Running Head: One More Week, Sorta

Does everyone here love APA formatting as much as I do? It's this huge scam put together by the American Psychological Association to sell a new manual about it every couple of years. In order to do that the APA has to change various things about the format. This is the only possible explanation for some its more bizarre elements. My favorite is the title page and the inexplicable Running Head. And I'm downright uncomfortable not capitalizing the words in book titles in my reference page. It seems so...disrespectful. If you don't know what I'm talking about I envy you. I long for the days when I didn't own the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. Oh, I mean the Publication manual of the american psychological association. OK, I know, I'm allowed to capitalize "American", but it wouldn't be as odd and uncomfortable and then my point would be, somehow, muted and you'd move on to the more interesting student nurse blogs, wouldn't you now?

Well, you already have. My patient: one almost 100 and suffering from dementia. The first day, she seemed fine: social, funny and charming. I would have barely called her forgetful. At one point she went to get her toothbrush and forgot what she had gone to get, but, heck, who hasn't done that? The next day that I saw her she told me to go away. She thought sleeping pills had been hidden in her banana (she pointed to a few brown spots where they had "clearly" been inserted). My clinical instructor thoughtfully rotated the banana around and looked at it closely, "No, no medication here." With dementia you're supposed to use "reality orientation" so I pointed out that every day she takes something like 20 pills and why wouldn't "they" just slip them in with her other pills. And then she said that people (specifically a "woman in a wheelchair") is spreading rumors that she's looking into windows. Next minute, she's charming and sweet again. All I could think of: check her O2 sat. 95% and that = fine for someone of her age, but it would get my son instant admission in the ER during an asthma attack. Next plan: give her a shower. That really perked her up, made me feel like I'm only half-feeble as a nurse.

You've got to come and see my tulips! Now the sun is up when I leave the house at 6:15 AM and I run past them, some are dropping their petals, some are in their prime and some are various stages of about to happen.