Thursday, April 05, 2007

Back To School Fun


It's back to school after my very short spring break. It took a lot of energy to "relax" during my break. I had a HUGE list of things I wanted to accomplish: paint my bedroom, prepare a veggie garden for the kids, finish the kids' quilts, de-clutter the house, finish pruning the Ugly Tree in my parking strip and the baking projects, oh lord, The Baking Projects! No. Not a one. I didn't get any of them done. I did pick up the soil for the veggie garden and it is now killing a huge spot of "grass" (read: weeds that we try to mow into a grass-like height) in the backyard. I spent the whole time trying to catch up on books, movies and magazines that I'd been putting off. I stayed up late every night reading. I spent a lot of time each day not doing the things I'd planned. And then school started.

And now I'm in school or clinicals five days/week. I have to keep telling myself: It's just ten weeks, it's just ten weeks, it's just ten weeks. And on Tuesday I woke up in the middle of the night with a knife stabbing the back of my throat and with tonsils so swollen I was choking on them. I couldn't swallow. I was shaking and feverish. I suffered through skills lab (aseptic technique! PO (by mouth) meds! We got to put masks and gloves and gowns and caps and take them off again. We didn't practice giving each other PO meds, perhaps a good thing because I couldn't swallow a thing.). And then my doc said, "strep." So it's ten days of erythromicin. "Uh, can't I take Zithromax, doc?" which is twice/day (BID) for three days. And he didn't know. I go back to school and two random student nurses asked, "Zithromax?" arg.

My clinical is at a very busy hospital very close to home, thankfully. We did a grueling orientation and an equally grueling online course on fraud etc and tomorrow I tail an RN and see how they do the things they do at the place we're doing 'em.

4 comments:

Kitt said...

Oh you poor thing. Strep is hell, and erythromicin is nasty. But I guess it's kind of hard to call in sick to nursing school.

Anonymous said...

Right. What if I miss the day they teach us to catheterize someone?

Anonymous said...

Oh dear, I'm telling myself there's only 5 weeks of OB left right now... I feel you...gulp.

Anonymous said...

yea, and being sick at nursing school is no joke, unlike at a regular job!