Student Nurses Milling Around

There we are, a clod of student nurses. Yes. I'm the Old One. They make us dress in white so that a) we will blind people w/ our brilliant clothes and they won't notice that we don't know what we're doing and b) people will know that we're students and don't know what we're doing. Take your pick. We went back to an "elder care facility" to do our "teaching". Remember I told you about going and taking elder folks' blood pressures and such? We had to gaze at our data and decide what we wanted to teach the elder folks about and our "nursing diagnosis" (glad you're keeping up with me on this!) was "constipation" and "risk for constipation". Pretty easy to teach about, right? So we spent hours hunched over images of colons, rifling through info about constipation-inducing drugs, banging out brochures and and science-fair-style posterboard making (look at the lovely colors!) and (my three-year-old said the other day, "Drum roll, mommy,") only three people showed up. We were a cluster (herd? school? flock? pride?) of about twenty white-clad and eager students w/ our various posterboards, our brochures, our snacks (did I mention our tasty high-fiber food selection? The other presenters had food, too, though I have to question licorice as a food choice.), info in hand and brain ready to go and hardly anyone came! Arg! Maybe it was our "pick-up line": "So, are you constipated?" Maybe it was our bright posterboards or eager faces. Maybe it was because it was Veteran's Day and people had better things to do. We mostly stood around snacking on high-fiber foods and chatting. I had a great conversation about constipation with one very attentive elderly woman. I then learned that she had late-stage Alzheimers. Sigh.

I'll try and post a Thanksgiving recipe for you before next week. Do you want something sweet or savory?