Monday, February 26, 2007

Pain


Is the quarter almost over? I keep telling my friend and fellow nursing student, S., "It's only two more weeks!" and she says, "Uh, no, it's three." I'm just going to keep telling myself it's only two weeks because I'm pretty sure I can make it two more weeks without popping, imploding or screaming up and down the street in the rain. And, you know, it's not the care plans, it's not the impending math test that I have yet to study for, it's not learning the language of pharm (acology), and it's not the lack of sleep. It's all of the above and/or I'm ready to move on. I'll have fewer classes next quarter, for one thing. I'll be working at a hospital much closer to home. Patho and Pharm will become History of Nursing and, heck, history used to be one of my majors. How hard can it be? How boring can it be? (don't answer the last question if you already know. I want to be surprised!)

My patient last week was a sprightly woman in her late sixties. I was impressed by a) the normalcy of her toenails b) the amount of pain medication she takes on a daily basis and still describes her pain as an "8" on the pain scale (that's on a scale of zero to ten, zero is "no pain" and ten is "the worst pain you've ever had in your life"). Eight. And she has a fat fentanyl patch on her chest. I had to pick, the night before, between studying for my pharm test and stdying pain and I, crappy nurse, picked the pharm test. So I was useless to her. And I couldn't even hear her heart murmur.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

oh, yeah, I'm feelin' ya...I keep telling myself that this rotation is over in one more week...at least this semester is split in half, otherwise, I'd be crackin' up right about now.

Molly said...

Yep. Technically, this is the last week of the quarter, right? Finals week doesn't count does it?