with no debt.

The catch? 5 years mandatory service. That, my friends, is all.

Let's weigh the options here.

Civilian: Graduate in 4 years with approximately $50,000 in debt, before interest. Work 22.5 hours a week while juggling school and those f'ing "extracurricular activities" that might make me worth a scholarship. Work for 5 years to simultaneously pay down said debt, put money to RRSP, put money to first house and car, and cross my fingers that I don't get knocked up in the process - 'cuz wouldn't that just be ducky!

Military: Graduate in 4 years with perhaps $25,000 in savings. Be in awesome shape from Basic. Be an f'ing Nursing Officer. Be deployed to various awesome places to administer medical aid to those who need it. Work for 5 years getting experience in floor nursing, and then either love it or leave it.

Now, some of you may be thinking yeah, ugrn, the perks are because you might, uh, die.

A valid point.

However, I might also die in a tragic car accident next week and/or get a stingray to the heart when I next go snorkelling. You just never know!

But really, Canada's bloodlust isn't exactly roaring these days and the Tories say we're supposedly pulling out of Afghanistan by 2012. Even still, I would be second-line and pretty unlikely, by military standards, to bite it.

So that's my news for today.

Midterms, that is. I technically have one more on Monday, but it's English and therefore impossible to study for.

...While watching 101 More Things Removed From The Human Body.

Studying hard this weekend for my next midterm on Wednesday, the Discipline of Nursing. I got my marks back in Anatomy - 89% and Physiology - 88%! (Class average was 68%!) I earned those, and I'm very happy. Foundations I'm a little concerned about because it was a whole lot less 'fluffy' than I was thinking... instead of questions like, "Which is an example of epidemiology?" it's more like, "The LaLonde report identified the need for what?" and gave 4 very-plausible-almost-identical answers. So yeah, it was tough; and no, I didn't study nearly as hard as I needed to.

you will see me, wearing a mask and snorkel. 

...is brought to you by Foundations in Health:

So this week has been craaazy. I completely burned myself out after studying for anatomy, so that I didn't even want to pick up my notes for physiology until the morning of the test. A lot of the information from anatomy also corresponded to physiology though so I didn't feel too bad about it. One of the questions was identical: Which order do body structures go in? Cells, tissues, organs, organ systems, organism. That was an easy one. The rest of it was kind of challenging because it wasn't just regurgitated information, it was applied to different scenarios. I was reasonably sure of my answers on 49/60, and had to rethink the rest before I turned it in.

Wrote Anatomy midterm #1 this morning at 1100. I had been studying feverishly for it for the past week. Wayyy overstudied - we had 1h 20 minutes to complete the test, and it took me (and most of the class) 30 minutes. On almost every question, I was high-fiving my brain. I don't feel annoyed though at over-studying, because I really learned a lot this week and even if it's useless to me now that I can name the carpals, at some point the information will be useful.

...Is this book. Yesterday I spent 6 hours around town at various quiet locations studying anatomy. I was mostly studying the bones of the pectoral girdle and the upper limb. My eyes started blurring around the coronoid fossa, but I whipped out my handy Analogy Guide To Anatomy, that then took what I was trying to learn by forced memorization and spelled it all out so nicely:

Yesterday we had an interesting workshop on researching information and how to find what you want. Since I've been a student for a few years now, I've already attended similar workshops and I thought it would be boring to go again. My prof, however, told us: Even if you've already been to an information literacy workshop, I highly suggest you attend this one.

So wow, my road trip was fabulous. I shall detail it shortly... But first, the information you nursing-students-to-be are clearly dying to hear about: how the N95 mask fitting went!

The mask fitting is today, and the road trip is this weekend.

Ok, I seriously need to take better care of myself. I have slipped into the UgRN-Diet (tm) which consists of whatever carbs are handy if I absolutely need to eat something, supplemented with a daily Centrum Junior multi-vitamin (colors and flavors and shapes, oh my!).

Mom: So describe this feeling?

Me: I don't know, like I'm pumped on caffeine, but without the energy. I can't sit, I can't think, I'm sore all over, and I could probably fall asleep right now!

Anything else?

Yeah, one of my tonsils is, like, 4 times its normal size and hurts like a bitch.

Hmm. How have you been sleeping?

Good, for the most part. A solid 7.5 hours a night, I'd say.

How have you been eating?

Um, I forgot to bring my lunch so I had a bagel today and a bag of Sun Chips from the vending machine. Then I got tired so I had a coffee.

What?? When's the last time you had PROTEIN?

*thinks* Probably on... Saturday? We went out for sashimi.

Maybe, just maybe, that is your problem. You know, if you want to do this whole vegetarian-except-for-fish thing, you actually have to compensate at some point.