Oh, and I also have to say, after beginning nursing school, being a pharmacy tech seems like the easiest undertaking in the world, and I feel almost relaxed going in to work.  Definitely thankful, even on the craziest days.  The responsibility seems next to nothing, and I get to work with lovely people. 

Maybe I'll bake them a pie.

On Tuesday, I failed my injection skills criteria and passed my skills criteria on giving NG tube medications...  I feel like an abject failure, because I can't even stab someone correctly with a needle.  Though I feel like I did a great job otherwise.  I would have had more time to reconsider my needle length had the examiner not been questioning everything I did, and making me supremely nervous.  When I said I'd be charting, she said, "Well, what do you chart?" and when I replied correctly, she said, "Well, what WAS the pH of the residual?!" and then it became me saying, "It was below 5, which is normal," and her going, "Well, what number was it!?"  Okay lady, it's a dummy with a tube in it, and some pulse and stomach sounds.  If it was a real patient and I didn't have to invent a number to satisfy you, I'd be okay.  But winging it when I did answer with the grading criteria, is going too far.  Ugh.  Talk about nurses eating their young--teachers do it, too.

When I left, I had to go outside and get fresh air, because I was sweating nervous-flop-sweat and my back was warm and I felt like I was going to cry.  I get to return on Thursday and retry it, after some practicing.  It was a bit harder than just drawing up regular medication, since it was Fentanyl in a glass ampule and I had to deal with a filter needle.  Then I got my ventrogluteal and vastus lateralis muscle landmarks wrong, because I was palpating for the greater trochanter and instead, out of sheer worry, was putting my palm on the stupid iliac crest.  Fail.  Though I do say, I did verbalize everything right.  She couldn't harass me for that.

Instead of going home and punching a wall, I drove home the long way and ended up rescuing a dog from traffic.  Accidentally.  Someone else had stopped and he was willing to take the dog from me, to get him to a vet and check him for a microchip.  I picked the little scared pup up, after he came over and licked my hand when I made kissy noises.  He was shaking and terrified, a little chihuahua mix, and very sweet.  He clearly trusted me and he licked my face several times, and when I handed him off I knew the guy was clearly interested in his safety too.  He had two rescued dogs and lived across the road, and I knew it would be fine.  Second stray dog found in the past 6 months.  The feral / stray cats don't bother me as much, because it seems like everyone around here either feeds a cat, lets one live under their porch, or has an indoor-outdoor cat of their own.  The neighbors across the street have a few outdoor hangers-on, and their next-door neighbor has two cats.  One of them I call "The Darkness" because it's large, has long black fur, and glares at me when I park my car and walk inside the house.  You can see its yellow eyes across the road.  Our cats are thankfully indoor kitties, and relatively safe and sheltered. 

So, nursing school is a ball of stress and panic, and makes me want to curl into a ball some days, and sleep or cry it off.  Other days I feel like I did something amazing, or at least acceptable and proactive.  I finish my first semester in a month, if I do okay, and then I'm 25% finished.  It feels like the past few months has rushed by in a blur of exams, skills tests, clinicals, patients, nursing process assignments, and long, tedious lectures.  I love clinicals so much, and I want to be at the point where my instructor doesn't assume I'm dense or oblivious.  I know I can do a lot of things, but I always look for complicated answers when it could be a simple one.  Maybe I should have gone to medical school and over-thought my entire career.  Hm.

To stay sane, I'm knitting a cabled cowl out of bamboo yarn from Stitch Nation.  It's a pretty sea green and may even look pleasant with my ugly white scrubs.  The knitting thing is keeping me from going completely unbalanced, or kicking the dogs, or yelling at someone.  That's always good.  Next week is Thanksgiving and I'm feeling so thankful, mostly that the semester is close to finished.  Maybe I'll be able to make a few items for dinner this year, because normally my husband takes over the kitchen and refuses to let me near it.  I'd like to at least make a cake for after dinner...  Not pie, not a pie fan.  At least, the crust irks me.  So, despite having a crazy schedule, having failed my injection skills, and having a lot of crap on my plate... I'm still thankful for this year. 

I just keep having to remind myself of it.

Weekend

This weekend was vaguely productive.  On Friday, I got my craft room semi-cleaned out, and studied, and played way too much on Pinterest.  (That site is addictive, and evil, and I need to stay off of it.  Except now there's an app.  And it is visible on my phone, since the new phone has a large enough screen.)  I read about hand hygiene, and how we need to use nursing assessments to plan diagnoses, and the history of nursing (go Florence!), and healthcare policy, and how PPO orgs are structured, and about infection control.  And then my brain melted, and ran into the floor, and through the slivers in the wood, and I think I will need to scrape it off the basement floor before the cat licks it up.  Really, it was a bit much for a Friday.  To take a break, I ventured out to a local cafe & bookstore, and talked to the lovely girl behind the counter that I normally talk to.  And then I went back home and hung out with the dogs.  And my husband and I had dinner, and I went to my friend's parents' house.  She's getting married in two weeks, and needed some assistance with centerpieces, and luminaries, and these cool pins we've made over the past few weeks for the wedding-goers.  There are bottlecap pins for the men, and hat pins for the ladies.  It's a steampunk wedding, which I think is adorable and fitting for them.  The groom's more gung-ho about it, but she rallied, and it's a nice look. 

So, Friday I came home after midnight, and showered and crashed in bed with a snoring husband (it's not usual, really, but it's Bad Sinus Season and can't be helped).  I slept until 10 or so and woke up feeling rather foggy on Saturday morning.  I had a muffin from the farmer's market, which my sweet husband picked up for me, and he also brought me a bouquet of gorgeous flowers.  Some of them look like brains, which is weird and amazing, because they're also fuzzy...  Not a clue what they are.  I wish I had botanical knowledge, but I don't.  My mom got the green thumb.  I can admire them, but they all die in my presence.  It's pathetic. I studied all day, like a dedicated student, and distracted myself periodically by making a birthday card for my sister (she turned 12, it's astounding), and petting the dogs or separating their fights.  They're like smelly toddlers with large teeth...  We had dinner together, which was cornmeal banana pecan pancakes, and buttermilk pancakes (husband = excellent cook and dedicated pancake experimenter).  Then I went to my friend's bachelorette party, which included bowling while wearing glow sticks.  It was nice, but I didn't get home until about 2 AM, and I didn't sleep until 3:30. 

Today is a cleaning / bumming around the house / napping day.  I'm feeling a deep-seated sort of Ick coming on, and regretfully accept that it's part of the stress involved with nursing school.  It's going to make my immunity absolute balls by the end of the semester.  All I can do is take my vitamins, sleep enough (unlike this weekend), and start working out.  So, that'll be interesting.  Husband (J) was darling enough to vacuum out my car and clean all the windows inside and out.  I helped with the back and under the seats, and it isn't thoroughly coated in dog fuzz now.  He's such a darling. 

This week is orientation to our long-term care assignments, which means nursing home.  And our first clinical assignment in general.  Which makes me alternately terrified, amazed, excited, and feeling like I'm going to puke on my shoes.  Or that's the Ick.  Who knows? 

I'm planning on sewing a table runner for Halloween.  Even if I'm studying for my first exam, I can reward myself with a good crafty thing right?  And some chicken noodle soup.

Crafty Cupcake, signing out

There's not always a lot to report in my life.  My dogs are generally content, my home is cluttered and dusty but not terrifying, and most of my time is spent studying, messing around on Ravelry, or playing with new ideas that I've gotten off Pinterest.  I can blow a lot of time on those sites, and I've been trying to ignore them as much as possible.  But it's hard when you just see one project... and then there's another one, and another one.  Put down the computer, right?  Walk away from it and actually make something.  Stupidity.

I started nursing school, which is the hugest news I've had in the past year, and that's been rather intimidating.  I've been learning how to intubate patients and feed them through tubes in my first two weeks.  In another two weeks, I'll be learning how to deal with real, live patients.  My clinicals begin that soon.  It's terrifying and awesome, and then it hits me how huge it is.  And then I crawl back into wanting to draw stuff, or read a book, or knit something, because those are my "comfortable tasks" that I understand.  Nursing is new, and though I read a lot of cool nursing blogs and read a lot of books about medicine, application is 100% different than reading about someone else's experiences. 

I guess maybe I should say, "I'm terrified."  I'm feeling swamped with the number of textbooks I'm reading, with all the online "resources" we're given, with every Blackboard email that pops up on my phone, with all the nursing process questions we have, with going to lab and making sure I have everything in order...  I'm feeling very out of my league.  So, if you don't mind, I'll be walking away slowly... and starting a simple knitting project.  Because those are the easy things. 

...The ones I can control.