welcome to 4BC

I got a taste of a nurse's life on 4BC for real yesterday. 12 hours of nothing but running. My new preceptor let me take care of everything on my own, which was good, but daaaamn. My patients were coming and going all day, pharmacy was screwing everything up, service was complaining, I was giving amio boluses and mag boluses... stat orders coming out of my ears. I managed two have time for two small cups of coffee and a frozen lunch. Otherwise, I was running all over the damn place.

Oh but it's good.

on shaky legs

I got new preceptors... again. But it turned out to be kind of a good thing, because the one who I was dreading working with most, she let me go pretty much on my own and had some really good ideas for me. I had a meeting with the educator, who had only good things to say about me. I will be off of orientation on August 4th. Hoo-rah!

I have overheard some of the night preceptors complaining about their orientees. I am surprsised that none of the people I started with are doing anything on their own yet! I mean, seriously? I guess I don't know everything about them, though. I'm just surprised.

ready to be on my own... or not

My preceptors say I'm doing great and I'll be ready to be on my own soon. Thursday evening really put that to the test. My preceptor needed to run downstairs for 15 minutes, and I was alone with my 3 patients for a while. In that time, I gave Morphine IV push, I talked to service on my own, and I sent a patient down to X-Ray with the SWAT team. I was sweating, and nervous, and suddenly I really felt my newness, even though I tried to cover up for it.

I think I did ok, though, and it was good experience. I've never been so nervous about giving Morphine in my life, though!

I've also done a driveline dressing on my own twice, now, and I'm feeling good about that.

dreams come true

I passed. My results went up yesterday afternoon. It was an amazing feeling, to see that tiny little word: 'pass'. Tears nearly came to my eyes. Everyone was saying 'congratulations! But we knew it already'. The pressure was enormous, thank god I lived up to it.

I started signing my name with 'RN' right away. Then I stood there, grinning stupidly at it. It looks awesome. Someday soon I'll take it for granted, but I just want to sign 'RN' all over the place right now.

I just have to wait for them to post my license number on the website so that my nurse educators can give me a password to take out meds. I feel like I'll finally be a trusted and equal member of the team. I have been so lucky to find my unit, where all of the nurses are so close and comfortable with each other, where there is so much respect and teamwork amongst everyone. I never expected to have this much fun at work.

so that was that

I did it. I took the NCLEX-RN. I got the minimum number of questions, which means I either did super well or really bad. I wasn't nervous until a half hour before. Then I sat down at the desk and finished all of the introduction stuff, and it hit me. My hands started to shake and I had to take deep breaths to calm myself down. I kept thinking, these are the answers that really count, and freaking out.

Now I think waiting will be the hardest part. There is no peace until I know that I passed.

full of crap

Yesterday my nursing friend popped open a colace and put the liquid in my ear. One of the MA's told us it would help break up an impaction I had, which she saw with her otoscope. A few hours later, my hear was throbbing and I left for urgent care to get it irrigated out. This big scab thing came out in the basin, ew, very gross.

I had a good day with lots of laughing with my new nursing friends. I never imagined it would feel this good to be "one of them". I never imagined I would get along with so many people so well.

Tomorrow is THE BIG DAY.

not what I signed up for

I wanted an insulin drip. What happened was the insulin drip was continued and I was left with a raging penile yeast infection. So I dealt with it. The coolest part of the day was when we went to take out a patient's sutures, and they were so healed over that we had to dig into the skin and wrip them out, with blunt tweezers no less! Blood was running, we kept pouring saline over it and blotting it up. I felt so bad for the guy who was a total trooper.

Sometimes I feel so far away from my other friends now. All I want to do is talk about blood and gross infections and cool rhythm strips, and they are SO not interested. When I'm a real nurse, will I ever be able to connect with them like I used to?