In the home stretch

I am so excited knowing that I have less than 2 weeks left of my first year of nursing school. My last day of clinicals was on Friday. I had 3 clinical days back to back. It was the best week of clinicals by far. I continued caring for 2 patients and I felt really good about the whole experience, except for those few times I had to wipe one of my patients butt. Other than that stinky experience, I really enjoyed it. I was organized with my meds, assessments, labs, feeding, discharging, I&O's, charting & documenting. I was on FIRE!!! Yeah baby!

On Friday I had another "almost passing out" experience. Bear in mind, I ate at 5:30am, and it was 10am when I was asked to go into another patients room to watch a chest tube insertion. I really didn't know where the chest tube went and what it went into. Well, I soon found out. The surgeon cut a 1-inch incision between the 8th & 9th rib. She moved the tissue apart and then clamped a tube and inserted the tube into the left lower lobe. When she punctured the lung, I heard a loud burst of air come out of the lung. That's when it hit me. I started to feel funny and kind-of nauseous. I stepped out of the room heading straight for the break room. I downed a granola bar and a cup of orange juice. After 2-3 minutes I was fine and went back into the room. At that time the surgeon was taping and securing the tube and the procedure was just about done. The pt. was giving me a hard time for feeling woozy while he was awake for the entire thing! Next time I'll try to eat something before I watch something of that caliber.

Endoscopy

I had a one-day rotation at Endoscopy. I was able to watch many procedures. Some were interesting, some were not. That day, I watched 5 colonoscopies, 3 esophogealgastroduodenoscopies and one bronchoscopy.

I learned one thing: If you've seen one colonoscopy you've seen them all. They all look so similar...except for the one patient who didn't prep their bowels very well. There was sticky yellow feces that attached to the colon wall so the MD couldn't visualize any abnormalities in the bowel lining. I did see one pt. with diverticulitis. I did my research paper on diverticula disease and it was great to see it live on the screen. There were many pts. who had polyps and they were removed for lab testing to determine if it is cancerous. After standing on my feet all day I was ready to go home. Endoscopy is definitely not an area I am interested in. On to the next one....

My patient with the rod

It has been a while since posting last. I have been super busy. On the floor I worked on, most of my patients were post-op orthopedics, with hip replacements, knee replacements...etc. Nothing real interesting. Well after being on that floor for 4 weeks, I moved to another floor where patients with more needs were. The day prior, I had two patients. My instructor encouraged me to take 3 patients. Before I left I chose a patient with a diagnosis of "Urinary foreign obstruction". Before digging into his file I just thought he was passing stones through his urethra. Well, I was a little naive. My patient was an older middle-age man who had a friend insert an aluminum rod into his urethra and went into his bladder. It got stuck and had to be surgically removed.
He was being discharged the day I had him and I had to teach him how to care for his foley catheter for the week after he went home until his appt. with the urologist. He was a sick and perverted man. He was also rude to me and I just couldn't wait until he was discharged. I worked as hard as I could but he had no ride home for over 3 hours. I think he was going through some sort of alcohol or drug withdrawl, which could explain his rudeness. I don't think I'll be seeing another man ike that...or at least I hope not.