"Don't mess with me, I have needles..."

So I figured it was about time I wrote this blog since I am never going to live this story down at work, I thought I'd share. A few months ago I was working one night and my patient (we'll call her YS) was someone I had had the week before when she was on the ventilator. Now she was extubated and using a BiPap machine to breathe. Long time smoker, very large (I'm being nice here), multiple problems, etc., etc. On the ventilator she had been an ok patient. However, during report this night the day nurse said that the patient occasionally would get confused and let's say difficult (combative). She had done great all day though and I did not expect anything different. So, I go in to do my assessment and I am talking to her and WHAM out of nowhere, she punches me in the nose. She did it about 3 more times before I could grab her wrist and stop her. Ok, that hurt and now I'm peeved. So I try to figure out what is wrong, but the patient won't let me touch her and I am unable to understand her because of the face mask. I can't take the mask off because her oxygen saturation plummets to the 80% in seconds without it. So another nurse comes in and tries to talk to YS. She beckons the nurse to come closer and then starts laughing. The darn lady is enjoying this. She wants to abuse us. She got a stern talking to and I finished my assessment while staying out of the reach of one wrist and holding the other. Not very effective. So now my charge nurse (head nurse for the floor for the shift) comes in to try to give her a pill (anti-anxiety, she needs it badly to help calm her down). We mix it in applesauce and quickly take off the mask to give the pill. As soon as that mouthful was in there though, she spits it all over the charge nurse (needless to say, she was not amused). I was on the other side of the bed and missed the spray, thankfully. So I am still really really trying to be patient and figure out what this lady needs/wants but she is seriously stretching my patience thin. So I get a piece of paper to see if she can write what she needs. First she scratches out the word "suck." So I am trying to be empathic and say "oh this sucks, being here in the hospital. I know." She shakes her head vigorously "no." Then she rewrites and I discern out two words that decided her fate for the rest of the night: "YOU SUCK." She starts laughing. Ok, I'm done. Now, I am pissed and my patience is gone. Not "this sucks," "you suck." Directly aimed at me. It takes quite a bit to break my patience like that, but once it's gone, it's gone. Of course I had to take the note to show all the other nurses, which they thought was incredibly funny (I do too now, but at the time I was a little less amused). This story has now spread and more people know from my unit. I may be forever known as the nurse who got told that "you suck" by a patient. Awesome. Back to YS: We told her that she really should be nice to her nurses, we are just trying to help her. After the note I then told her that she really should be nice to me, I'm the one with the needles...I proceeded to get some Geodon (anti-psychotic which also makes people sleepy, yay) which is an IM shot, long needle that goes into the thigh. Unfortunately, with all of her subcutaneous tissue (fat) I'm not sure it even got to the muscle (I'm not being mean, I'm serious), but I got a little satisfaction from sticking her just the same. Later, I also got to give her her Insulin shot, she didn't like that at all, at which I told her "yeah I told you not to mess with me, I have needles." Normally, I don't like sticking my patients, but this night was an exception. Apparently, after an interesting discussion with her MD, we theorized that as her CO2 levels in her body rose, she got crazier. One thing I have learned is that you CANNOT reason with a crazy person, it doesn't work. The longer she wore the mask the better her CO2 levels would come down and her mind/actions would return to normal. So when I walked in the room at 4AM to do her blood draw and bathe her she was a COMPLETELY different person. She was nice, helpful, friendly, talkative, etc. She even helped us bathe her. I don't think she even remembered what had happened 8 hours ago. Ugghhhh...I guess I can't hate her too much, she wasn't in her right mind. People do things they would normally never do otherwise when they are sick and their mind isn't all there. Most would probably be horrified to find out some of the things they do (I've seen them be dumbfounded when they hear what they did and apologize profusely for their actions). This is exactly why I never take anything personally at work, even a note that says "You suck."

Glamorous, this is....NOT

A little update since I haven't blogged in so long- I am currently working as a nurse (duh) in a new hospital in an Intensive Care Unit. We do everything from Medical/ Surgical to Coronary Care to Cardiovascular to a small amount of Neuroscience (MSICU, CCU, CVICU, & NSICU). I always thought I would specialize in something, but at least this keeps me up on all of my body systems. Who am I kidding though, most of the time I feel like I don't have a clue about what the hell I am doing. Comforting, huh?! So much for getting out of school and not having to study anymore. Haha, yeah, no deal. I still have to study a ton. I've learned nursing school didn't teach me squat. Bleh. One of my coworkers was telling me the other night about her sister who never got a degree and now makes 6 figures and gets to dress up to go to work everyday. We, on the other hand, wear what is basically pajamas to work everynight. I had to work my ass off to get two degrees over 7 1/2 years of college and I make barely enough to get by. What kind of deal is that? Really. As I was standing in this lovely outfit(plus gloves)

that we have to wear in isolation (infection patients) rooms holding the head of a puking, kicking, punching, screaming, crapping patient while another nurse put down a NG tube (nasogastric tube so she won't puke anymore), I reflected on the fact, glamorous this job is, not; and we are, not. Nights like that I honestly have to search really deep to find a reason why I keep doing this and why I ever wanted to do it in the first place. Cuz' let me tell you just how fun this is. I don't even like germs (that's another blog, coming soon though). Haha, not that anyone likes germs. Wiping butts (when it's not your own kids) and being there when a family finds out that their family member is dying is not really my idea of a good time. SO glad I spent so much on school for this. Oh well, I guess it's the occasional feeling of knowing that you might have actually helped someone (patient or family) or easied their pain for a night. It's the occasional adrenaline rush that I live for. It's the love of medicine. It's the thrill of getting to do all the things I've wanted to do for so long. It's the teaching. It's the occasional thank you's. It's the hoping that you actually made a difference in someone's life. It's the things I learn everyday. It's the joy of getting to tell someone that they're doing better. It's getting to be real. It's being me...Oh well, I guess glamour will have to wait for another day.

Everything I know I should've learned in Kindergarten....

Remember those posters about Everything you should already know?

Yeah well everything I learned in nursing school and in my few short months as a Registered Nurse, I should've already known. These are some examples:

1. Don't drive drunk. Duh. This should be a given, yet people keep doing it and the consequences can be tragic.

2. Wear a helmet. If you're going to ride a bike, scooter, or motorcyle wear the helmet. Believe me saving your life and not having a bolt drilled in your head so they can measure the pressure in your head either before/after they choose to do surgery is worth it. Lucky you. I have personal experience with this. Just wear the dorky helmet.

3. In scooter versus car/ truck/ SUV the scooter (or rather the rider) never wins. The end.

4. Don't ask your physician for antibiotics when you don't need them. If you do not have a bacterial infection you do NOT need antiobiotics. This is the reason that MRSA, VRE, and C-Diff (YUCK) are becoming such a problem. If you have a cold or the flu get some rest, drink fluids, and take some tylenol.

5. Wash your hands. This is a classic Kindergarten lesson, now it just applies more. Hand washing is the number one prevention of infection.

6. If you think "I probably shouldn't be doing this" or "this is probably going to hurt" before you do something, save yourself and the hospital a lot of trouble and money and just don't do it. (I dedicate this to all Terrell boys. Don't tell them I said that, haha).

7. Along with #6 a lot of people suffer from a disease called NCM (No Common Sense). If you have common sense, use it. If you don't have common sense find a way to learn it or have someone teach it to you.

8. Guns and knives are NOT toys. Don't get me wrong, I love guns, but there are rules for using them. If you don't know how to use them and don't respect them, stay the hell away from them.

9. Don't smoke. You'd think this would be self explanatory by now, but since people are still doing it, it's obviously not. Yes, I realize it's addictive, but guess what, heart attacks, COPD, and cancer hurt (and are expensive).

10. Wild animals are NOT pets. (Case in example)

11. Don't play with fire. It burns. Duh.

12. Look both ways before crossing the street. Thank you Moms of the world.

13. Don't talk to strangers. Still applies, adults.

#14 removed because of recent nursing experiences

15. SMART cars are NOT so smart. The amount you will save in insurance and gas money will not make up for the emotional, physical, and psychological pain you will go through when you crash this so called "smart" car. They show videos of SMART cars coming out of crashes faring pretty well, unfortunately, the person inside that car does not usually fare so well. Sure you may live through it, but you will probably wish you hadn't. But hey, if you want to have broken legs, ribs, etc. and have a drill stuck in your head so they can take pressure off of your brain because you have a serious head injury be my guest, buy the stupid car, idiot. (Not so smart, or cute anymore)

16. Honesty is always the best policy. The end. (How about you just follow the 10 Commandments, they're there for a reason).

17. Get out and move. Exercise. Your body will thank you later.

18. Every person on this earth, no matter what they've done and who they are, are worth something and should be treated as such.

19. Balance and moderation are oh so important. While I am not one to banish my patients from eating salt and sweets (as a cardiac nurse), it's all about moderation. Moderation. Moderation.

20. To end on a positive note: Love, laughter, and faith heal.

So there you go, that's just some of what I've learned (or already knew). That was an awfully expensive education to "learn" those. Lame.

The two little piggies (or fingers)...

This little piggy went to the ER. This little piggy stayed on. This little piggy got stitches. This little piggy got none. Apparently I decided I wanted to cut off my fingers the other day. Cut right through the apple and right into two of my fingers. Too bad my husband keeps the knives from our butcher block really sharp. I'm lucky I didn't chop my fingers off. When water didn't stop the bleeding I admit I panicked a bit when I realized how much blood I was losing and I was like "what do I do now?" Then I'm like, "Jennie, chill out, you're a NURSE. Get a grip. Put pressure on them. Call your husband." Ridiculous. haha. I think I nearly gave the poor boy a heart attack with that phone call. (Don't tell my apartment complex I bled on the carpet, oops). After running into 3 techs that I went through orientation with and 2 respiratory therapists I knew and getting made fun of a lot. I ended up with just 4 lousy stitches (luckily my nail acted like my stitches for my other finger although I will probably lose the nail later, lame) and two bulky ugly bandages that don't inspire a lot of confidence in my patients. I tried to get out of the stitches and just go home, but I had to work the same day and open wounds and nursing is a recipe for an infection. But hey, one of the doctors on my floor even said he had done the same thing. So, what did I learn? Stay away from knives. Don't get an infection (I can't even wear gloves at work so they sent me home later, lame). Scars are NOT a fashion statement. Lidocaine hurts like HELL going in, but makes you feel really weird when it works and hurts when it wears off. It's incredibly hard to work (nursing) with one hand (for instance trying to attach an IV line). Cuts HURT (can't be on narcotics at work, you get fired so no prescription for me, just Tylenol). Ok, that's about it. I'm buying an apple slicer. I don't think my husband will object.

Love Story

I will seek and find you. I shall take you to bed and have my way with you. I will make you ache, shake & sweat until you moan & groan. I will make you beg for mercy, beg for me to stop. I will exhaust you to the point that you will be relieved when I'm finished with you. And, when I am finished, you will be weak for days.

All my love, The Flu

Now get your mind out of the gutter and go get your flu shot!

Ahhahahahahahahahahaha...my nursing friend sent me this and I thought it was hilarious. Ok, maybe demented medical humor. But whatever.

"Good thing babies are breakable!!!"

OK so I haven't written in a long time I realize. These are the last few experiences from my classes last semester. I know it took me forever to write this even though I started forever ago. Sorry. I hope they're worth it now. :) Enjoy!

So Scatterbrained was on a whole nother (is that a word? eh, oh well, it is now) level one week. This is a direct quote from her while we were studying GI (gastrointestinal): "this is boring. Well it's really not boring, you can save someone's life with this stuff. But, I'm like dying for a guest speaker for GI." Um, did she really just say that her topic was boring? Wow. I guess it was true though, GI is pretty boring but we still have to learn it. I'm not sure a guest speaker would have helped us though. Scratch that...maybe that class would have made more sense from guest speakers. This is a demonstration of what she drew on the board almost daily with her notes. Yeah that's a box that's circled like 10 times with arrows coming off of it pointing to things all over the board. This was a daily occurrence. Too bad you can't read her handwriting. I think my all time favorite moment in that class was when she brought in two old casts from a broken arm and a broken leg and made one of my friends put the cast on to demonstrate something. EWWWWWWWWWW GROSS!!!! Who wants to put on someone else's old, dirty, smelly, nasty cast?! That gives me the willies!! Poor girl. Then Scatterbrained threw her leg up on the front table in our classroom and tried the leg cast on herself. I'm pretty sure I'm was trying to contain my laughter (and horror) on the back row by that time. Yuck!! Seriously. Oh well. She's a really nice lady and was a pretty good professor (minus the ditsy part) and I did fine in her class so whatever, moving on.

My last class period of Drama Queen's class period was rather uneventful, if I remember right, except she just HAD to get in one last jab about milk. Ugh. It started out with her going off on calcium. She told us to ask our patients: "Excuse me?! How much calcium do you take?" Then she told us that we should "take enough to supply our bones, but not too much." This has to do with kidney stones and how too much calcium (aka milk according to her) causes them, supposedly. She said that she "just had to bring it up." Well yes, we wouldn't have it any other way on our last class period than to have you vent one last time about milk. Then she succeeded in throwing in her anti-men clause as well. Kidney stones are incredibly painful (just so you know). But this was her little complaint about men. "Especially men, they act like they are in labor and I say 'No way!' They act like such babies." Hahaha, eh never mind it was funny when she said it. But your public service announcement for the day is that you "need to be really careful about how much milk you drink." Oh no, not again! I'm so freaking sick of hearing about milk. Not that I'm a big milk drinker, but I love cereal, therefore I have milk in my diet. Heaven forbid. However, this is NOT something I ever want to have (forgive the pic, don't worry, they're much grosser in person). But FYI, high calcium alone isn't a risk factor for kidney stones (despite what DQ's opinions may be) other factors are involved. Enough with the nursing stuff. She was also a very nice professor, as dramatic as she could be.

On to the title story of the blog. No, you didn't read that wrong. That is a direct quote from Monotone herself in one of my last class periods. Monotone said, "Good thing babies are breakable." I burst out laughing, I just couldn't contain it, it was too funny. But I was kind of loud and by this time everyone in the class was zoned out already. She looks at me and she's like, "what?!" I'm like "did you hear what you just said? [at which point she stares at me blankly, so I have to repeat it back to her] 'Good thing babies are breakable.'" I was having a hard time keeping a straight face (I think she was surprised to find that I was even listening to her at that point). Monotone then tried to correct herself by saying "one good thing about the babies is that they break easy. [I was still laughing, that sounded just as bad- so she tried to fix it again] Not that they break easy, but that they heal easy. It came out wrong." Well, obviously. I would hope that you're not glad that babies break easily. Too bad she didn't find this situation nearly as humorous as me and my friends did. It was worth it to go to class this day just to hear her say that. I still think it's funny. :D

There's this weird thing about winter here where everyone and everything gets really staticy (that's not a word either). (Yes, I'm going somewhere with this) After the whole breakable babies conversation I had a hard time (harder than usual) concentrating in that class. Both my friend and I were really staticy though and kept shocking each other. So we were discussing this (instead of the lecture- during the lecture)...the following is the disastrous (or funny, whichever way you want to look at it) result of sarcasm + the two of us + Monotone's class + funny moments in Monotone's class + no filter + lack of sleep + too much stress + end of semester= Me: "you just have a sparking personality. You want me to rub you? Oh wait...That sounded wrong...." :) Her: "I dig myself a hole. You jump in it and start covering yourself up." Unfortunately that's very true. Damn.

Moving on to the Postpartum Depression lecture (that was like 15 minutes later in the class)....this was my friend's response about how she's going to be when she has kids. "I'm gonna be like WTF?" [when they hand her the baby and she doesn't know what to do with it]. Me: "Your kids are going to need therapy before they get home [from the hospital]." Her: "I'm not going to lie to you. Maybe that's what their Dad is for." Lovely. Well if we haven't learned anything else this semester I think we have come to the conclusion....are you ready for it?! OK my final conclusion for this last semester is....We're not ready for kids yet. Love them to death, but yeah I'm so NOT ready for them. Nephews and nieces are great. At the end of the day, you get to give them back. I've lived with a nephew and niece and I just spent the Christmas vacation with my nephew and nieces. Yeah, I wouldn't trade them for anything, but boy am I glad I'm still single at this point in my life. There you go folks, that's the final blog for last semester. Sorry it took so long. I hope you're IQ didn't drop reading this. Alright, off to bed so I can start a whole new semester at 8am tomorrow morning. Bleh.

Why I don't go on blind dates anymore

So some friends and I were discussing malpractice insurance for Doctors the other night and it reminded me of the time that I could have sued a Doctor for misdiagnosing me....We were also discussing dating which reminds me of the same story. This is why I will NEVER go on another blind date again. This is also why I don't have an appendix, or a belly button either.

I woke up at 12:30am with the worst pain I've ever experienced. Actually, it's a toss up between that pain and the pain of having the packing removed from my nose after that surgery. But, that's an entirely different story. I can tolerate my fair share of pain, really at it's worse I've only called my pain an 8 out of 10. For me to call it a 10, I'd have to be unconscious from the pain, nearly dead. Anyways, I suffered through the night somehow until 8:30am and then convinced one of my roommates to take me to the Health Center at BYU (this is no way degrades the care of the Health Center, they are great!!). Let me back up just for a second, my pain was in my abdomen, but was not localized like appendicitis usually is. Since I knew appendicitis is usually pain in the lower right quadrant of the abdomen I figured that it was not appendicitis so I could put heat on it, which I did. BAD BAD idea. NEVER EVER put heat on appendicitis. It can kill you! I'm an idiot. Luckily I survived my stupidity. Back to the Health Center....I received IV #1 and fluids. They took a x-ray of my abdomen and the Doctor determined that I was constipated. Are you freakin' kidding me?! Worst pain of my life and he's says it's just constipation. Yeah right. He wouldn't give me any pain medication because he said that would make the constipation worse. Lovely. I stayed in misery for the next 4 hours at the Health Center. They finally sent me home sometime after noon (they took out my IV) and told me to call if I started vomiting.

I went home and of course...I started vomiting. At this point they decided that I needed to get in to have a CT Scan. So I drove to the Imaging place, bawling my eyes out. At this point, I called my brother and sister-in-law and asked them to meet me there. At the Imaging place of course they had to start another IV (IV #2) to do a contrast CT Scan. If you've never had one of these done, I'll just tell you this, it leaves a copper taste (kind of like penny's) in your mouth and also makes you feel like you peed your pants. I know, awesome. At least I can have empathy for my patients now, I guess. They did the CT Scan and I sat in the waiting room with my bro and sis- in-law and nephew for a while crying until they told me to go straight to the hospital, I had appendicitis, I have to have surgery immediately. Basically, do not pass go, do not collect $200. So, luckily the Imaging place was around the corner from the hospital. I was no longer in any shape to drive though, so I had to leave my car and have my sis-in-law drive. I'm so grateful for the Priesthood in my life. My brother gave me a blessing on the way to the hospital, it wasn't the only one I would get during this hospital visit.

We got to the hospital ER (I don't remember what time it was). So much for being an emergency, though. I sat in the waiting room of the ER for like another 2 hours, puking my guts up in a bucket. Oh the joy. I vaguely remember that one of the bathrooms was flooding in the waiting room too, but maybe I just made that detail up, I don't know. My brother called my Mom while when we got to the ER waiting room to tell her what was up. Unfortunately, I had not warned her of what was going on, so she just got a phone call from my brother saying..."we're in the ER, Jennie has to have surgery." Hahaha, my poor Mom. My brother thought I had talked to her earlier, so that news was a bit of a shock to her. Luckily my home in Colorado is only a 5 hour drive from Provo, so she left right away. Now, to the blind date part....

I had a blind date planned with a guy who's parents were good friends with my parents for the night after my surgery. Well...as I was puking in a bucket in the ER waiting room, my date called me to finalize details. Of course I didn't want to answer, so I made my brother answer and explain to him that I was in the ER and about to go to surgery for an emergency Appendectomy, so the date would have to be postponed, obviously. End of story, right? Wrong! But I'll get back to that a little later.

I was finally admitted to the actual ER around 5pm, where they FINALLY gave me Morphine for the pain. YAY for narcotics!!!! Big fan!!! So basically I hadn't had ANYTHING for pain for the past approximately 17 hours since my pain had started. Yeah, it was the day from Hell! Well, I had never had Morphine before and it works great for me, but it also knocks me out and makes me pretty loopy. Basically I am NOT responsible for ANYTHING I say when I'm on narcotics. I DO NOT edit what I say and basically you could probably get me to tell you anything. I'm pretty sure it would NOT make any sense though, sorry. I'm not sure if I received IV #3 or if they left the one in from the Imaging center. I thought I spent like 2 hours in the ER waiting to go into surgery. I found out later that it was actually 5 hours. My poor brother, who must seriously love me, sat with me for the entire 5 hours. I love him dearly!! Poor guy! Apparently there were like 3 or 4 more cases of Appendicitis in the ER at the same time I was there, which was really random. I was finally taken back into a prep room for surgery at about 10pm. They gave me something that they said would make me kind of drowsy. Hahahaha, yeah right. I was completely out in like 30 seconds. I don't remember anything until they were taking me into my room 3 hours later. I wasn't even awake to go into the OR. I woke up at 1am as they were wheeling me into my room on the Med/ Surg floor and my Mom had just barely arrived.

The funny thing is they put me on the floor below where I worked. 3 weeks previously I had started work on the Medical/ Oncology Floor as a PCT (Patient Care Tech- basically a CNA who gets to draw blood and put in catheters, woohoo :P). I was even supposed to work that weekend. That obviously didn't happen, but I did go up to visit my co-workers, IV pole and all, just to prove that I wasn't just skipping out on work for fun. :) The next day was pretty blurry for me. I was on a lot of drugs, which not only knocked me out, I was also in pain. I know a bunch of people from church, who I didn't know yet (later we became really good friends) came to see me. I don't remember the details though. The funny thing about narcotics and me is that, like I said, I don't have the ability to edit things when I'm on them. So, apparently I told me brother something that is entirely too graphic to put on here (I've taken so many medical classes that I tend to use correct medical terms. This isn't coming out right. Ok, I described something in detail in medical terms that normal people don't use in casual conversation). My mother was mortified, though. I think it's hilarious, but my brother was kind of horrified. Anyways, me on narcotics is dangerous for casual conversation.

Back to the blind date thing. The evening after my surgery, we got a phone call in my room that my Mom answered and guess who it was? My blind date. Yeah, guess where he was? Downstairs in the hospital. Oh yeah. No, I'm not kidding. He drove like an hour and a half to get there, it wasn't like I could turn him away. Another note on narcotics, they make me incredibly emotional. So I was completely irrational and had just been crying about something. So anyways, I got to meet my blind date while lying in a hospital bed wearing literally nothing but a hospital gown, no make-up, I've just been through surgery, and I'm totally loopy on narcotics. Lovely. Talk about embarrassing. He does get points for making me cookies and bringing me a card, but I can't quite forget how humiliated I was. Now it's just funny, but it wasn't very funny at the time. Apparently, my Mom spent almost the whole time talking to him. I was too drugged to be very conversational. That may be kind of rude, but considering the state I was in, I didn't care. I did end up going out with him later on our date, which was disastrous, by the way. It was awful. He was sizing me up for marriage the whole time, basically. But, I don't want to totally trash the guy, so back to my hospital story. Nope, I'm not done. It gets better, although the blind date part is done.

I should have gone home the next day (Post-Op Day #2?), I think (I don't know, the days all kind of ran together). But I do remember the PCT coming in the next morning and taking me vital signs. She stuck a sat monitor on my finger and nearly panicked when it read my Sats as in the 70's. Yeah, VERY bad. Ok, your "Sats" is your oxygen saturation in your blood. Basically you want it to be above 90% (my nursing professors say much higher, but basically when it gets to 88% it rapidly drops)...so the fact that I was in the 70's was a bit of a panic moment for them. I had to get a chest x-ray, which showed that the bottom of my lungs were starting to collapse (I had atelectasis, my nursing friends will appreciate that diagnosis). Basically, that put me at a big risk for getting pneumonia, unless I started moving around and coughing, deep breathing. By the way, when you've had you're stomach muscle cut through, the last thing you want to do is cough or deep breathe. Yay for nurses who told me about using a pillow as a splint. Ok, I better stop there before I get really carried away with the nursing stuff. They also sent me down for ultrasounds on both of my legs to check for DVT's (blood clots) from lying in bed too much (a cause of the atelectasis). It was a rough day. I finally got to go home the next day (I think). Recovery was like 3 weeks at home and another 3 weeks not lifting anything. That was just a laparoscopic appendectomy. (P.S. Yes, this means I have 3 tiny scars, one of which is in my belly button, basically he destroyed my belly button. I don't really have one anymore). I can't imagine what an open appendectomy would be like. Recovery sucked, to put it lightly. Lortab (Vicodin) was my friend for weeks! Thank goodness I only had one appendix, I NEVER want to do that again.

Anyways, the good thing is it did give me a lot of empathy for my patients. I know what it feels like to have a sore throat from being intubated. I know what it feels like to be in pain from having air inflated into your abdomen for surgery and then to have to burp it up for the next day (yes, they do that, and yes, it actually hurts). I know what real pain feels like (to a degree, of course, pain is subjective and different for every person). I know what it's like to need pain medication and to have to wait forever (or so it seemed) for your nurse to bring it to you. Ok, I should stop. Basically, I learned a ton from the experience.

Hmm...did I forget anything? That's a really long story, sorry. It's better when I tell it in person, with my voice inflections and facial expressions, of course. I'm not telling this to be cocky or dramatic, it's just a great story. Anyways, I refuse to go on anymore blind dates. They're not worth it. What would happen next time? I'd probably get hit by a truck and have to get my spleen out or something. I can only lose so many internal organs. Yeah, it's not worth it. No go. (because I'm morbid and like pictures) :)