Can I take your blood pressure?

I worked hard studying last week to prepare for my classes, so the evening before orientation I decided to take it easy and have a nice, relaxing evening. I took a bathroom break to start off my quiet evening...and I managed to overflow the toilet. Water was gushing out in every direction and I screamed for Anna to come save me. She bounded barefoot into the bathroom through my toilet water and managed to turn the water off. By this point the entire floor was soaked. Of course, the one household item that Anna doesn't own is a plunger. We started scooping water into the bathtub with a pie pan and a dust pan. Once we got the floor dry, the toilet water was back down to a normal level. I thought maybe we lucked out and didn't need a plunger after all, so I tried flushing it again. Bad idea. Anna was standing by to stop the water, but she accidentally unhooked the hose apparatus in the tank and water shot out with an amazing amount of pressure right into my face. So of course I screamed and ran out of the bathroom to let her finish the dirty work. We were laughing so hard at our misfortune that we could barely even fix the problem. Now water was all over the walls and counter top and the toilet still wasn't fixed. So we took a trip to Walmart to buy a plunger. I wondered what the girl at the register thought. Obviously if someone goes to Walmart and only purchases a plunger, they had some kind of accident. You don't buy a plunger just in case. How embarrassing. Needless to say, my quiet, relaxing evening was neither quiet or relaxing.

That night there was a bit of a snow storm and the roads were horrible. Unfortunately they don't cancel school here for snow. I gave myself 45 minutes to get to school because of the weather. Exactly 45 minutes later, I accidentally pulled into a parking lot. I noticed there was a card swiper thing to get in, and I thought that was odd. It was too late to turn around and try a different lot because there was already two cars behind me. I tried swiping my card. Nothing happened. I tried again. Nothing. Excellent. I yelled at a girl across the way, "How do you get in here?" and she yells back "That's the faculty parking lot!" So the poor professor behind me had to get out of his car and swipe his card so I could get in to the parking lot to turn around and drive back out. I have the worst luck, I swear.

Tuesday I just had to go to the school and pee in a cup. It was getting colder at this point, about 0 degrees. That evening, some bozo shattered our glass door to get into the apartments. This just made it colder in our apartment. The heat just wasn't even getting the job done. I studied the rest of the day with three shirts, two pairs of pants, leg warmers, slippers, a hat, a heating pad on my lap and a blanket on top of me. Brr.

Thursday morning I woke up to fifteen below. This is by far the coldest weather I have ever been in. I went out to my car and tried to start it but it wouldn't even turn over. Fortunately Anna's school had a two hour delay because of the cold. I called her from the street and asked her if she would take me to school. How many times is that girl going to bail me out? I made it to school half frozen. That day we practiced doing vitals on each other. It was torture to have to take our sweatshirts off and have ice cold hands palpating all over our arms and freezing metal stethoscopes down our shirts. A nice girl I met offered to take me home, which I was very thankful for. We decided to jump my car when we got there, and it took 45 minutes of our cars attached for mine to start. I drove it around for awhile and it drove like a piece of garbage. When I got back inside to study I realized I didn't turn any of my homework in. I emailed my professor and begged her for mercy, trying to convince her that I'm usually not this irresponsible. She granted my wish. =) When Anna got home I took her blood pressure multiple times. Then her friend came over and I took her blood pressure too. Then I went in my room and took my own blood pressure.

Friday we were tested on our vitals. My partner's name is MJ, and we were nervous. We only had five minutes to take the temperature,radial pulse, apical pulse, blood pressure, and respirations per minute. I got 94%. =) They also forgot to mention that it was awkward lab day. We were studying the abdomen and respiration. For the first hour we had to get into groups of four and one of us had to lie down and lift our shirt up to the 5th rib while the rest of us poked and prodded and listened to bowel sounds. Fortunately one of the boys volunteered. There was no way I was volunteering for that. The next hour we went into little rooms and had to take our shirts off and practice listening to the lungs. That was fun. Fortunately my lab partner is a female.

It finally warmed up this weekend. It's in the upper 30s and my car drive like normal again! This weekend was full of studying. I'm loving it! It's so much fun to only have to study things I'm passionate about. I started reading for pharmacology today and I absolutely love it! It's so fascinating to find out exactly how drugs work.

I think I found the church I'm going to attend! One of Kia's church friends from home moved here so she gave me the name of the church he attends. It's called Omaha First Covenant. I decided to try it out this morning, and there were so many friendly people that actually cared why I was there. The greeter hooked me up with a family to sit with, which was really nice. The people made me feel like I was at home.

One of the highlights of the week: Kia sent me my favorite tea from my favorite tea shop in Portland, Tea Chai Te! I've been drinking it all week! She's the best. My mom also sent me a picture of my Uncle Steve and it is now one of the two framed pictures in my room.

My first big test is on Tuesday! We'll see if I really am back in to the swing of things...