Breathe in...Breathe out.

Thank you nursing staff for scaring the crap out of me on the first day. Today was the first day of the semester, and within the first hour, I start having a panic attack. FABULOUS. But it's cool everyone, don't trip, I just monitored my pulse and counted my respirations like a true nurse would do until those feelings subsided. Why was I panicking so much you ask? Oh I don't know, maybe it's because today was an 8 hour day of class where they lectured about how we would be in the ICU and this is no joke. We could kill someone. Nursing students have killed people in their clinicals. Our professors start throwing out questions about arterial lines, types of heart transplants, how to hook up a chest tube, etc.

The professors assure us that we will get the opportunity to learn a lot in our 'wet lab.' I guess they call it that because they actually have live microbes in there such as Hepatitis A, B, C, MRSA, etc. I don't know what the purpose of having real diseases in the room is, but they sent me into another panic when they told us how important it was that we COULD NOT EAT IN THE LAB. Professor Harland went on to explain that one T.A. made the mistake of eating her lunch in the lab, contracted Hepatitis B, and DIED SHORTLY AFTER THAT. I pause, waiting for her to bust up laughing because she's got to be joking. No. She's dead serious. Then we had to go into this 'wet lab' aka death trap. Professor Harland 'said' they try to disinfect between labs but you can't get everything out of the room. Freaking out, I lathered hand sanitizer all over my body.

Okay okay, wet lab was over. Then I meet my clinical instructor, Penny. She is really cool and very knowledgeable (she got her RN, Nurse Practitioner , and Doctorate). But then she threw out the question, "What drug would you never give IV?" Hmmm...trying to find the answer buried deep in my brain since all of Christmas was just filled with Wii Fit fun and trivia games that wasn't about nursing. But I don't know? Answer: Potassium. "Giving someone Potassium IV is another word for the death sentence in prison...because it is." Oh snap! Penny goes on to say, "Actually a year or two ago we had a student that was doing their capstone in the final semester of the program and gave a person Potassium IV and the person died immediately. Needless to say, she got kicked out of the program. The person was only 50." AHHHHHH. This is crazy!! I always knew that nursing was a big responsibility and I would be in charge of peoples' lives, but I never really thought about how one tiny mistake could kill someone. Penny told us a few stories about nurses who are tired or overworked or don't have great vision and misread MD orders and ended up killing someone. Now, my perspective on school is totally different. Now, I don't care about grades at all. I care about how much I know and how much I can learn before I graduate because someone can get good grades and be a terrible nurse. And I will never be a terrible nurse. Lesson for everyone: Be your own health advocate. If you end up in the hospital, ask questions and know the drugs and plan of care you are getting. My family will be safe though. I'm going to be a freaking Nazi to the nursing staff if any of them are in the hospital.

Penny oriented us to the culture that would be at the hospital I'm assigned to: Veterans Affairs Hospital. This will be the best time to be working at the VA. We have a lot of WWII veterans left in Utah because they were less likely to drink and smoke, thus Utah has the largest population of them. WWII veterans are really nice, Penny told us, and enjoy going to the hospital because they get to catch up with veterans and tell war stories. Vietnam veterans are mean supposedly because they were hated on when they came home. I guess people called them 'baby killers' and names like that so they are bitter. I would be too if I risked my life and saw friends die only to come back to a country that disrespected me. And now, the Iraq guys are coming home. She said it will be very hard to take care of them because the Iraqis figured out that we have great equipment to protect the trunk and head, but nothing to get the extremities. So the Iraqis tactics have been to shoot off the limbs and many guys in their young 20s are coming home with 1,2, or 3 limbs missing from them and as of right now it's not considered a war so they don't get benefits past two years. I would go into more detail about everything she told me about the VA, but it would go on forever. I am so excited for this semester and will start on the floor in the ICU in two weeks!