Life is Fragile...

So I am interrupting my life story about being a nurse to add some present day insight...my husband is 10 years older than I and has all the bad genes of his ancestors...Hypertension, Mixed hyperlipidemia, Diabetes and really bad anxiety....His hypertension has been somewhat controlled. His diabetes is a little controlled and his hyperlipidemia is difficult to control...He also developed atrial fibrillation about 3.5 yrs ago...and has been pretty well controlled with a beta blocker up until mid last year when the doctor placed him on an antiarrythmic which didn't work at all...we were referred to EPS specialist who recommended ablation therapy...my husband underwent a new ablation treatment yesterday using laser instead of radiao ablation...it is actually a study that by husband was enrolled in...the procedure actually took a little over 8 hours however my husband was actually off the unit for 12 hours....the procedure went well...we are keeping our fingers crossed that the procedure cures the a fib...my husband today is realizing he needs to be kinder to his body and eat and do what he needs to do to prevent problems down the road...a mantra that I have been saying to him for a long time but he always poo poo's me....I am hoping he really learns this mantra and lives by it...life is very precious...sometimes we do things to our bodies not knowing what the after effects can be....I love my husband...and want to be a wife to him I am also a nurse practitioner and know what needs to be done to prevent the bad things..i e cardiovascular disease...when I try to educate my husband I am not badgering him ..I am loving him and trying to educate him...I think he gets that now...anyone else out there that feels where I am coming from?

Nursing in the stone ages

Yes back in the stone ages ...I am truly dating myself...in looking back to when I was a staff nurse..things were soooo different. First of all the attire...white uniforms, white stockings, white shoes, nursing cap, nursing pin and name tag....As a new grad you had the choice of evening or night shift. (3-11 or 11-7) we didn't have 12 hour shifts...you had to earn in seniority and experience to work on day shift..work schedule was predictable...worked every other weekend. if you worked Christmas or New Years one year you had it off the next year...You had 2 weeks vacation.
Primary care nursing was just coming into vogue..but it was by districts. You were assigned a group of rooms...you had these rooms for 3 months then you rotated to the next set of rooms. On evening shift ( the shift I chose to work) I had a 8 patients. I had these patients from admission to discharge. The shift started by getting report from the day shift nurse who had the same set of patients. We did walking rounds..That means verbal one to one report outside the patients rooms then going in and inspecting the patient with the off going nurse...checking IV's IV site, intake and outputs, dressings, cleanliness of room.....once report was finished...we went through the kardex to check on the nursing and doctor orders...then we would pre pour meds for the whole shift...we did not have computers. we had med cards handwritten with the name of medication, dose and time the meds were to be given. we poured each medications into a med cup for each patient for the whole shift....we had certain times medications were distributed...We signed off the when medications were given in the med kardex.Then we actually went in and did a physical assessment on each patients. head to toe...and then wrote the assessment into the chart....Once dinner was completed and visiting hours were over...we passed out nourishment and gave back rubs...we also sat with the patients and provided patient education on whatever they were in for or whatever surgeries they were going to have the next day....We didn't have infusion pumps for IV's we actually calculated the drip rate and counted the drops of the IV to make sure it was running at the rate it was ordered....We called doctors with abnormal lab values...the doctors didn' get labs from a computer ....We respected physicians and gave them our chairs when they entered the nurses station...We were expected to help the doctors with bedside procedures...i.e chest tube insertion, spinal tap. the unit was quiet...no yelling in the hall from staff to staff...We charted every shift on every patient. Every patient got a bed bath and had their linens changed daily. No one under the age of 18 was allowed to visit.... We didn't have blood glucose machines..we checked urines for sugars instead..we didn't have sliding scales...The sickest patient on a med surg unit was someone who just had gallbladder surgery or a TURP....patent's who had wisdom teeth removed were admitted to the hospital....Patent's were admitted the day before their surgery to have preop blood work....We mixed our own IVPB and TPN...metal bed pans...sippy diet (for GI bleeds milk and maalox alternating every 30min). Someone with a colostomy was a complicated patient. We had vetilator patients on med surg floor for months...no social workers, no case managers, no DRG's, no time limit to when the patient could go home.....

The First Step to Being a Nurse...

I know your were dying for me to come back and finish telling you about my college experience....Well college was fun...It took me a year to really fit in to the college scene...I had no problems making friends...but I wasn't going to give up my study habits....I was a die-hard for sticking to my class objectives and reading list and studying every night ......But I did make time on the weekends for some fun...I didn't get real crazy....but don't get me wrong...I did enjoy a party or many.... but all and all I finished college with a 3.5gpa...back to how college prepared me to be a nurse....The first 2 years of college were all the liberal art courses and general requirements...I was dying...all I wanted to do was be a NURSE My sophomore year was pretty interesting this is where we took the hard core science classes to prepare us to enter nursing. In anatomy class we dissected a cat. In microbiology we cultured everything under the sun and looked at it under the microscope. In pathology we learned all about diseases and Psychology we learned about mental illness ...finally my junior year I got to take my first nursing course...but the biggest event was the capping...yes the capping...this is an elaborate ceremony where you wear your student nurse uniform (blue dress with a white pinafore) and get inducted as a student nurse...this ceremony acknowledges that I have survived the boring first two years of my liberal arts and required course and am now taking the plunge to finally learn to be a Nurse...the ceremomy ended with each of us receiving our caps...each nursing school has their own personalized cap...ours were square shape and had a purple and gold stripe ..our school colors.....now the real hard work starts....we were now required to attend 3 1/2 day classes devoted to learning nursing skills/nursing theory/nursing process and on our own time we had to go to the nursing simulation lab...this is where we practiced on mannequins how to give bed baths; make a bed with a patient in it;do dressing changes; use bed pans...take vital signs...once we passed this lab we were set to go on our first clinical rotation....Each clinic rotation was 2 days a week and lasted a whole semester. My first rotation was in a day care center...I really wasn't getting this...but I guess it fit into the curriculum somehow...The really cool rotations were Obstetrics...ahhh and if you were the lucky one you could even watch a baby born...I never was lucky ...the really scary rotation was at a Psychiatric Hospital....we were each assigned a psych patient...my patient was schizophrenic and was obsessed with talking about trucks .....and sex....this was a scary place especially on the locked units...when that locked door closed behind you and you turned around to see all the psychiatric patients walking aimlessly and talking to themselves...you wanted to get out of there but fast....the most challenging rotation was Cardiac Care and Med Surgical Units...it wasn't because the patients were complicated...it was the instructors ..the Cardiac Care instructor would expect you to memorize all of your patients medications. Not only did you have to memorize the medications you had to write each of the medications on a 3x5 card and copy word for word what was in the PDR about this medication....that was what you were to memorize....plus on top of that...the instructor would lock you and her in the med room the next day staring you down and quizzing you about all the medications and what was on that 3x5 card....thank God I got through that one...Oh and the med surg instructor....would stand behind you when you were with your patient making sure you were doing everything right ...for example how would you like your instructor looking over your shoulder when you were catheterizing a patient for the first time....and this was a sterile procedure..you couldn't do anything wrong....
When I look back on my clinical rotations I remember one patient that stands out and I really feel bad for this person now and what I put him through...He was going through DT's was hallucinating and confused...he had multiple IV lines and I was trying to bathe him and change his hospital gown...being a novice and trying to thread all the IV tubes through his old gown and threading the tubes back into the new gown...well needless to say...it was one big knot when I was done.. the patient survived but it took me about 30minutes to get everything straightened out....
Despite all of this I made it ....the pomp and circumstance was the pinning...this was another ceremony marking the completion of our nursing requirements to label has a Graduate Nurse...during the ceremony we proudly wore white nursing uniforms, our caps and were pinned with the nursing school pin....we were on our way to pick up where Florence Nightingale left off....this was an exciting time...I had a job waiting for me at that same Community Hospital where I candy stripped at working on a Medical Surgical Floor...I was going to work 3-11 shift...BUT it doesn't stop here...I still had one more big step to take before I could be a full fledged RN...that was taking the BOARDS....