Just Breathe

Well this week is my spring break, and it was very much needed! The last two weeks of school have been complete insanity and I am proud that I made it out alive. I'm recharging for the madness to begin again on Monday.

Last week I started my second clinical rotation...long term care. LTC is basically the same thing as a nursing home; we take care of older people that are unable to take care of themselves. We are assigned one resident for the two days we are at the facility. The first day of clinical I wasn't sure what to expect...but I assumed we would have a nurse with us monitoring everything we did. Wrong. We showed up bright and early at 6:20am and our professor informed us that all nine of us were assigned to the same nurse and we were pretty much on our own. "It's your responsibility to get your resident down to breakfast before 8:30. Good luck." And we were off.

I was lucky to have the most lucid patient in the facility for the first week. She was very helpful and knew exactly what needed to be done at what time. I learned a whole bunch of new skills in those first two days of rotation. I gave my first insulin shot, I learned how to give medications through a G tube, I learned how to give bath, I learned how to wipe an adult's butt, and my personal favorite....I learned how to clean poop out of a wheelchair. Unfortunately just because a person is lucid doesn't mean they are continent. After this week I realized just how lucky I am to be able to get up and use the toilet when I need to.

Speaking of toilets...I had an unfortunate accident involving my cell phone and the toilet. I was on my lunch break at school and my phone was in the back pocket of my jeans. As I slid my jeans off, my phone shot out of my pocket like a newborn baby right into the toilet. I did all I could to save it, but sadly my attempts were futile. I went to get another phone, and the wonderful people at sprint sold me a broken phone. I didn't have time to go back in for another week...but I finally have a functional phone again.

The weather has been fickle again lately. Within the last week and a half I have experienced a snow storm, 1 degree below zero, a thunder and lightning storm, rain, hail, ice, and a balmy 70 degrees. One morning I slipped on a patch of ice and fell straight on my butt and the next day I was frolicking outside in a tee-shirt. And I thought the pacific northwest was bipolar!

Once again, I have another new love of my life....racquetball! I played it for the first time a couple of weeks ago and I cannot get enough of it! I have never before been quite so sore and covered in bruises! The guy I play with, Alex, is a very pateint person. So far I have hit him in the face 3 times and made him bleed once. He has done neither of those things to me. I'm definitely getting better! Yesterday I scored ten points against him!

Thursday night my mommy came to visit me for spring break! We pretty much had non-stop fun the whole time she was here. On Friday we went to the zoo...which is apparently one of the best ones in the country. My friend from school used to work there, so she got us in for free! My friend Clete came with us...which was really great because I'm pretty sure I couldn't have pushed the wheelchair up some of those hills without him! With the amount of walking that zoo requires, they really should give wheelchairs to everyone. Those wheelchairs are hard to maneuver. Good thing she's got a good sense of humor! I ran her into walls, small children, snow piles, Clete's feet, etc. It was like off-roading compared to the facility I'm used to using a wheelchair in! Overall it was a fantastic zoo and we had a blast! It was 70 degrees that day too, so it was just perfect. I decided that I want a wallaby and a penguin.

My mom and I did all sorts of fun things! We went to thai, we went to happy hour sushi, we went to the $2.00 theater twice, we made multiple delicious meals, we went downtown, we went to Iowa, we drank lots and lots of tea, we stayed up way too late every night, and we watched about a million episodes of I Love Lucy! I had never seen the show before...and I'm definitely a fan! I thought it was hilarious.

Countdown till graduation: 9 months, 1 week