I survived my first week of clinicals, although this is a little late. I'm placed at a small long term care facility a few miles away from our house. My unit is half open and half locked down since it houses dementia patients that like to wander (I think I would be one of those if I happen to have dementia). The first day was a lot of orientation stuff and getting used to the facility, but all of our patients are very nice. I have been able to feed a few of our residents (they eat more than I do sometimes!) and have gotten to know a few of their stories. I was on the "open" front end of the unit last week and will be going to the "closed" back half of the unit Wednesday/Thursday this week. My patient was able to feed her self and I practiced using a Hoyer lift (it's like a sling that can move people in and out of bed) since she wasn't able to get in and out of bed on her own. She was a little cranky in the morning so it was hard for me to not try to make her feel better while I was giving her a bed bath, but I think it just made her mood worse. I also don't feel totally comfortable turning patients by myself yet, so I had one of my collegues help me. I'm sure that stuff will come in time, but I really just don't want to hurt them (they all seem kind of frail!).

Anyway, we were so tired on Thursday after our clinical that everyone fell asleep until at least 8 pm. I woke up at 9, decided I had to have dinner so I made pasta and watched So You Think You Can Dance results. Our lives are so exciting. It seems like every weekend we talk about going out or exploring somewhere new but by the time we get there we all just want to sleep. I hope that we get to hang outside this weekend, though, since it hasn't been really nice yet and we haven't gotten to go to the beach.

Nic has been super awesome and had me and a couple of our friends work out with him on River Campus (which is just main campus but they call it something else since there's a RIVER next to it. Ridiculous). We did a sprinting work out today and I'm not sure if I'll be able to walk tomorrow (we did a bunch of lunges last week and I really couldn't) but I like our bonding time together :)

We finished our pharmacology/pathophys class today, have an exam in our clinical class tomorrow and have a paper due in our last genetics class Friday. 3/5 classes will be done Friday at 2:30 pm! In one month, I'll be one third done the whole program!