Avoid caffeine = 5 cups of coffee a day??

I don't really have time to put a full story of last week's classes together so this is just the highlights. Drama Queen has it in for milk, seriously. For some reason my slides aren't opening so I'll just quote what she typed on the slides, my comments are in brackets. "Do not put a baby or child to bed with a bottle of milk!!! [Um, this is Pathophysiology, NOT Pediatrics, I happen to be in OB and Peds right now too, so I don't really think you're the expert on kids, sorry.] If the child must have a bottle in bed, fill it only with water. When they lie flat, children will aspirate the milk down the right main stem bronchus and develop pneumonia- very common [I'm pretty sure if you lie anyone flat with fluids while sleeping, they'll aspirate and could develop pneumonia, it's not just the milk]. No pacifiers- They cause vacuum pressure in eustachian tubes with resultant otitis media (ear infection). No smoking around infants and children- results in lung and ear infections." She then felt the need to add her comment that this was not her bias and that studies have been done that have shown these results [that just made me roll my eyes, not your bias, B.S.]. She also mentioned several times that her children didn't ever take pacifiers [of course not, because your children were perfect, of course]. This woman drives me crazy! I wish I could put some of our slides on here for last week, you can't even read them, the print is so small and they're just paragraphs of information that we can't even read. Oh, and how do you know that your professors need a hobby? When they're so bored they're putting the pictures of famous authors who had diseases from the 1800's on your slides because they have nothing better to do. What a waste of ink and paper, since we have to print them out. This particular author that she put a picture of on our slides had TB (tuberculosis). She told his story of how he moved to a better climate for treating his TB, then his wife hated it, so they moved to a different climate and the "TB loved it. [like it had a personality] It did him in. [Of course it did, otherwise the story would SO not be worth DQ telling it]." It's like inanimate objects talking, except now diseases have personalities too, lovely. Oh, and we're CONSTANTLY told NOT to diagnose in nursing school, including this class. But somehow several times each week DQ will find a way to slip into her lectures "nurses do a big job in diagnosing." Or "the doctor told me that basically I diagnosed the guy." Of course you did, and you're the hero and you lived happily ever after....oh wait, wrong story. Oh, by the way, apparently DQ has gone off on milk in other classes. My friend said that she also told them not to shave their arm-pits [excuse me while I gag here] and that deoderant is bad and gives you infections, or something like that [remind me never to get too close to her]. The woman might actually be insane, I don't know though, I'm not supposed to diagnose.

OB is always interesting as well. Monotone nearly kills me each week of boredom. Everytime I look around the room everyone looks like a bunch of zombies that are completely zoned out. We may be looking at the professor, but that doesn't mean we're paying attention. Like I said, it takes all of 10 minutes or less to zone out in that class. The glazed over eyes aren't from drugs, they're from boredom and lack of sleep. This is about how I feel about that class: Actually this picture was on the slide about the effects of alcohol and drugs and tobacco on pregnant women. As my professor put it, "cigarrettes have that stuff in them, what is it called, nicotine, in addition to upteine other things, and it's best avoided." Um, no kidding. Street drugs will cause your "baby to be born as a junkie." Oh yes, this is the enlightenment I get in my classes each week. That doesn't even count the comments we get from the idiots in our classes. OB is probably the worst b/c some of the students have kids in there, so obviously they think this makes them THE experts on the subject (more so than the professor, at least). They also think whatever stupid things they hear from their friends who have kids are automatically facts. One said idiot tried to argue with my professor for like 10 minutes about whether you can have too much Vitamin C or not. My professor kindly tried to explain time and time again that Vitamin C is water-soluble and therefore goes right through you. It can't build up in your body. But this girl was having none of that. She's still convinced that you can have too much. Apparently we need to go over the definitions of water and fat-soluble again. Good grief.

Pre-natal classes are common and there's several different ones besides just "Lamaze" which is the one most people have heard of. Unfortunately, one of them is named after it's creator "Dick-Read." Why the hell would you name a childbirth education class this? I also love (NOT) that all of them are created by men. As one of my friends raised her hand and asked in class, "are any of these actually created by a woman who's been through birth?" Seriously! One of them is all about the woman being able to feel the pain and he thinks that "fear of birth = tension/ pain." Um, I'm pretty sure that's because he's a guy and he's never been through it. The jerk. I'd love to see him try to go through just an hour of labor. I'm pretty sure he'd change his entire philosophy then. Apparently when you no longer fear the birth you won't feel tension or pain. Yeah right.

Peds was actually pretty good this week. I actually learned stuff. That might have more to do with the fact that I had a really cute 14 month old as a patient this week, so lecture related to what I actually saw with my patient. I totally wanted to keep him, he was adorable. But the one highlight from that class was when my professor (Scatterbrained) was talking about allergies [not milk] and stated "If the dog/ cat dies, it's a good opportunity not to get a new one." Brutal! My classmate chimed in and was like "In other words kill it," (sarcastically of course). I think that just came out really wrong for Scatterbrained. It did not go over well for my class.

Oh, the title line: "Avoid caffeine = 5 cups of coffee a day" is from OB. Apparently avoiding caffeine during pregnancy is equal to having no more than 5 cups of coffee a day, a couple of bars of chocolate, some coke, etc. Ok, even thinking about that much caffeine is making me sick and I'm not pregnant. Yuck! It sounds a lot like the diets of a lot of my classmates though. Not like mine is all that much better, minus the coffee. :)