Today was the last day of our clinical rotation this semester. We brought in fruit, donuts, bagels, and coffee for the staff of our floor to show our appreciation for the education and support they provided. We were lucky to get to work with a good group of RNs who were interested in teaching us and giving us a good experience; not all of the clinical groups were as fortunate.

Afterward we went to Lalo's for margaritas and chimichangas, and presented Julie with our gifts of appreciation. She is a wonderful teacher, and we all learned a lot from her. I don't like to be overly sentimental, but we were a good group, and I'm going to miss working with everyone.

"Report" occurs at the beginning of every nursing shift, in which the nurse starting his or her workday gets all of the patient information from the nurse who cared for them during the previous shift. The information includes patient history, alertness, vital signs, nursing care provided, family visits, recent medications given, and any other anecdotes that may be helpful for the nurse starting the shift.

It is an important and chaotic ritual that occurs on our floor every 8 hours, in which sentences such as "Who had Mr. Rahoonance?", "Patient thinks it is 1986" and "She pooped times 2 overnight, runny" are overheard.

I finished my homework early, so Julie and I went to play Euchre with Dylan and Justin. It was a funexpected afternoon, and they almost got me to drink more beer than I should have by refilling mine when I went to the bathroom, but I caught on the second time they did this. We won 2 of 3 games, then went home to celebrate with Red Curry and Lad Nar.

I should get my work done early more often.

This semester we had to make a couple concept maps based on our patients. This was mine from last week. I was ashamed to hand it in because I thought it was ugly, but I did pretty well on it. At first I thought this was kind of a stupid assignment, but after completing it I realized that it is meant to help us synthesize information and make all the necessary connections required in critical thinking. Even a seemingly simple case, such as my patient, has a lot going on once you lay it all out on paper.

The old hospital (and I mean old compared to the new one, not affectionately as in "you old so and so)" has different colored tape on the floor to lead people to different places. I'm pretty sure I have followed the purple line through the tunnel system, but I'm not sure where the others go. I like to think that one of them leads to certain death, probably the teal one.

A bunch of nurses came to my improv show tonight, which was awesome, but also made me really nervous. When I have friends in the audience, I either step up and perform better, or get in my head and do kind of crappy. Tonight I did kind of crappy, but overall, The Diplomat Motel had a pretty good show, and everyone seemed to have a good time.

Before the show, I would have put money on the fact that Colleen would be the one to volunteer for The Dream portion of the night, and indeed she did. She told us about her day, and then we showed her what that night's dream might look like. It ended up being pretty incoherent and kind of crazy, which are also words that could describe most of the nurses after however many Friday beers they had consumed prior to coming to the theater.

Of the three Dunkin' Donuts I pass on the way to school, the one near the Howard stop is the worst. It gets consistent low marks for service, speed, friendliness, sincerity of smiles, and correct placement of the coffee lid so that it doesn't come off spontaneously and spill coffee on your scrubs.

And I have to give a shout out to the guy who works the bagel station at State and Van Buren. You're the hardest working person there, and I hope your colleagues respect your work ethic and the proficiency with which you adapted to the new flatbread sandwiches.

On Tuesday I got to help a Neurosurgery ICU nurse as she cared for a man recovering from brain surgery. He was stable, but required a lot of care and constant monitoring. The most important thing I learned is that a good ICU nurse has to be very attentive and organized. The RN was frustrated at the mess and tangle that had accumulated over multiple shifts, so we spent the first hour cleaning up the room and straightening up all of the tubes and wires. It made everything we did later on a lot easier.

Wednesday my patient was very low maintenance. He had back surgery the day before, and was getting discharged in the afternoon. He was very friendly and talkative, and I got to do a fair amount of patient education. We also talked about Chicago baseball, and he acknowledged the chance that we may run into each other at a game sometime. Nice guy.

It's a little bit brighter these days when I get up at 4:45 am to go to the hospital; just a few short weeks ago it was as black as a hamster's eyeball. Getting up early is not fun, but I do take a certain amount of self-satisfaction from knowing I am up before most of my friends and family.

Julie and I went to Axehead Lake to enjoy the weather. I brought my fly rod, and did a little casting. I wish I could call it fishing, but considering I'm not very good yet, and I don't believe there are any fish in residence there anyway, it was just casting practice. Northern Illinois isn't exactly a sportsman's paradise, but I am enjoying this challenging new hobby.

Julie: It might be pretty here if it wasn't right next to the Tollway.

Apologies for another food post, but I feel the need to spread the word about the Pizzazz Pizza Oven. When I received this device for Christmas, courtesy of my aunt Lynda and her boyfriend T.R., I was worried that it would be another Rotato, a kitchen item that you use once out of curiosity, then never touch again.

I was skeptical when T.R. told me that it cooks the perfect pizza, but he was right. When you're slumming with a Jack's or a Tombstone, you might as well reach for perfection.

In the summer I play 12" softball at Waveland Park. The Clowns have steadily improved each season, and this year we have our sights set on a championship. All we need to do is figure out a way to beat the formidable Taco Slammers, and the Spring league should be ours.

I played pretty well for the first outing of the season: 2-4, with 2 doubles, 4 RBI, and two runs scored, one of which sent the game into extra innings. But more importantly, I discovered that I could still run 60 feet without having a heart attack. It was a tough loss in extra innings, as we just couldn't overcome the three run deficit in the bottom of the 9th. Next week.

Also, Julie and I saw Teeth at The Music Box. It was probably the best a movie about vagina dentata could possibly be.

Some of my classmates chose to take advantage of the nice weather and work on their group presentation outside. Sadly, this is the closest thing we have to a quad in proximity of the College of Nursing, and I couldn't help but feel a twinge of nostalgia for the quad at UIUC.

Luckily, I can keep tabs on what's happening there using the QuadCam: http://www.uiuc.edu/resources/quadCam.html. No anti-war rally or awkward frisbee circle will go unnoticed. I wonder if Preacher Dan and Crazy Sports Guy are still around?

Usually surprisingly graceful for my size and giant head, I will occasionally take a spill on a set of stairs. This is the spot where I tripped rushing to catch a train on Wednesday and sent my coffee flying through the air. If any of you saw this happen and laughed, I don't blame you, it was probably hilarious. And to you, man on the train who held the door for me, then said "I'm sorry that happened", I hoist my beer and bid you long life and happiness.

This week Elise was complaining of weird heart palpitations. Julie, awesome instructor that she is, saw this as a great opportunity to teach us how to use an ECG machine. We went down to the research lab where she works, hooked the leads up to Elise, and ran the ECG. Normal sinus rhythm = boring, but I'm glad that Elise had no immediate cause for concern.

I might fake a stroke next week so that we can learn how to use an MRI.

Being in the hospital is less scary now as I have become more comfortable in my role as a student nurse. I'm getting used to being in the hospital, and talking to patients, nurses, doctors, and the hundreds of other special services that come through each day. We're all there together, with the primary goal of caring for people who need to be cared for. I no longer dread Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I have embraced the suffocating terror of patient care.

But I would be lying if I said I wasn't tempted to stay on the train every morning and see what 54th and Cermak is all about.

A couple days before school started, I went grocery shopping with the idea that I would make all of my meals, thereby eating better and saving money. This plan worked well until I ran out of food and rekindled my reluctant love affair with Subway.

I finally went shopping again today. I was suckered into buying these novelty apples that are supposed to taste like grapes. There was no price listed, so I figured they would be $4 tops, a fair price to pay to satisfy my curiosity. When I got home, I discovered that I had paid $7 for them. I tried one, and yeah, it kind of tasted like a grape; but what I thought was a miracle of artificial selection and orchard ingenuity turned out to be a sham. They are just apples dipped in grape flavoring, and I paid the opportunity cost of a Saturday matinee to have them.

It made me wonder what other things could be dipped in flavoring and marketed with a clever smerge. I'm thinking about dusting these bananas in ranch flavoring and calling them baranchulas.

Sunday was just barely nice enough for a game of bocce in Touhy Park. Eric and I mounted an impressive comeback, leaving Justin and Dylan to wonder where everything went wrong.

We started off playing by a legitimate set of rules, but ended up developing a sort of bocce golf. Someone would whip the boccino very far away, and we would get two turns to get near it, kind of like a par 2. We also decided that it's more interesting to throw over trees and blast into fences than just rolling the balls. I had a ton of work I was supposed to be doing, but decided bocce was more important.

Then I went home and made tacos.

Occasionally my friend Kellina asks me to proctor the ACT test at Holy Trinity High School. In the interest of helping out and making some extra scrizzle, I usually oblige her.

On this particular occasion, I noticed that many students left large sections at the end of each test blank. Even the ACT guidelines are explicit in the fact that it is to the student's advantage to answer every question. I wanted to encourage them, but as an impartial proctor, was helpless to do anything about it. It's the same type of student apathy that killed me slowly over the last few years.

Even manikins are capable of sassy poses.
Is it weird that I miss them?

After Pathophysiology tests, most of us hang out in the lobby to wait for lecture to start. You can usually tell what people thought of the test based on their demeanor. Silence can either mean a person did poorly, or did very well and doesn't want to rub it in. Animated hand gestures often means that someone is not happy with a particular question or part of the test. I'm not sure what a sassy pose indicates.

This is a COW (Computer On Wheels), one of the many acronyms I have learned since I started nursing school. The hallway is lined with them so that the various healthcare workers can do their charting.

When I look at a patient's chart for the first time, I feel like I spend most of the time figuring out what all of the acronyms mean. A few weeks ago my patient had SBO, SOB, and BSO. Thanks to www.medilexicon.com, I was able to figure out that these were small bowel obstruction, shortness of breath, and bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy.

Julie, our clinical instructor, floats us to a couple different units during the course of the semester to expand our experience. Today I was in the research unit, where both outpatients and inpatients participating in research studies have various tests performed. It was a pretty slow day there, but I learned a lot.

One major ongoing study is examining Chronic Renal Insufficiency. A woman was there for a screening to see if she qualified for this study, so the nurse drew blood and took a urine sample. I then watched her do the urinalysis and prepare the blood sample by spinning it in the centrifuge. The experience brought me back to my days in the mosquito lab, where I decided I did not want a career in research. Today's experience made it a viable option again.

One of the nurses mentioned that retention of participants is one of the main problems with research, and told me about the monetary compensation involved. She said there is one healthy guy who makes about $50,000 a year being a participant at local hospitals. She then told me about a prostate study going on right now if I was interested in earning a little extra cash. This begs the question, what is the minimum amount of money one should accept to let a doctor put his or her finger in your butt?

Today marks one of the few occasions in which I set an academic goal and fully achieved it. I was able to crank out my Evidence Based Practice assignment and finish the final installment of The Queen. They should make Helen Mirren queen when Elizabeth II passes on or finishes her second term or whatever.

My dad is doing great after his knee replacement. He's doing really well with his rehab, and when I offered to get things for him, he said that he needed to get up and do things himself, a shocking turn of events.

He also let me give him a subcutaneous injection of lovenox, a medication to help prevent blood clots. It was the first shot I have administered to a human. I was a bit nervous, but it was nice to know that my first injection would be given to someone who wasn't allowed to hate me for it.

Me: Do you mind if I post a picture of your knee?
Dad: No, go ahead. Do you want my trademark? (referring to his lack of an index finger)
Me: Uh, sure. Bonus.

I went out to the Kane County flea market today for the first time. I grew up 20 minutes away, but never made it over there. It was an incredible combination of trash and treasure. My friend Rick had a booth set up, so I stopped by and hung out with him for a while. I even bought a couple things from him. A guy in an adjacent booth had an old xylophone, and every so often someone would run the mallet up the length of it. The sound was exactly like the Antiques Roadshow sound when the appraisal price comes onto the screen. It was as if he was finding out every ten minutes that his xylophone was only worth the $45 at which he had priced it.

This bedpan caught my eye for a potential photo op, and the label of "ASSTRAY" made it an easy frontrunner for the daily entry. I learned a new word, and am looking forward to finding out whether or not this is official nursing lingo, or just creative labeling. The woman selling it also had a stack of metal signs that said "CAN'T TOUCH THIS!" with an American flag, a screaming eagle, and a fighter jet. They were incredible, but in my opinion overpriced at $5, so I tried to negotiate.

Me: How much could you come down on the price if I bought more than one?
Vendor: Well, I already reduced them from 8 dollars and put them on the 5 dollar table. I really can't take any more of a loss on them.
Me: Really? Who besides me has offered to buy one?
Vendor: Nobody today, but I sold one for 19 dollars at a monster truck show.
Me: Fair enough. Maybe I'll be back later.

I did not go back, something I may regret for the rest of my days.

We finished up the presentations we started at the beginning of the semester in our cultural fluency class. Every class period a few people would give a short presentation about themselves and bring in some sort of icon or artifact that represented a culture with which they identified.

Today Reny attired Katie in one of her many saris, and also did a pretty hilarious impersonation of her mother.

I am a big fan of this course. Any other class on a Friday afternoon would be torture.

I love getting the catbird seat on the train. It's like getting my own personal travel cabin, and I find that as crowded as the train gets, few people will attempt to share this seat with you. I'm not sure if it's out of respect for the personal space you have created, or because this is the most likely place in a train car to find vomit, urine, and/or feces.

Katy found this educational gem on the floor yesterday. I am relieved to know that undergoing a craniotomy would not inhibit my ability to point and laugh at things.

Patient education is an important aspect of nursing. This seems like a well written educational pamphlet, and answered all of the questions I would have if surgeons were going to drill holes in my head and remove a piece of my skull.

I went to the library for the first time today to gather journal articles for my paper. At first I was irritated that only one of the nine articles I wanted was available online, meaning I had to get them the old-fashioned way, but I got over it. There's something gratifying about tracking down journals in the seemingly endless stacks.

I found all of them except one because somebody had torn it from the journal. If anybody out there has a copy of Volume 95 of Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery, I would love to borrow it. And you, the person who removed pages 247-248, "Passy-Muir Tracheostomy Speaking Valve", are an asshole.