4/14/26

Today I didn't have my OB clinical, so I slept in until around 1 PM. I slept on the couch and woke up a little sore, so it was a slow morning. I really didn't do much at all until around 3 PM, when I started getting ready to go to an extra credit thing they were having for my adult health class.

I left and got to the extra credit thing at 3:30. This was a little lecture about mandated reporting that was going on in Crisp, and I thought it was only going to be our class, but it was also for the semester below ours, so Janell's cohort. So she was there too, and this room was super full. Like, there were barely any seats left, full. I signed the sign-in sheet and had to sit in the very front next to Noelle and Adriana. I talked to them some, so it wasn't all that bad. The actual thing was led by an older lady who was a pediatric nurse, and it was kind of sad. She told a lot of stories about abuse and sexual assault cases of kids she's seen. This thing went on until 5 PM, and then we could leave.

Afterwards, I had Janell go get me Panda Express from the UC with her funds. So I got this orange chicken with peppers and green beans, fried rice, and a Dr. Pepper. She just got rangoons. We ate and talked in the UC for a bit and then left and went our separate ways. As I was driving when I left, something weird happened and my car suddenly died and lost all power. I was able to pull most of the way into the parking lot across from the SEMO bookstore, I turned my car off, and turned it back on and it was fine. I thought it might've been because I was low on gas, so I went to fill up.

After that I waited out in the parking lot of the hospital because it was about time for me to go to work. Then I went in at 6:30 PM. Work wasn't too bad, the ER was pretty busy. Apparently there were 41 patients down there. So I think all of mine were from the ER and there were only like 5 requests tonight. Even though it felt like more. Nothing really notable from it.

Then I went home, finished my Panda Express from earlier, ate an apple, watched the new Slushy Noobz Fall Guys video, and got ready for bed. I slept upstairs tonight even though it was kind of hot up there because the last time I slept on the couch downstairs, I woke up a little sore.

So today was alright I guess, no class except that extra credit thing, Panda Express was good, and work was average. 5/10 day.

4/10/26

Today I had my mental health clinical and it was at the Southeast Behavioral Hospital again. So I got up and almost fell asleep again, but my mom called me to make sure I was up, and that got me up. I got ready, drank an Alani, and left.

I got to the behavioral hospital at 8 AM and went in. This week, I'd be on the adult side with CJ, Katie, and Tanya, since two weeks ago we were on the adolescent side. So we all met in the lobby and Dr. Twidwell led us to the breakroom in the back to leave our stuff. We had to sit in there for a while while Twidwell led the other three people who were going to be on the adolescent side over there. Then she came back and got us and brought us to the adult side. I was actually pretty nervous because I wasn't feeling any confidence to talk to anyone. I was thinking it might be easier to start talking with adults rather than children, but no, I think it was harder.

On the adult side, there weren't many there at first, I guess they aren't required to be up until 9 AM. There were a few, and one of them was a guy named Steve, who was very friendly. So we all talked to him for a bit. There were only two adult patients in there for a while and the two girls were both talking to them, so CJ and I were just watching Ice Age that was playing on the TV for a while. The next person to come in was a girl named Isabella and she came over and sat next to me after Dr. Twidwell convinced her to come over to one of us. So I talked to her for a good while and it was actually nice. I feel like I got to know her pretty well and I enjoyed talking to her. We talked about her experience here, her goals, my nursing classes, hiking, what to do in Cape, books she's read, journaling, all sorts of stuff. The room filled up pretty quick after that but no one else really came over to our table.

We went to treatment team at around 10:30 AM and got to listen to the psychiatrist and some other professionals discuss the patients. That was also kind of interesting and sad because you learn a lot about their background that you wouldn't learn just from a casual conversation with them. We went back in with the patients and there was a guy named Owen at my table now, so I sat with him and talked a little bit. He was a bit harder to talk to, but he said he's been to a lot of facilities like this. Then they all got the opportunity to go outside, so a lot of them did and we went too. Their outside area was a walled courtyard that felt like a lot like a prison yard. There was a grassy area, a sidewalk, and a basketball hoop. We all played basketball for a while, mainly just us students playing. We tried playing PIG but we all sucked. There was one patient who was doing all of these warm-up exercises and then sprinting full speed on the grass, so that was interesting to see. A lot of the patients were just sitting at some tables outside, and that's what I eventually did. I did that after I had to be the referee for Katie and CJ's little basketball 1v1, which took forever because neither of them could make a shot. The sprinting guy was having a worker there time him, and then he was trying to do all of these calculations to see how much he ran. Then Isabella came back out and asked if I wanted to throw a football some, so I did, and I kind of sucked at first, but I got a little spiral eventually. And we had another good talk, we talked about my college experience, Spanish classes, sports we've played, that kind of stuff. I don't really like how that's the most normal and friendly conversation I've had with someone in a long time. Like, I could see myself being her friend, but she's a patient here and has done some troubled things. But it was really nice talking to her.

We were able to leave for lunch after we went back in. We had from around 11:50 to 12:40, so I went to McDonald's and got a cheeseburger with my points and a frozen Coke because I was craving one. Then I sat up in the trailer park that overlooks the behavioral hospital and where I used to go for piano lessons and listened to music in my car.

We went back in at 12:40 PM and were able to get out charts. I did mine on Isabella because I definitely talked to her the most. So we got a lot of our packets filled out and were in here for an hour or so probably.

After we got all the information we needed from the charts for our paperwork, we could leave and go to post-conference at SEMO, so that's what I did. At post-conference, everyone just talked about their experience at their clinical site and that was about it.

Then I left and went to Frank's Hill, where I didn't do much. I sat outside on my porch watching it rain for a while, took a nap, and then got up and started working on my clinical paperwork from two weeks ago which was due tonight. So talk about waiting until the last minute. I got all of that done after a couple of hours and then started working on this blog entry. I also realized a book that I started last night, The Stand by Stephen King, is a lot like the book that Isabella was reading today, Station Eleven. So that was a weird coincidence. Then I went out and decided to smoke the rest of a cigar that I started a few weeks ago, and I just decided to try and finish it. So I was out on my porch smoking this and listening to music for at least an hour, and it was kind of nice. I think towards the end, I started to get a little nic sick, I felt a bit nauseous, so I quit and drank some water and a couple of sips of Coke. And I still had probably a fifth of the cigar to go, so I really only smoked a little over half of it in this session. Then I took a long shower and went to bed at around 2 AM.

So I guess today was pretty good, I did enjoy the behavioral hospital. So 6.5/10.

4/2/26

Today I woke up at 5:30 AM to get ready for my adult health clinical. I was still tired when I got up because I only got about five and a half hours of sleep, but I actually didn't wake up at all last night and didn't use any sleep aid, so that's good. So I got up, got ready, ate an apple and a banana, and drank part of a Voodoo Grape Monster. I actually ate breakfast because today I was going to be in the OR at St. Francis, so that's exciting.

I got to clinical and went in a little before 6:30. Everyone else got their patients and lucky me didn't because I wasn't staying in neuro today. So happy about that. I did help Panashe give his bariatric patient a bed bath because I didn't have to be at OR until 8 o'clock. That was pretty interesting, I think the guy had a Staph. lugdunensis infection, which I'd never heard of. So that took a good hour and a half or so. We did the full bath, changed his external catheter, and changed the bed sheets.

Then at 8 AM, Whitney took Kaerynn to the wound clinic and me to OR. She passed me off to a lady named Debbie, and I guess Debbie knew my mom because she was asking about her. And then Whitney started going crazy like, "Who's your mom?" because she thinks she knows everyone. Debbie led me to the breakroom area and showed me where to get scrubs and change in the locker room. So I did that, and then I met back up with her. Unfortunately, there weren't any crazy cool cases today, like no cardiac stuff. I got stuck sitting in a robotic inguinal hernia repair for the first one. There was a nurse in there named Julie or something that was talking to me some about the procedure. That whole thing probably lasted an hour or so and I walked back to the PACU once they were done. Then she told me to wait outside of room 4 for the next case. So I waited for like, twenty minutes until people showed up in there, then I went in. This one was a hemorrhoidectomy, awesome. Just kidding, it was not awesome. I was with Dr. Richmond for all of these cases. So he held the anus open with this speculum thing and I couldn't even really tell what was going on. They sprayed betadine on that whole area and that was kind of terrifying looking because it looked like blood. And there was a lot of blood once he started digging in there. There was a nurse in there named Richard who was talking to me some. I think he was from Texas. After that one, I kind of just wandered around some because I didn't know where I was supposed to go. There wasn't really a specific person I was supposed to be following, and I just kept walking in circles, I was kind of lost. Eventually I found Julie and she said I could go into one in room 5, which was another robotic inguinal hernia. Great. So I saw another one of those. They are kind of cool, and I got to see the entire process this time, I missed the setting up and everything for the first one. There was actually a complication in this one, I think they accidentally made and incision in the stomach or inflated the CO2 in the stomach or something, so it took some extra work. After that, there was a gallbladder removal or something that I started out in, but realized it was almost 12:30 PM, so I went out and Debbie found me and said my instructor was looking for me. So she led me back to the locker room, I got changed, talked to a guy named Alan who said he knew my mom, and went back up to the neuro floor.

We went over post-conference and I wasn't late or anything. We were out before 1 PM, and I texted Janell to see if she'd get me food and she said she'd order me Panda Express to pick up. So I went to the UC and picked that up, I got orange chicken and fried rice. Then I went to Nana's, ate that, and fell asleep for almost two hours. Apparently my dad came over here, but I was asleep so he didn't wake me up. When I woke up I had about an hour or two before I had to go to work, so I got some stuff done and then left for work.

Work started out not busy for the first thirty minutes, and after that it was busy non-stop for the rest of the night. Like crazy busy. There was this one guy on CPC that I had to get twice throughout the night for x-ray and CT, and he was pretty difficult. He was in constant pain and always groaning and cursing, I guess it was abdominal pain. And it always took me forever to find his stupid nurse to disconnect his IV. And he also made me bring the whole telemetry computer with me. Like, we did not need that, he was stable. Then PACU was assigning me stuff like crazy all night, which was unusual. I guess they finally discovered how to put in requests. I had three or four from them. But I kind of like going back to surgery. There were several ultrasound ones and some ER stuff, too. Janell called me when I was almost done asking if there are any more drug tests throughout the semester because she was planning to go smoke with her friends. Ridiculous. Anyways, I had 13 requests done by the end of the shift. That's the most I've had in four hours. I snatched a piece of pizza from the med tele break room and left at 10:30.

After that I went to Nana's, studied some mental health for the exam next week, wrote this, and ended the night.

5/10 day today. At least it felt pretty filling again.