30 January 2010
27 January 2010
Wordless Wednesday
This is my mom, Claire & I at the zoo
this past summer- Claire's first trip.
Apparently that pretzel was extremely tasty
since she couldn't look at the camera!
25 January 2010
Not Me Monday!
Who? Me? NEVER!!As of 10:20pm last night, I certainly was not frantically rushing around to complete an online testing assessment, a 5-page worksheet for clinical and review for two quizzes, all of which are TODAY. Nope. I had all of this stuff done way ahead of time, completely finished by last week. Huh-uh. Not me!!
23 January 2010
The Journey of Caring
While working on the beginning of a project, I thought it might be interesting to share the project with you as it progresses.
I have a semester-long project to complete, called "The Journey of Caring". According to my syllabus: The "Journey of Caring" is an interactive approach to assist beginning nursing students to explore the art of nursing in addition to the science while developing clinical decision making skills. The journey will prepare you to recognize issues experienced by older patients and their families as they navigate the health care continuum. The project involves not only the art of nurisng but also addresses the general education skills of writing, interaction with the public, economics, nutrition, ethics, values, social issues, and problem solving. The project allows you to gain basic information about the health care environment outside the hospital while also building your time management skills. The project will include the use of communication tehcniques and understanding of yourself and how that knowledge might impact your relationship with clients."
The first part of the JOC project was to write a paper about "The Art of Nursing"-- reflecting on why we chose to become a nurse, our perception of what a nurse is, describe what caring means to us with a personal example to support the description, and to address how we feel about aging.....
I have a semester-long project to complete, called "The Journey of Caring". According to my syllabus: The "Journey of Caring" is an interactive approach to assist beginning nursing students to explore the art of nursing in addition to the science while developing clinical decision making skills. The journey will prepare you to recognize issues experienced by older patients and their families as they navigate the health care continuum. The project involves not only the art of nurisng but also addresses the general education skills of writing, interaction with the public, economics, nutrition, ethics, values, social issues, and problem solving. The project allows you to gain basic information about the health care environment outside the hospital while also building your time management skills. The project will include the use of communication tehcniques and understanding of yourself and how that knowledge might impact your relationship with clients."
The first part of the JOC project was to write a paper about "The Art of Nursing"-- reflecting on why we chose to become a nurse, our perception of what a nurse is, describe what caring means to us with a personal example to support the description, and to address how we feel about aging.....
Journey of Caring
The Art of Nursing
As cliché as it sounds, I still believe that nursing is all about “helping people.”
I was seven years old when I first decided what I wanted to be “when I grow up”, and I haven’t changed my mind even once over the last twenty years. My mother was in an extremely serious car accident, and when she was released from the hospital, she and I stayed with my grandparents until she was completely recovered. It was there that I dutifully helped my grandmother change my mother’s positions, clean her up, and change her bandages every single day. In the niaveness that only a young child can possess, I truly thought that I was solely responsible for her progress; and although I was saddened by her injuries, by the end of her recovery period, I had decided that I wanted to be a nurse.
One of my first patients as an STNA was a 36 year old male who had been completely paralyzed from the shoulders down from a motorcycle accident. When he first entered my facility, he was a complete-care patient, requiring a Hoyer lift to transfer him and a very minimum of two staff members to assist with any type of care. He was at the facility for a full three months. On the day he was discharged, I wheeled him to the front door for his ride home. He stood up from his chair and WALKED to the vehicle with the help of walker. Although I know that the therapy department played the biggest role in getting this patient to that point, that moment to me was everything that nursing is about.
Regardless of what the task is, how long it’s going to take, or how difficult it’s going to be, we as nursing staff are there to help the patients who need us. It’s our job to accept them at their worst/weakest condition and to do everything in our power to either bring them back to their best or to make them comfortable and dignified until they can no longer survive in that condition.
As a typical person, there is a part of me who doesn’t have any problem with getting older. I welcome the Hallmark idea of growing old with my husband, having a large family of children and grandchildren who come over for Sunday dinner every week after church, and doing cliché “old person” things like knitting, playing bingo, and doing crossword puzzles.
And then I go to work. I take care of people as young as 60 years old all the way into their 90’s. I see the 60-year-old who looks like she’s in worse shape than the 94-year-old because she cannot function physically or very well mentally—she drools, she can’t speak, she can’t feed herself, her food is pureed so she doesn’t choke, her main source of transportation is a wheelchair because she can’t walk, she’s incontinent, and she can’t even do something as simple as scratching her nose if she has an itch. I turn the corner and see the 94-year-old walking down the hall without the assistance of even a walker. She’s walking to the dining room for dinner, except she doesn’t know where the dining room is even though it’s right in front of her and she thinks she’s going to her grandmother’s house to bake cookies. She’s rambling something to the effect of “Grandma likes when I help her bake cookies because the elephants can’t come into the bathtub and take them”.
It’s the lives I see when I’m at work that make me dread getting older. I like to think that because I take care of the people who suffer from Alzheimer’s and dementia, that God will never punish me with such a terrible mind and body stealer; that I will be spared of such a horrible experience so that I can live freely to experience those Hallmark moments in my golden years.
The Art of Nursing
As cliché as it sounds, I still believe that nursing is all about “helping people.”
I was seven years old when I first decided what I wanted to be “when I grow up”, and I haven’t changed my mind even once over the last twenty years. My mother was in an extremely serious car accident, and when she was released from the hospital, she and I stayed with my grandparents until she was completely recovered. It was there that I dutifully helped my grandmother change my mother’s positions, clean her up, and change her bandages every single day. In the niaveness that only a young child can possess, I truly thought that I was solely responsible for her progress; and although I was saddened by her injuries, by the end of her recovery period, I had decided that I wanted to be a nurse.
One of my first patients as an STNA was a 36 year old male who had been completely paralyzed from the shoulders down from a motorcycle accident. When he first entered my facility, he was a complete-care patient, requiring a Hoyer lift to transfer him and a very minimum of two staff members to assist with any type of care. He was at the facility for a full three months. On the day he was discharged, I wheeled him to the front door for his ride home. He stood up from his chair and WALKED to the vehicle with the help of walker. Although I know that the therapy department played the biggest role in getting this patient to that point, that moment to me was everything that nursing is about.
Regardless of what the task is, how long it’s going to take, or how difficult it’s going to be, we as nursing staff are there to help the patients who need us. It’s our job to accept them at their worst/weakest condition and to do everything in our power to either bring them back to their best or to make them comfortable and dignified until they can no longer survive in that condition.
As a typical person, there is a part of me who doesn’t have any problem with getting older. I welcome the Hallmark idea of growing old with my husband, having a large family of children and grandchildren who come over for Sunday dinner every week after church, and doing cliché “old person” things like knitting, playing bingo, and doing crossword puzzles.
And then I go to work. I take care of people as young as 60 years old all the way into their 90’s. I see the 60-year-old who looks like she’s in worse shape than the 94-year-old because she cannot function physically or very well mentally—she drools, she can’t speak, she can’t feed herself, her food is pureed so she doesn’t choke, her main source of transportation is a wheelchair because she can’t walk, she’s incontinent, and she can’t even do something as simple as scratching her nose if she has an itch. I turn the corner and see the 94-year-old walking down the hall without the assistance of even a walker. She’s walking to the dining room for dinner, except she doesn’t know where the dining room is even though it’s right in front of her and she thinks she’s going to her grandmother’s house to bake cookies. She’s rambling something to the effect of “Grandma likes when I help her bake cookies because the elephants can’t come into the bathtub and take them”.
It’s the lives I see when I’m at work that make me dread getting older. I like to think that because I take care of the people who suffer from Alzheimer’s and dementia, that God will never punish me with such a terrible mind and body stealer; that I will be spared of such a horrible experience so that I can live freely to experience those Hallmark moments in my golden years.
Saturday Smile
{This post idea was taken from "Sticky Notes", another mommy
blog I enjoy reading. You can find the blog here:
22 January 2010
"Because I Said So"
DIET STARTS MONDAY. AGAIN.
I recently got on the scale for the first time in a month and came to the shocking realization that I'd gained a lot. I have no idea how this happened. I mean, my diet is exemplary. Today, for example, I had two cups of cream with a little coffee for flavor and a doughnut that was stale, so I'm sure sure it doesn't count. At church, we celebrated a birthday with cake after the worship service. I think the cake was blessed, and holy cake can't have many calories. Of course, I had to finish my son's slice as well: waste not, want not. For lunch I had a peanut butter sandwich, about seventy pretzels (but they were the little skinny stick kind, so they don't count) and half of my weight in chocolate. The chocolate didn't even taste good, and if you don't enjoy the food you're eating, you don't have to count those calories. I had a big, fat cheeseburger for dinner, along with enough fries to keep Idaho in business, but I ate while standing up and doing dishes because I was in a hurry to leave and play chauffeur to my daughter, and everyone knows that food consumed while standing doesn't count. Plus, I washed it all down with a Diet Coke, which negates the calories in the cheeseburger, so really I think I should be losing weight.
I recently got on the scale for the first time in a month and came to the shocking realization that I'd gained a lot. I have no idea how this happened. I mean, my diet is exemplary. Today, for example, I had two cups of cream with a little coffee for flavor and a doughnut that was stale, so I'm sure sure it doesn't count. At church, we celebrated a birthday with cake after the worship service. I think the cake was blessed, and holy cake can't have many calories. Of course, I had to finish my son's slice as well: waste not, want not. For lunch I had a peanut butter sandwich, about seventy pretzels (but they were the little skinny stick kind, so they don't count) and half of my weight in chocolate. The chocolate didn't even taste good, and if you don't enjoy the food you're eating, you don't have to count those calories. I had a big, fat cheeseburger for dinner, along with enough fries to keep Idaho in business, but I ate while standing up and doing dishes because I was in a hurry to leave and play chauffeur to my daughter, and everyone knows that food consumed while standing doesn't count. Plus, I washed it all down with a Diet Coke, which negates the calories in the cheeseburger, so really I think I should be losing weight.
SLEEPING LIKE A BABY
Sleeping like a baby. Now, tell me, who on earth came upw ith that nonsense? Talk about an oxymoron. I haven't had a full night's sleep in fourteen years!
The minute you see that positive pregnancy test, you can pretty much give up on a good night's sleep for the rest of your life. Sleep deprivation is a way of life for parents. I'm saying that sleep deprivation is a way of life for parents instead of moms because I don't want to leave out the one father in Passaic, New Jersey, who actually gets up with his baby. For the rest of you moms, who walk around like zombies all day because you've only had thirty-five minutes of sleep, you are not alone. Why do you think Starbucks is so popular?
It all starts in pregnancy. Some say the sleeplessness of pregnancy is just the body's way of preparing us for the sleepless nights that lie ahead once the baby arrives. I say it's a cruel joke designed to make us question our decision to have a child.
For anyone who has never been pregnant and can't understand how pregnancy could cause difficulty sleeping, try this: Eat your weight in salt and walk twenty miles. That should sufficiently swell your ankles. Next, eat fifteen extra-hot burritos to make sure you get a whopping case of heartburn. Then do a little weight-lifting. A dead lift of five hundred pounds should do the trick to make your back feel almost as bad as a pregnant woman's. Before retiring for the night, drink a fifty-five-gallong drum of water to ensure you'll have to get up to pee every five minutes all night long. Finally, as you lie down to sleep, put a twenty-pound watermelon on your stomach. Sweet dreams!
After the baby is born, when the physical discomforts of pregnancy are gone, you still don't get a full night's sleep. You know the baby will wake up during the night. After all, you took the classes. You know the drill. You were warned that your precious newborn would wake up to eat in her first few weeks of life, but nothing really prepares you for the sleep loss that new moms experience. Imagine a smoke alarm that goes off two inches from your head in the middle of the night. The only way to turn the incessant wailing off is to carry it around with you for an hour.
I'm sorry to say that it doesn't get much better as the kids get older. Instead of getting up to eat, they get up because it's storming, or because they've had bad dreams, or because they need to tell you something they forgot to tell you five hours earlier when everyone was awake.
When older kids get up in the middle of the night, they don't scream and cry. You think that would be a plus, don't you? It isn't. What older kids do is walk into your bedroom, stand with their face a mere inch away from yours, and then proceed to stare at you until somewhere, in the deep recesses of your sleeping brain, you sense them there and crack open your eyelids to a pair of giant eyeballs staring at you. This scares the living daylights out of you, and you will not be able to get back to sleep for at least an hour- and probably only with the aid of some nitroglycerin pills.
Then there are the kids who like to stall when it's time to go to bed. Every night, it's the same routine. "Can I have a drink of water? Will you read me one more story? I have to go to the bathroom. Can I have another glass of water? Mom, where do monkeys sleep? Can I have another glass of water? Can you help me find my teddy bear? Why does the sun go down at night? Can I have a snack? I have to go to the bathroom again. How old are you, mom? Can I have another glass of water? Why do you look so tired, Mom?"
Perhaps you'll be blessed with children who sleep through the night and don't give you too much grief about going to bed. Even still, once you become a mom, you probably won't get a full eight hours of sleep on a regular basis. When your child is a baby, you'll lie awake, gazing at their perfect little faces. You'll periodically lay your hand on their chest, checking for the reassuring rise and fall of their breathing. You'll worry about your child's health and whether her growth will be stunted if she lives on ketchup and M&M's for a month. You'll worry about his social development: Will he be an outcast forever because he bit another kid at preschool? As they grow older, your worries will change. Am I really ruining my daughter's life by not buying her a cell phone? They'd better be home by curfew. I hope they make wise choices. I pray they don't get in a car accident. And you'll still lie awake and worry about them.
With all that extra awake time, you could do something productive such as scrub your floors, pay bills, or catch up on reading. I personally like to watch my children sleep. They look so angelic when they're sleeping. Somehow those kids who were running around like little maniacs just an hour ago now look so peaceful, so sweet, that I forgot how just an hour ago they were flinging pudding at the ceiling. When they're asleep, I can easily remember why I love this job.
From: "Because I Said So" by Dawn Meehan
The Love of My Life!
After breakfast, Claire usually curls up in the living room chair to watch cartoons while I'm getting ready in the bathroom in the mornings. I got done and called out to her that it was time for her to get dressed. No response- which isn't completely abnormal because she's usually too involved in the cartoon to answer. So what do I see when I walk around the corner to repeat myself?
LOVE MY MUNCHKIN!!!
20 January 2010
19 January 2010
A Little Catching Up Before #3!
Since Claire will be turning 3 in a few months, I thought I would share her first two birthdays with you.
(notice how Pap-Pap and Pa rush to save the little princess while Mommy takes pictures! lol)
(Claire with her friend Abby from school)
(Claire with her "gnama")
For her first birthday, we did a Winnie the Pooh Theme and had it here at the house. This was my munchkin for breakfast that morning, not exactly thrilled.
My mom and I went all out for the party-- tons of decorations, food, and we even melted colored chocolates to make into molds of the #1, Pooh himself, and balloons. I wish I could say I'm talented enough to have made the cake myself, but I left that up to the local Buehler's....
Speaking of cake....
(notice how Pap-Pap and Pa rush to save the little princess while Mommy takes pictures! lol)
Claire's second birthday was held at a local park that has a 30,000 square foot playground and awesome picnic area. The theme was Ladybugs, and a friend of a friend made the cake for me, which turned out even cuter than I imagined it!
(Claire with her "gnama")
18 January 2010
Not Me Monday
Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week. http://www.mycharmingkids.net/ (I have yet to figure out how to link her website to just one word or phrase such as "her blog" so that you can just click on "her blog" and go to her page, so I'm doing it this way for now. Anyone who knows how to do this, please fill me in!)
I was not in bed by 9pm last night and I certainly did not sleep until 10am this morning. Really. I did not hit the snooze button when the alarm went off at 10 and I did not sleep even more until 11am. Nope. Not me. (Hey-- don't knock it people. I have a 2 1/2 year old that usually wakes me up no later than 7am on days that we don't have to get up earlier for school, so I fully welcomed her extra visit with her dad for the "holiday" and took full advantage of it!)
Which means...
I was not eating breakfast at 11:30am and I did not stay in my pajamas until almost 1pm. Noooooo sir-eee.
I did not totally ignore my reading assignments this weekend.
And I did not spend 5 extra minutes sitting next to my munchkin's bed rubbing her forehead and hair to get her to fall asleep instead of making her tough it up like a big girl and go to sleep on her own because she made me feel bad that "I missed you Mamma" and didn't feel very good. And I did not love all 300 seconds of it.... yeah, who am I kidding?!
16 January 2010
15 January 2010
Well, I successfully completed my first week of the semester. What have I learned so far?
That a day of lectures followed by a 7-hr clinical wasn't the best scheduling idea I've ever had.
An Anatomy & Physiology lecture that lasts an hour and a half is TOO LONG.
Walsh University is dyslexic.
I think that about covers it. Sad, huh? What's really sad is that I am already behind in reading. So guess what I'll be doing during any free time this weekend? Yup, you guessed it. Playing with Claire!
*************************************************
Speaking of Claire, I have to give her HUGE props... she left the house today wearing -- ready for this? -- big girl underpants!! She's been successfully going potty all week and insisted on wearing her big girl underwear when she got dressed this morning. I didn't want to discourage her from wearing them, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that she is staying on track at her dad's today and still has them on when she comes home tonight. Where did my baby go?!
************************************************
My treat this week? A new book (yeah, like I have the time to read anything other than a nursing book!):
It's written by a mom of 6 (six! Could you just imagine!?) who has taken on a witty perspective to parenthood. Apparently she was selling a baseball on EBay and attached the story of how it caused craziness in her kids to the auction-- her story attracted over 220,000 people and she ended up selling the baseball for $1,125! Ehh... it was a buck fifty- I figured why not? I'll let you know how it is and I'm sure I'll be adding a few excerpts down the road.
Have a great day everyone!
That a day of lectures followed by a 7-hr clinical wasn't the best scheduling idea I've ever had.
An Anatomy & Physiology lecture that lasts an hour and a half is TOO LONG.
Walsh University is dyslexic.
I think that about covers it. Sad, huh? What's really sad is that I am already behind in reading. So guess what I'll be doing during any free time this weekend? Yup, you guessed it. Playing with Claire!
*************************************************
Speaking of Claire, I have to give her HUGE props... she left the house today wearing -- ready for this? -- big girl underpants!! She's been successfully going potty all week and insisted on wearing her big girl underwear when she got dressed this morning. I didn't want to discourage her from wearing them, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that she is staying on track at her dad's today and still has them on when she comes home tonight. Where did my baby go?!
************************************************
My treat this week? A new book (yeah, like I have the time to read anything other than a nursing book!):
It's written by a mom of 6 (six! Could you just imagine!?) who has taken on a witty perspective to parenthood. Apparently she was selling a baseball on EBay and attached the story of how it caused craziness in her kids to the auction-- her story attracted over 220,000 people and she ended up selling the baseball for $1,125! Ehh... it was a buck fifty- I figured why not? I'll let you know how it is and I'm sure I'll be adding a few excerpts down the road.Have a great day everyone!
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