A love note.

Dear leisure time,

This weekend was wonderful. Thanks for letting me spend some time with my boyfriend, do a little knitting, and watch that great show about bonobos on PBS. I wish you wouldn't go so soon, but alas, I have thirty-eight meds to look up before clinicals tomorrow - and I think we both know that I can't get anything done with even the thought of you hanging around. At least I got the bathroom clean and the laundry done while we were together. I miss you already, and I'm hopeful that we'll meet again sometime.

Yours always,

Mandi

A breather.

This crazy week is finally drawing to a close. It's been exhausting, but good. I have one class this afternoon, work this evening, and an afternoon of clinicals tomorrow at the mental health facility. Then I'm completely free for two whole days! It will be lovely. I'll catch up on school reading and household chores, and Luis and I are planning to have dinner at our favorite restaurant.

Perioperative clinicals were really interesting. I got to watch four different surgeries, and I was fortunate enough to work with a surgeon and two anesthesiologists who were willing to explain things to me and really make it a great learning experience. I jokingly told my friend on the first day that I wanted to see a open abdominal surgery first, and I ended up doing just that. I figure if I can handle that, I can handle anything.

Yesterday I got my new tattoo. I really like it. She did a beautiful job with the colors, and it covered my old one really well. It's a lot more "me" than the other one was.

Exciting week:

This is my first week of med/surg clinicals, and I'll be spending tomorrow and Tuesday learning perioperative nursing. I'll get to provide some pre- and post-op care for surgical patients, but during the actual procedures my job is pretty much to stay out of the way. I feel like I'm sneaking in to a private party - like someone is going to discover me in the OR and tell me to get out.

On Thursday I have an appointment at a tattoo parlor. I got my first tattoo the ripe old age of nineteen, and for reasons that escape me now, I decided to get a Chinese symbol. It's supposed to mean 'happiness', but who knows what it really says (if anything at all.) I relied on a page out of a book at a tattoo shop to translate a difficult character-based language correctly? Anyhow, I've been wanting to redesign that tattoo for a few years, but I couldn't settle on what I wanted to put over it. I finally decided that the shape lent itself well to becoming a little oak tree. (My other tattoo is a sun - it's interesting that both of them will be images from the natural world. I think it's fitting.) I came up with some rough sketches, and I took them in to a tattoo artist last week. I like what she did with my idea, and I'm pretty excited. Sammy is coming with me, so I should have some pictures to post afterward.
Now that I think about it, I should have posted a photo and held a "redesign Mandi's tattoo" contest. I know there's some artistically inclined people reading my blog. Oh well. :)

LOST - UK Channel 4 Promo

This is a commercial that aired in the UK back when they first started showing LOST. It's creepily beautiful, with a great song by Portishead.

Welcome, little one...

My best friend's sister and brother-in-law welcomed a 7 pound, 4 ounce, healthy baby boy into the world this morning at 9:06am.

Congratulations to the new parents!

More miscellany.

Today I finished watching the past episodes of Lost - I'm ready for Wednesday night, when the new shows begin. I made good time getting through the previous seasons, considering I started at the beginning of season one on January 8th.

For my intro to psychiatric nursing course, I got to take a tour of the facilities at Missoula's Opportunity Resources. It seems like a great program - a non-profit, private organization that assists disabled individuals. They contract with different companies for in-house work, and in doing so are able to fund their program and at the same time teach valuable job skills to disabled individuals. Some of the workers, after training, are able to work in the community. The workers at Opportunity are able to set their own schedule, receive physical therapy and medial care right on site as needed, and interact with other people to form some social support networks. I really enjoyed the time we spent there, and I'm looking forward to our project - the nursing students will be teaching short health promotion classes for the workers. It's a great way to learn how to adapt nursing teaching to those with learning or physical disabilities.

As I watched the last episode of Lost season two Sunday, I started thinking about the fictional characters which I find most attractive. There seems to be a theme, and it's kind of interesting. I find that I'm really drawn to the male characters who are strong, protective, and a bit guarded, but I find them most appealing in their moments of vulnerability. Strange? Yeah, I thought so, too. Examples: Dr. Cox (from Scrubs), when he has his rare teary, sensitive moments. Jack (from Lost), when he's kneeling on the dock, bound at the wrists and held captive by the Others. My mom laughingly suggested that it's because I want to break them (them being men, I think) down, but I think it's probably more related to my desire to take care of people. I feel the overwhelming urge to protect them. I've always been an emotional person (for better and worse), so it's possible that the intense emotional situations being portrayed are also drawing me in. As I've gotten older, I've gotten better at using my head along with my feelings as I move through life. I'm still a work in progress, though. Luis is a wonderful balance to my emotional sensibilities, he's great at rationalizing and approaching things logically.

Wow, not sure where all that came from. Moving on...

This last weekend I attended the Montana Student Nurses Association state convention in Bozeman. It was fun to get away for a few days, and I got a lot of information about the profession of nursing here in Montana. I was elected (by default - I'm the only one who ran) to the the MSNA state board as the Newsletter Editor/Website Coordinator. I probably didn't really need any more work on my proverbial plate, but it sounded like fun. Plus, it's a great resume builder. I'm excited about getting involved in a student organization, and looking forward to the National Student Nurses Association convention in Anaheim this April.

I finally had a day off that was both warm enough and snow-free enough to calibrate the sensor on my ipod sport kit. On its default setting it thought I was running 6-7 minutes per mile, which is wishful thinking. I'm not a fast runner, but that's certainly not news to me. I got it reset, and it's reading out my standard 10-11 minutes/mile pace. I'm not fast, but at the pace I usually take I can run longer. I'm thinking of signing up for a race this summer, but more on that when I've got a plan...

My ipod shuffled me to Faure's Pavane this morning before class, and it's been in my head all day. It's haunting and beautiful, probably one of my top ten favorite pieces of music. Perhaps I'll listen to it once again before bed...

Holy cow.

Ten days have passed since my last post – they’ve flown by in a whirlwind of new information and general craziness. As predicted, this semester is keeping me very, very occupied. The bright side is that I'm learning stuff I really want to know, so that makes the thousands of pages of assigned weekly reading much more bearable.

Today was a tough day at the office. It takes a lot of work to work with people who have fundamentally different views from your own. I’m still working on it. Sometimes you just have to mentally agree to disagree...

Last night was our winter office party… it was fun, and for the first time in four years we won one of the door prizes! Well, by ‘we’ I mean Luis – he won a silver 4GB second generation ipod Nano. I’m pretty jealous. He’d been talking about upgrading to one of the newer ones, and now he has one.

Our pharmacotheraputics lab on Friday was spent practicing different routes of dispensing medications – the most interesting of which were the types of injections. I got to give a subcutaneous and an intramuscular injection. We used normal saline solution, and we practiced on each other. I was a little apprehensive the night before class, but I didn’t have any problems poking Jessica (a very nice girl in my class). Turns out that it doesn’t hurt at all to give an injection… Ha, little joke there. I don’t like the idea of causing anyone pain, but I know that it’s a moment of discomfort in order to preserve their health, or to alleviate their pain, or to help them get well. The benefit certainly outweighs the small amount of hurt.

Ugh. I suppose I should get to studying. 6:30 comes pretty early...

First day of school

Today was the first day of the new semester. Here's what I've learned so far:

I'm going to be in class/clinicals about 30 hours a week. I also work just under 20 hours a week. The sheer volume of coursework we're going to cover, as well as the increased difficulty of the curriculum means that I'm really going to have to utilize my time efficiently. Time management has always been a weak area for me, so I'm looking at this as an opportunity to improve.

I'm not the only one nervous about our upcoming clinical experience. Everyone in my class feels the same way.

For grins, I decided to weigh my textbooks - 48.8 pounds, not including my binders and course packets. I also have three more books yet to buy (smaller and lighter, thankfully!) I prefer to think of my books in terms of weight rather than cost – in pounds it’s kind of funny, in dollars it’s just plain painful...

We received our clinical groups and unit assignments today. My first clinical rotation is in surgery. Nothing like jumping in headfirst, eh?

Now it's time for bed. I'll end with a lovely quote from Virginia Henderson, one of the bright, influential nurses of the 20th century:

The nurse is temporarily the consciousness of the unconscious, the love of life for the suicidal, the leg of the amputee, the eyes of the newly blind, a means of locomotion for the infant, knowledge and confidence for the young mother, a 'mouthpiece' for those too weak or withdrawn to speak.

Cold, running, and Lost.

I returned to Montana just in time to enjoy an effing freezing cold snap. This morning when I woke the actual temperature was 0°, and in the past hour it's risen to a balmy 2°. God knows what the wind chill is out there - I have no intention of leaving my toasty apartment until I have to be at work this evening... The predicted low for tonight is -8°, but this should be the worst of it. We're supposed to slowly climb back into the 30's by next week.

The most frustrating part about the cold weather is the fact that I can't go running. Running is my main form of exercise (as well as stress release), and as I don't currently have a gym membership, other options are pretty limited. I have a strong desire to burn off any Christmas poundage I may have acquired during my three weeks of vacation-style eating, and even more importantly, I really want to play more with my new toy. For Christmas Emilio gave me a Nike + ipod sport kit, and a couple of lacelids to adapt it to my current running shoes. It's cool. Really cool. I used it once outdoors before it got too cold, and I can't wait to get back out...

Most of my free time this week has been spent on my new addiction – my Mother got me hooked on LOST. I'd watched a few episodes of season one and liked it well enough, but I worked on Wednesday evenings and couldn't follow it. Then last week Mom and I started watching her season two DVDs. I got hooked hardcore. I returned home and started the series from the beginning - Luis and I are getting through a disc a day. Why the furious pace? I picked a poor time to become obsessed with a television show – this semester is going to be a toughie, and I'm still working too. I figure if I can get through most of the old episodes before classes get into full swing, I can spare an hour a week to keep up with it.

Ha. My Weather Channel desktop icon has informed me that it's dropped back down to 0°. Dang, that's cold.

Resolve.

I will become a better listener.

I will strive to be more understanding.

I will eat more veggies.

I will not allow myself to entertain unkind thoughts about others.

I will switch from SPF 15 to SPF 30.

I will spend more time considering life from others' points of view.

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Best wishes to you all for a peaceful and contented 2007.