Mini-mental assessment = bad idea

We learned how to do a neurological exam in Nursing Assessment today and one of the questions you're supposed to ask to judge the person's cognitive function/general awareness is, "Can you tell me what day it is?" Wrong question to ask. I have no idea. I had to remind myself it's Wednesday, and I had NO idea what the date was - that's why Word automatically finishes that stuff for you. I've been so engrossed in following the APNN calendar that I don't look at the date, just what I have to do and when. It's a little better now that I synced my Google calendar with my iTouch since that has the date right at the top of the column, but other than that I just go from house to class to lobby to lab to class to lobby to class to house (or some variation).

In lab yesterday we got to draw all over our partner's face with markers to help us remember where nerves, lymph nodes, sinuses and muscles were. Luckily "washable" really means "washable" for the markers we had. The coolest thing I got to see so far was probably the tympanic membrane. You never really wonder about how the inside of your ear looks until you have to carefully stick something into someone else's ear to look at it. Usually it looks nice and flesh colored and the membrane is shiny and pearly gray. You can even see one of the smallest bones in the body. Super cool, even if it was a little stressful and awkward at first.

There is a path that goes along the Erie Canal that I explored yesterday in the drizzle and a little more today. It's pretty nice and I've heard it's really really long. You don't miss green plants and trees until you don't have them anymore. I am more than happy to be back in the northeast and to jump in/avoid the puddles on my way to and from class.

Our study break tonight is a trip to Abbott's for some (apparently amazing) custard. Reward time! Our first assignment, dosage calculations, is due tomorrow and our first tests are on Monday. The stress level hasn't increased too much, but it's probably because I'm still in the honeymoon phase - I'm not bored in class! My roommates are great! Maybe by our first clinical I will feel differently. But for now, I love nursing school! :)

I can't find my brachial artery.... Am I dead?

We got our stethoscopes and iTouches this week, so we have all been playing around with our new toys. In lab we learned how to take blood pressure, heart rate, and temperature as well as do a patient assessment. The hardest part so far has been finding brachial arteries and learning the adjectives used to describe a patient's appearance. "Normal" means nothing (unless you're talking about head shape), so "symmetrical," "adequate nutrition," and "skin appears to be age stated" are now floating around in my head while I wander through Target, Best Buy or the gym. In class I'll make sure I can still find my own brachial artery when we get a break. You get over feeling weird about touching people pretty quickly since you're feeling their arm for 10 minutes trying to find their pulse or cutting off the blood supply to their hand since the gague on the little pump up ball is stuck on their blood pressure cuff. Isn't it great we get this all out of the way on each other and not on our patients?


Everyone that we (we being my house) are friends with are really fun. One of my friends was at the men's NCAA lax championship this weekend in Boston (bummer) but the girls that live down the street came out with us. I forgot what it was like to have fun with your roomies! Audrea took pictures to document our ridiculousness, but I don't think they do us justice. The club was actually pretty big with a huge deck- who knew Rochester had a night life? Unfortunately, going out Friday night ruined a lot of our Saturday since all we wanted to do was sleep. Nic and I went to go get printers and covers for our iTouches so at least we were out in the world a little bit. Audrea, Anna and I watched a movie from Ghana, which was funny but didn't have an ending, and then Step Up so Anna could see just how cute Channing Tatum really is. While Nic went to the gym, Aundrea, Anna and I went for a walk around our neighboorhood and found a little strip mall that has Chinese, Thai, pizza and BBQ places in it. Obviously, we went home, got wallets and got dinner at the BBQ and Chinese places. Delightful.

I think I have figured out Skype. I've video chatted with Cassandra and typed to Seedling, but now I have made a call to Stuart! I was proud of myself. Instead of reading or working on taking blood pressures, I talked to Stuart and had way too much delicious food. I think it's a solid way to spend a Saturday night.

I suppose I should go try to read about pharmacology or something. Maybe I'll just listen to my heart with my stethoscope instead.

Back to school, back to school

Orientation wasn't too bad this morning, except that they split up me and my roommates! It's like they knew we were living together - bummer. We each met some other students who seemed pretty cool, so it wasn't a total loss. We also had our first class - pathophysiology/pharmacology. For me, it was basically a review of the last two weeks of psychopharm with Dr. Folkerts plus some nursing stuff (like what to ask a patient during an interview and how to ask it). In class we also got to look at a case study and found out that we have to pass a test sometime next month in order to distribute medications when we do clinicals. Yikes? The professor said that it's usually the math section that gets people in trouble. Math? What? Good thing I brought my calculator. The practice problem and post test assignments are due sometime next week and looking at the post test it seems like the factor-label method. Who knows - I have yet to read chapter 5.

Be ready to be impressed - for the first time in my academic career, I have read all of the assigned reading for a class ahead of time. I haven't watched the videos, and still need to catch up on pathophys/pharm reading, but I am totally ready for nursing assessment tomorrow. I think. That's the only class we have tomorrow since iTouches, stethoscopes, uniforms and pictures are all scheduled to be received, fitted and taken. When my "blurb" and picture goes on the website, I will post it :) Hopefully I will look happier than I do in my ID picture and have less of a brontosaurus neck. Good thing I like dinosaurs.

Everyone talks about how awesome Rochester is in the summer and how much stuff there is to do - I'm not totally sold that I'll get to do any of it, but our plan is to try to get to as many street fairs as possible. If I can, I would love to at least have Friday night off from reading, even if the texts aren't as dry as they could be. We will just have to see how it goes.

Another 8 am-4 pm day awaits so I am off to bed!

From summer camp to real college

Twelve hours from now, I will be in the middle of orientation at the University of Rochester for their Accellerated Program for Non Nurses. Two weeks ago, I running between UPS and my apartment trying to ship the contents of my room across the country. I don't really have a problem with my lack of summer vacation since I think this will be the most rewarding choice I've ever made, but it's a little crazy to think that three weeks ago I didn't have a degree and now I'm starting a second one.

We drove down on Saturday, through the Adirondak forest of course, and I finished unpacking and decorating my room on Sunday. I tried to be concious of where I placed things on my wall so it wouldn't look quite as helter-skelter as my other place did (pictures will come soon! Cass already had the video tour when we Skyped). I'm missing recent pictures of everyone, but I'm sure I'll make up some excuse to go to Walmart and print them out instead of studying soon. I have all of my summer books (most of them I had ordered before graduation) and some of them are pretty intimidating. Luckily, it seems like those are the books that are required for the year and not only a single class. I'm crossing my fingers that the pharmacology class won't be like psychopharm was last semester - it will take an amazing amount of will power to pay attention if it is. It seems like some of our classes, like genetics, are online, but I guess I'll find out tomorrow! I have already started reading for my Nursing Assessment class. I'm an over acheiver? I think it's more paranoia - I can't recall a class that I ever actually read for at Pepperdine - sorry Brewster, Vandergon, et al.! My lack of motivation to read doesn't mean I liked you any less. Of course I would look up certain topics in the texts for micro or biochem, but it wasn't like I actually read the entire chapter like I was supposed to. Hopefully that will change this year... or at least this summer.

My roommates are amazing. Two are from Washington and actually went to the same school (but didn't know each other and graduated in different years) and my other roommate is from Chigago but originally from Ghana. I, of course, am the baby of the group. I think I'm at least 2 or 3 years younger than all of them though. I could be the youngest in this program (which I am very tempted to believe) but even some of the stuff my roommates have done makes me jealous. Two of them have worked with HIV/AIDS patients (in clinics and hospices) and the other has been a treatment counselor. What did I do? Wait for a plate reader from Finland for an entire semester. Faux volunteer at Venice Family Clinic. Student wedding assisting. Fitness classes. PVC special events. The list of crazy jobs goes on. Really? Really. At least I'm not the only one who didn't study abroad! I have already made goals of things I would like to learn from my roommates. From Aundrea, I would like to learn patience. From Nic, I would like to learn Vietnamese and from Anna I would like to learn Twi, a language spoken in Ghana. We all want to find the gym to make sure we don't get too stressed out and we all share a similar sense of humor so I am very optimistic about our year together.

We have done a little exploring so we know where Target, Walmart, Best Buy and the mall are (they're all close together), but got completely lost trying to explore downtown. Nic fell asleep in the back seat, so Aundrea and I were left to wonder what the heck the Inter-Loop was and why the lawyers on the billboards were so creepy. There are a lot of parks within the city and campus is really pretty. Our campus (the medical one that has the Schools of Nursing, Medicine and Dentistry) is within walking distance, so we will be getting some exercise each day going to class. We found the soccer stadium (go Rochester Rhinos!) and a baseball stadium as well. Rochester apparently has professional lacrosse and U of R has a football team (!) - goodbye summer camp, hello college! I'm more than sure this program will be super intense and a little crazy at times, but if I can't find a way to relax I will go crazy. Besides, after junior year I can handle anything.

I keep expecting Cassandra, Dana, Sansone and Seed to pop up from behind a bush or ring the doorbell. Eventually that expectation will go away... I think.