This week's challenge is to keep my foot on the pedal, because the pressure has come off slightly and it's very tempting to slack off. My big assignments are in, most of our evil quizzes are complete, and we technically only have 2 weeks of teaching left. However, for the next little while I will go nowhere near a lecture theatre or lab as we have NO CLASSES for the next five weeks!
Four of those weeks are possible clinical placement weeks, but I've only got 2 weeks of placement: Royal North Shore Hospital in spinal rehab. I'll be very interested to compare my experience with my mom, who worked as as a spinal rehab nurse for a number of years when we first moved to New Zealand. I'm actually quite nervous about this placement. My last two were non-clinical placements so I haven't actually been anywhere near a hospital since January of this year. My second placement is in late December and I expect it to be bloody damn scary but hopefully I will learn a lot. What is the one area of nursing I've been sure I never want to do? Burns. What patient population am I a little scared of? Children. What's my placement? Children's burns unit. Yip. Shaking in my jandals. I'm afraid of seeing children in pain (although good nursing means a patient shouldn't be in pain) and I'm afraid of parents being mean to me (although if I was a parent and my kid was in pain, I wouldn't want a student nurse anywhere near my child). I'm also afraid of very gory wounds. I've missed out on seeing serious wounds. I was supposed to see a few on my aged care placement (do not google pressure sores unless you have an iron stomach) but other stuff happened and I didn't get to dress any. The most valuable tip I've learned so far is to breathe through your mouth instead of your nose all the while keeping your face neutral even though it smells hideous and you feel like gagging.
I'm currently in the middle of a cooking experiment. It's called '100 ways to make miso soup without going crazy'. I've lost my cooking mojo and miso soup is all I can bring myself to cook these days. Terrible, I know. But it's just so easy and good for you and most importantly, you only use one pot! My standard is just vegan dashi, soy sauce, shiitake mushies plus cubed potato, noodles and then baby spinach thrown in at the end. An easy 15-minute dinner.
Did I mention that I have a moving out date? November 30th. I should probably move it further away since I'll only finish house-sitting for Nic and Amy in Bondi on Nov 27th ... I am currently house-sitting in Lilyfield and looking after Zac the diabetic cat who requires 2 insulin shots a day. And for the first time, I actually manged to stick myself with a needle today. Thank goodness it was not in the hospital setting! Oh yes, this from this placement onwards, I can do INJECTIONS! Sub-cut and intra-muscular. I genuinely cannot wait. I also really want to get to insert a naso-gastric tube. I did make a deal with nurse-friend Tash that we'd practice these on each other, but then she went and moved to Western Australia.
Back to the house-sitting, I am quite tempted to change the locks so that the couple who own this house can't come back home. I love house-sitting here. Lovely wee house, good area, close to the bus and the light-rail, but not close to any good coffee. No lawn to mow (I have learned my lesson - lawns = bad) and only one cat (again, lesson learned. 4 cats = too many.)
So there it is, my all-over-the-place catch-up, brought to you by red wine and procrastination from study.
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