And now, I wait

I finished up my last final of the semester yesterday. It was in my A&P II class. I am sitting on the line between an A and a B so my A is riding on how well I did on the final. I need this A. If I don’t get it, I have to take the class over again in order to get enough points for my program which means that I won’t be able to apply for the Spring 2011 start. I feel that I did pretty well on my final so I am not too worried, but it is still at the back of my mind that I could possibly come up short. I’m trying not to think about it too much right now though or I know I will stress myself out more than necessary. (notice I said trying. I’m not sure that it’s working as I am pretty stressed about it)

I am also waiting for my social security card to come in. I’m pretty sure I haven’t mentioned (possibly because I was so pissed that I have pushed it out of my mind) that the birth certificate I couldn’t find? Yeah, I didn’t even need the damn thing. Just my driver’s license. I did ask the lady if she would please just pretend that she needed to see it though so I don’t feel like a complete moron for tearing my house apart looking for it, then paying the $55 to have it overnighted to me. I guess it helps to read the fine print. As soon as it comes in, I will be headed up to the school to get registered for my CNA class.

So now, I wait.

Have I mentioned that I HATE waiting?

Sunday’s Specialty – 1st Edition – Neurology Nursing

I am so excited about this first edition. When I contacted Jo over at Head Nurse to see if she would be interested in contributing I was meet with an enthusiastic “hell yeah”. I was honored that she was so willing to share her expertise with us. She is an amazing blogger. She tells her stories with honesty and hilarity all in one. She loves her job and it shows. I absolutely love reading about her experiences and am so thrilled that she agreed to share the love with us.


So without further ado, here is our first edition of Sunday’s Specialty. A look into the world of Neurology Nursing brought to us by Head Nurse. After you read about it, head on over (no pun intended) to Head Nurse to read more about life in Neurology.


Neuroscience, or: Brains: They're not just for zombies any more


I am a neuroscience nurse. Brains and spines and peripheral nerves are what I do. I got into the field totally by accident and stay in it for two reasons: first, I love what I do; second, when you say, "I work in neuroscience" to a skeevy guy at a bar, he immediately fails to make any nurse-related jokes he had in store and instead looks at you with new respect.


Neuroscience is interesting. It's never the same two days in a row. It requires smarts, creativity, endless patience, and a certain level of steely determination. It also keeps you young, makes your skin clear and luminous, and improves the color and texture of your fur.



Okay, not really. But you do get to work with some amazingly smart people.



WHAT THE HECK IS THIS "NEUROSCIENCE" THING, ANYHOW?


Neuroscience is anything that has to do with the brain, the spinal cord, or the peripheral nervous system. Anything from brain tumors to spine injuries to strokes to MS, ALS, or CJD can fall under this category. Basically, if you have a problem in your central or peripheral nervous system, you're a neuroscience patient.


The fascinating thing about neuroscience is this: once a surgeon gets his fingers into your brain (as it were), everything else in your body is affected. I tell my patients who are recovering from brain surgery that their recovery process is very much like trying to walk on a sprained ankle: the portion of their body that's getting the most use is also trying to heal at the same time.


This means, realistically, that I have to be aware of everything from heart rhythms to electrolyte balances to muscle strength on an hour-by-hour basis. Brains and spines and nerves affect *everything*, so you have to be flexible and have strong nursing skills all around.


WHAT I DO ALL DAY


Basically, caring for the neurological or neurosurgical patient is the same as caring for any other patient, with a few little tweaks.


If it's a patient with a spine injury, a lot of what I do is focused on preserving or restoring any function the patient can have below the level of the injury. Skin care and physical therapy are huge in these cases, and the patients can be very labor-intensive--things tend to go wrong suddenly with high spine injuries.


If it's a patient whose post-op from having a brain tumor removed, there's a fine line I have to walk between pain control and sedation. There are also issues with salt-wasting and diabetes insipidus and seizure control, depending on where the tumor was. And, of course, there are hourly neuro status checks, to make sure that nothing's busted loose or changed inside the brain.


If it's an occlusive stroke I'm dealing with, there's the whole science behind balancing declotting the area with TPA versus not allowing a reperfusion injury to occur. If it's somebody who's got one-sided neglect, care can range from teaching them that one side of the universe still exists to moving everything in the room around to reinforce that concept.


If it's something that affects the peripheral nervous system, or something like MS or CJD, well, whole books have been written on nursing care in those situations. Let's just acknowledge that the nursing care for patients with peripheral nerve injuries or demylenating diseases is complex and creative.


WEIRD STUFF YOU WON'T SEE ANYWHERE ELSE


Drains coming out of people's backs. Drains coming out of their brains. Real live cases of mad cow disease, without the cow exposure. Strange things nobody can identify. Worms in brains. Foreign objects in brains. People drilling into other people's brains at the bedside.

THE UPSIDES AND DOWNSIDES


Let's cover the downsides first: both the patients and the doctors tend to be strange in the extreme. If you don't have a lot of patience for deciphering what your patient who can't talk is trying to say, and if you don't have a lot of patience for doctors who apparently weren't raised on this planet, you won't last long in neuroscience. The work is hard--sometimes physically as well as mentally challenging--and sometimes heartbreaking...but that's the same all over nursing.


The upsides to doing neuroscience are these: you never get bored. Neuroscience is something that garners more respect than other fields, because it's seen as the province of extremely smart people. It's sexy as hell. And, if you're a big ol' geek like me, you'll find yourself fitting in perfectly with the group of smart, geeky, curious people you work with.

SOUNDS GREAT! WHERE DO I SIGN UP?


As I said, I fell into this specialty entirely by accident. If you want to do neuroscience on purpose, though, I would recommend that you find a good teaching hospital with a good neurosurgery and/or neurology reputation to work at. I emphasize teaching hospital because you'll have a whole lot to learn, and teaching hospitals attract people who, well....like to teach.


Med-surg experience is not necessary before you go into this specialty. The care is weirdly different in a lot of ways from straight med-surg, so the two don't overlap much.


As far as education goes, a good grasp of where the brain is (on the top) and where the spine is (down the back) is really all you need. Protocols differ widely from facility to facility, so you're likely to learn everything you need to know, and then some, once you start work.


I love my job. It makes sense to me, what the brain does and how it affects the body. I love my coworkers: they're smart, funny, and insane. I love my patients, who show me all the weird quirks the human machine can develop after an injury to its computer system. I say to all of you who might be interested in neuroscience as a career, c'mon in! The CSF is fine.

 
Thank you so much Jo, for giving us an incredible look into the world of Neurology Nursing!!

Cause I'm hardcore like that

I got my HESI Admission Assessment Exam review book in yesterday so I thought I would put it to some use.

Introducing....

After some thought I decided to go ahead with my idea on a weekly post. If it works, great! If not, at least I tried right? Oh, and by the way, we are NOT calling this a meme. I have no idea what a meme is. To me, it sounds like some kind of strange animal.

So here’s the deal. Every Sunday I will be highlighting a different nursing specialty. There are so many options out there for nurses. I thought doing this would not only help me, but also any other pre-nursing or nursing students who might be reading my blog. It will give us a chance to see all the different aspects of nursing available to us, maybe even ones we have never considered before.

I am looking for some guest bloggers to help me out with this. Especially if you are already working in a particular specialty. There is nothing better than hearing it straight from someone who has the experience. If you are a nursing student who already knows where you want to end up and would like to guest blog about your chosen specialty, I would love to hear from you as well!

If you are interested in guest blogging about a specialty, you can contact me here for more details. Also, if there is a particular specialty you are interested in hearing about let me know!

P.S. For all my artsy readers, feel free to re-do the image at the top if you feel you can do a better job. It won’t hurt my feelings. Really.

How stupid can you be?

Online courses seem to bring out the dumb in some people. I have had my frustrations over the past year taking online courses, from people who don’t use spell check, to the ones that use “text speak” – C’mon people, this is a college course you are taking – to the ones that simply cannot operate a computer. (My philosophy is that maybe they should require students to take a computer course, or pass some kind of computer competency test before allowing them to take a course that relies upon having computer skills but I digress.)

This one takes the cake though. I mean really? Who does crap like this? In my Art Appreciation class, we have to give our thoughts on a specific piece of artwork, or the artist, or even what they went through at the time. (key phrase here: our own thoughts). Pretty much par for the course in online classes: essays, discussions, more essays. Yesterday, as I was reading through the posts of my fellow cyber classmates, I came across a post from this chick. As I was reading it, my BS meter was going off pretty strongly. I remember her previous posts, and not to sound arrogant, but they were definitely NOT good, or at least not even as close to good as this particular post was. So being the untrusting soul that I am, I took the first sentence in her post, popped it into Google, and BAM! first result was word for word from Wikipedia, along with several other sources, all word for word. I take the second sentence of her post and this time the first result is a New York Times article from an art critic! Word.for.freakin.word.

Busted.

I probably shouldn’t have done this, but I called her on it. “I thought these discussions were supposed to be our own thoughts on the subject. I am interested in hearing what YOU think of this work” I realize that the teacher probably would have noticed it herself, I mean it was THAT obvious, but I couldn’t help myself.

I get so angry when I work my ass off to really look at the art (or whatever subject I might be studying at the time) and read my textbook and try to understand what I am looking at so I can form my thoughts into a semi educated discussion and some dumb girl plagiarizes her posts. Don’t you think I would rather copy some sentences from someone else and use that as my own post? It would definitely save me a hell of a lot of time.

If you are going to be that shady, then at least paraphrase what you find rather than posting it word for word so anyone can pick it up in Google and realize what a complete idiot you really are.

Possible idea - Weekly Post

I have been pondering this idea for a few weeks now. Something that I wanted to start doing here on my blog every Sunday. I'm just not sure if I want to commit to it or not just yet. I don't want to turn this blog into another "homework" assignment and end up hating it.

I really think it would be helpful not only to myself, but possibly others out there like me, who are either getting ready to enter nursing school, are thinking about entering nursing school, or are maybe there already but don't know where they want to end up.

I'm still thinking on it. I really, really want to do it, but I just don't know if I will have the time to take on something like this or not. I also thought about having some guest posters every now and then for it too, but not sure if I could get anyone to do that or not.

I suppose I could just try it out for a few weeks and see how it goes.

Maybe I will start it next Sunday?

Why can't anything ever be easy??

I have torn the house apart trying to find my damn social security card. I have no idea where it is. I need it in order to register for my CNA course. Looks as though I am going to have to go to the social security office to get a new one. (If you remember, government agencies and I do not go well together. SO not looking forward to that trip)

But wait...

In order to do that, I need my birth certificate, which must be off on some tropical island having a few cocktails and living it up with my social security card because that document is no where to be found either.

So now I have to order a copy of my birth certificate, wait for it to come in, then go to the social security office to get a new one of those, wait for THAT to come in, and HOPEFULLY have the damn thing in time to register for this CNA course in July. Oh, and hopefully there will be open spots for it by the time I get all this crap together.

It would be nice for at least ONE thing to go my way every once and a while.