One down...four to go...

I am officially done with my first semester of nursing school! My grades were decent...depending on who you ask (two A's and two B's). And now I have three weeks to let my brain rot before I need to use it again (just kidding dad, I'm not really going to let that happen).

In addition to finals, I spent this past week collecting on a number of birthday dinners...I'm up to five, and I still have a few more to go. One of them is waiting for me in California (thanks Lisa!)...now I just have to find a way to get down there!

How did this happen?

I can't believe that today I am a quarter of a century old! What happened to the last 25 years? Surely I'm only 18 or 19...right? Unfortunately I will not be having a huge celebration today. Instead, I will be studying for my Pathophysiology final. I am pretty sure that this is birthday #5 that I will spend studying not celebrating. Thanks mom and dad for having me in the middle of finals week!

Speaking of school, I am almost done with my first semester. Tomorrow will be my last final and then I will be free for three and a half weeks! Next semester I will be starting clinicals. The first three weeks we will spend in a long-term care facility, where we will only have one patient. Then for the rest of the semester, we will be in acute care (I'm not sure exactly where yet).

Let's see...other than that, not much is new. The weather here sucks. It is currently 33 degrees and pouring rain, so I probably won't be skiing any time soon. There has been snow in the forecast for at least 4 out of the last 5 days, but we have yet to see any of that...

Klondike Pictures

Here are some pictures from my crazy overnight

Pre race drinksOnly 4 miles left...RUN

After being awake for 24 hours and running 11 miles...that is a look of relief!

Post Race

Halfway done (with one semester)!

I have officially passed the halfway mark for this semester! I feel like I've learned very little for having been in school for eight weeks, but I think that is mostly due to the fact that I have nothing to apply it to yet. Next semester I will be in the hospital for one day a week actually applying my knowledge. I'm sure I will lose track of how much time has passed and this will all be over before I know it...but for now, halfway through one semester is a big deal!

No news is good news...right?

Well, I wish I had something exciting to report, but I don't. School has been keeping me fairly busy, but not with anything worth mentioning.

The weather also leaves something to be desired. It's chilly, but there isn't any snow. It snowed one night (less than 1/2 an inch), but then it warmed up and poured rain all last weekend. There's nothing like 33 degrees and rainy to motivate you to do nothing and stay in bed all day.

Call me Student Nurse Rosenstein

Today in school, I learned my first "real" nursing skill. We learned how to prime IVs AND we got to take our IV bag and tubing home to play with (apparently this is a huge responsibility as these are prescription only items). Priming an IV is the process of attaching the tubing and getting all the air bubbles out of the tube so that it can be hooked up to a patient.


This is me after priming my very first IV (now, you realize that I can't actually do anything with it yet...I can just get it ready for someone else to do something with).And here is my IV, ready for administration...maybe

After we learned about priming, we learned how to manually set rates on IVs. Definitely not an exact science. You open the stopcock (the light blue piece has a little rolly thing that opens or closes the tubing) a little and you count the drips from the bottom of the bag into the fluid chamber (the tan thing to the left of the light blue thing) for one minute. 31 drips/min is not an easy thing to accomplish. There is a lot of trial and error involved. I think the electronic IV pump might become my new best friend!

My first test

Today I had a test. It was the first test I've taken in approximately 5 years, and the first test in my nursing school program. Good news...I passed. I got a B, which my dad was not very excited about (he thinks I should get nothing but A's), but for the amount of effort I put it, I would say that is acceptable. C's still get degrees, right?

What? Snow?

There was snow on the mountains yesterday...and that can only mean one thing, winter. Don't get me wrong, I'm ready for winter. I'm just not THAT ready for winter.

Update...again?

It seems like I do more updating that keeping people up to date here...here's what I've been doing for the past few weeks:
Lost Lake Run 8.25.07 (www.lostlakerun.org)
The Lost Lake run is a 16 mile run from Kenai Lake (near Seward, AK) to the Seward Fire Station. It is an amazing trail! You gain about 2200 feet in less than 6 miles and the view from the top is gorgeous. So, after running uphill for 6 miles, you get a little break, then you run uphill for about 1.5 more miles, then you run downhill for 7 more miles. All I have to say about that is OUCH! My time was 3:24:54, which is great considering I was going for four hours! I was sore for about 3 days after...more sore than I have ever been in my entire life!

Me running somewhere around mile 9...don't I look like I'm having a blast?Nursing School 9.4.07
On Sept. 4 I started nursing school. After waiting for almost two years to start...it finally happened. Fairly anticlimactically if you ask me. There are about 40 people in my class, and so far I am not overly annoyed by any of them (that's a HUGE thing for me)! I am taking four classes: Nursing Informatics & Technology (don't ask me what that means because I don't know, it's the class where they put everything that they don't want to make a whole class for), Fundamentals of Nursing, Pathophysiology, and Biomedical Ethics. None of these are very exciting. In fact, the other day I was sitting in class thinking "is this really what I want to do?" and "why am I here?" at which point I almost decided to quit. But, as I am almost 25 and have not yet "done" anything with my life, I figured dropping out after five days really was not the best choice. Besides, when I told my dad I had thought about quitting, he told me he would kill me if I did. If that's not enough motivation to stay in school, I don't know what is! I have discovered that being out of school for two years and then going back is a lot harder than I thought it would be. I am very out of practice doing basic school-related things such as reading and taking notes and studying. I'm sure I'll remember those skills very quickly...I have a test next week and I'm hoping I remember how to study before then!

I would like to take a moment to thank my elementary school education for giving me a skill that one of my professors deemed "essential for being a nurse." Thank you Chugach Optional for making me a full-time learner!

Yukon Road Relay 9.7.07 (sportyukon.com)
Last week I did something crazy (even crazier than running 16 miles for fun). I piled into an RV with 9 people I don't know very well and drove to Skagway, AK to run a 113 mile relay race to Whitehorse (in case you didn't know, that's in Canada). Now, all the things that make up this trip sound like they would be painful and not fun at all (riding in an RV for almost 4 days straight, running a race that goes overnight, camping in the freezing cold, etc.). However, this was possibly one of the best experiences of my life! One of the guys that I work with at my summer job asked me if I wanted to run on their team...they needed a 10th person. The first time he asked, my response was "no way! That sounds terrible." Then after thinking about it for a week or so...I decided that I really had no good reason not to do it. When would I ever have this opportunity again? At the very least, it would make a good story. So I went. We left Thursday morning...drove to Destruction Bay in the Yukon, camped in the freezing cold, got up at 7am, drove to Whitehorse, had lunch, and drove to Skagway. I think we arrived in Skagway around 2pm on Friday. Our first runner started running at 7:30pm Yukon time (now that's a tough concept when you've crossed into and out of a time zone in less than 24 hours...and you are supposed to adhere to a different time zone than the one you are in). I ran leg 9, so I wasn't running until sometime the next morning. Now, that is another aspect that makes this race difficult, not only do you have to run overnight, but after your first runner, you don' t really know when you are going to be running. You can guess...but that's about it. Due to nerves and anticipation, I was unable to sleep all night! I ran at about 9am on Saturday morning (after being up for 24 hours...running is hard!). 11.1 miles late (1hr 53 mins) I was done...and exhausted...and sore. As soon as our leg 10 runner finished, we crammed ourselves back into the trusty RV and headed back towards home. We camped again on Saturday night...I'm not sure where, about 150 miles from the Canada-Alaska border I think. And headed for home Sunday morning.

That was the most unexpected fun that I have had in a long time. I was the newcomer to the team, yet they treated me like I had been around forever, which is a great feeling. Hopefully I made the cut for the team next year!!