nurse anyone?

[sirrahbed]

Hi I have some funny and happy memories of nursing school that I like to tell folks. Things have probably changed quite a bit since I went to school in the late 70's. But, one of my favorites was *learning to give injections*. We had to partner off and practice on each other with normal saline. I was with my best friend and our instructor was Helga the Hun (j/k) but everyone was scared of her and we were soooo nervous. My friend Carolyn was just about perfect in everything but this instructor was SO intimidating. Anyway, I stood there waiting for her to give me my injection and suddenly I have blood all over my arm and it is on Carolyn's finger's too She had stuck the needle through her finger and into my arm That instructor - I had never seen her laugh before but that day I think she wet her pants Carolyn is now a retired Nurse Practitioner but when I see her we still giggle over it.

Then there was "Mr. Penis" We did not really know what the clinical was going to be that day because the instructor brought in a plain black briefcase and a plastic bag full of paraphernalia. hee hee - well it turned out we were going to learn how to catheterize a male patient. She whips open the briefcase and LO and behold - a soft vinyl male torso with.....Mr. Penis!!

Once I started working for real, I was a very picky and slightly neurotic nurse. I made a mistake one day and was about ready to quit I felt awful!! My supervisor saw what a wreck I was and did not write me up. I was working the OB ward and gave a new mother a 9AM dose of PeriColace (laxative) that she had already had at 9PM as intended. Guess she had no problems going.

My favorite work of all was RN on a regular med/surg unit and on the graveyard shift. Things are pretty quiet before it is time to start pre-ops and what I loved to do was very old fashioned (my mom was an Army nurse in WWII) and go around to see who was having trouble sleeping and offer a backrub. I don't think nurses today have the time for stuff like that I LOVE caring for the elderly.

I also have my teaching degree in Education/Literature, but Nursing is special and wonderful. It DOES take a toll emotionally - at least it did on me - but I also have wonderful and sweet memories of soothing frightened folks and holding hands - simple things like that. I am also very detail oriented and nursing really challenged me more than any of my other classes - I loved the learning and staying on top of every drug, treatment and new development in medicine. I still read like crazy and try to keep up. My original major was Pre-Med, but....well, I wanted to get married and did not have the commitment to stick with THAT program - but glad I went with nursing or I would have missed the one-on-one that I liked the best.

My sister, persianmom (Carol) is a nurse and is currently working - she may be able to tell you some stories too. We sat the other day and laughed so hard because she had her schooling recently while mine was so long ago. She has unit dose injections and I had to calculate and draw everything up (take glass ampules, wrap the neck with gauze and break them to withdraw the injectable for everything) Only a few meds still come this way as most everything is unit dosed. We also did not have ANY bubble pack tablets or pills. Everything on the drugcart was done by hand. Tubex was new and exciting and now it is a joke Tubex is like a metal syringe contraption that you load with a glass cartridge for injections. We thought they were sooooo high tech!! Anyway - we had some good laughs about the way *I* had to do things.

ENJOY!!