Halloween.

We had a brief orientation of the Pediatric floor today. I am looking forward to this rotation, but I know sick kids are going to make me sad. We stopped by a patient's room today, and saw a 4-year old girl in sickle cell crisis. Our instructor was talking to her, and asked what was on her arm. She said, "That's my PICC line." No kid should know what a Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter is.

They do not perform any painful procedures in the patient's rooms, so they take them to the aptly named Procedure Room where they are presumably distracted by the cartoon characters. Or they learn to hate Donald Duck and Winnie the Pooh.

The hospital has some really nice rooms with a view of the lake.

Me: Do people request the lakeview rooms? Are there VIPs that get them?
Nurse: Yes, sometimes. And I do everything in my power to make sure that the people who ask for them don't get them.

My last day of the OB rotation. Overall, I had a great experience despite being marginally uncomfortable most of the time. This was the first rotation in which I have been very aware of my maleness. Also, our clinical instructor was really great, and made a considerable effort to make sure that we had a worthwhile experience. On to Pediatrics.

We had our OB and Pediatrics exam today. After tests everyone gathers in the lobby to talk about the tough questions, and complain about the poorly written/completely ambiguous ones.

I had my outpatient experience today in the prenatal clinic. One of the nurses gave us a wheel that they use to calculate due dates. After factoring in that I was a preterm baby, I placed the arrow around the date I should have been born, and worked backwards. This gave an estimated date of conception at the end of March, a time that includes both my mom's birthday and my parents' anniversary.

Sometimes I regret my inherent curiosity.

During the news tonight, Justin asked me if Martin has been attacking joggers in Arlington Heights.

ACT test today at Holy Trinity. Proctoring is super easy most of the time, but today I had a couple shitbird kids in my room from the same school. Whatever.

Kellina let me use her classroom for the test today. She has a really comfortable desk chair.

Today I went to Mental Health Court with Jessica. We had heard from our classmates that it has the potential to be a very boring experience depending on the cases they have that day. We were lucky in that we got to see two interesting cases.

The judge was super cool. She brought us into her chambers to discuss the cases, and stressed the importance of accurate and detailed information in patient charts, and how this is our responsibility as nurses. She also bought pizza for all of the people at court that day. I'm not sure if she is up for election in a couple weeks, but she has my vote.

Lia works in the Labor and Delivery unit at the hospital. When we tutored together on Tuesday, she told me she was working Thursday and that I should see if I can shadow her. Here she is using the Pyxis, which is basically a vending machine for medications and supplies.

Lia was working as a Mentor today, which means she doesn't have any patients of her own, but runs around and helps everyone else with deliveries. I was excited about this because it meant I would probably get to see a lot, but this wasn't the case. It was a pretty slow day. As I was leaving, she showed me the computer screen with all the laboring women. "Too bad you're not going to be here around 4 o'clock. Shit is going to get crazy."

The nurses at the hospital carry phones so that they are accessible at all times to patients and other health care workers. It's nice knowing what a patient needs before you go to the room.

Today I was taking the axillary (armpit) temperature of an infant, and he cried the whole time. I told him to "Quit being a baby", which got a laugh out of his parents. I also said, "You think this is bad, we used to take temperature a different way." That one killed. As someone who cares very much about comedic integrity, I am hesitant to recycle jokes, but I'm sure at some point in my career I'll use these again.

Tutoring is going pretty well. It's usually the last thing I feel like doing after a long day of class, but once we get started, the teacher in me comes out and I enjoy it. There's always a big turnout the week before a test. It's still weird tutoring a subject I had last Spring.

When I was teaching high school, I really never had to worry about students asking questions to which I had no answer. That isn't the case with the BSN students. They ask tough questions all the time, to which I usually respond something like, "Yeah, intrinsic clotting mechanisms can be hard. Can anyone answer that?"

We have tests the next two Tuesdays. It's nice having Mondays off to study.

I fully believe in the idea that writing everything out helps me memorize it. Plus I really enjoy writing with a pencil. Don't know why, just do.

My least favorite thing about this time of year is the migration of every house centipede in Chicago into my home. I'm pretty sure there was one under my pillow last week. It was either that or a piece of straw that I crunched with my hand as I was drifting off to sleep.

According to my prelimary calculations, if house centipedes were the size of a human, they would be able to run 85 miles per hour. Terrifying.

I have tried to make Friday nights and Saturdays my own. Sometimes I have so much work that these days need to be used for academic purposes, but I am trying to save these larger chunks of time for leisure and fun. I joined a Saturday afternoon 9-ball team at Ten Cat, which will get me out of bed before 11am and give me an excuse to drink a Bloody Mary.

I attended a Gambler's Anonymous meeting today in my neighborhood for my Mental Health class. It was a closed meeting, but the members were trusting enough to let me stay.

At every meeting, they go through "20 Questions" related to their gambling, and answer Yes or No. The handbook said that most compulsive gamblers answer Yes to at least seven of the questions; I was relieved that only six applied to me.

Hospitals have vacuum tubes to send medications and lab specimens. It's just like the bank except you get drugs and urine instead of money.

A circumstraint is exactly what it sounds like - it restrains infants while their foreskins are cut off. I watched this procedure today, and I think it was more traumatic for me than for the baby; he cried a little when they numbed him up, but then slept through the rest of it.

I thought about getting a picture of the disembodied foreskin, but for some reason that seemed disrespectful and inappropriate.

Really? That's how you spell it? "Aaaayh!"? I don't know what I would suggest, but that looks gross and I think MeTV could have done a better job.

I learned this weekend that when Cate says "Mah Dada pease", it's less of a question and more of a demand, and if Dora the Explorer isn't on the TV in under a minute, some serious shit is going to go down. I like to think that I would have hated this show when I was a toddler, but its interactive nature and comforting predictability would almost certainly have appealed to me.

After I finished The Handmaid's Tale, I had nothing to do but watch. My favorite was the episode in which Dora and Swiper team up to return friendship bracelets to the children of the world. It really showed that Swiper isn't a total asshole, and that sometimes we need to put aside our differences and do what is right, like when I let spiders live instead of kill them immediately.

Sitting around the fire, Sean told me that he hates blogs, and will never read mine, not ever.

I'm beginning to hate my blog also, and I'm sorry, Mom, that I haven't been keeping up with it. I am committed to another six or seven months of this, so will keep on it as best I can.

When the fish we were using as bait were bigger than most fish I had ever caught, I knew I was in for a fun day.

I now understand why people say that muskies are difficult to catch. I had two huge strikes today, but wasn't able to land either one. Dave had three or four, but was fishless as well. Sean, who caught his first one last year after years of fishing, didn't have a single bite. His baitfish had incredible intuition in that it stayed far away from any area in which a muskie would get him (or her).

Next year I am going to catch a monster.

My friend Sean invited me to his family's place in Eagle River, Wisconsin. He goes muskie fishing every year, and I was honored to tag along.

Esox masquinongy, the muskellunge, is a notoriously difficult fish to catch. Tomorrow we will spend the day on one of the chains up here, trying to land one of these elusive monsters. This specimen was caught by Sean's mother many years ago, and once held the world record for a muskie caught on 14-lb. test.

I'm really glad I stayed home yesterday. I feel a thousand times better.

Gema and I went to Labor and Delivery today, where you need to wear special scrubs that you obtain at the scrub machine.

I was with a woman today who had a scheduled Cesarean, so I got to be there with her and her husband throughout the entire process from pre-op to post-partum. Watching surgeons cut her open and take out a child was one of the wildest things I have ever seen, especially considering that she was awake for the whole thing. I learned that a c-section is not a gentle procedure. During the post-partum care, my clinical instructor came in, grabbed my shoulder, and said "Quick, there's a vaginal about to go down." She then threw me into a room where another woman was pushing (with their permission of course), and I watched the last 15 minutes of labor. The couple seemed very relaxed and happy, chatting casually between contractions about college football. I was a tad uncomfortable being there at one of the most intimate and amazing times in their lives, but after a well placed comment about Notre Dame and offering to take a picture of the new family, I made myself feel welcome.

Both births yielded beautiful baby girls, and both were equally amazing.

Thank you, DayQuil. Thank you, NyQuil. Goodnight. [Snore.]

I got blasted by that cold that's been going around, so I skipped class today. I'm a big baby when I'm sick and like to treat myself to greasy breakfasts. I love the Golden Nugget.

I took this picture at my grandma's house a couple months ago. That's my high school senior picture, and I'm thrilled not to be standing in front of a wagon wheel or lounging on a motorcycle. The picture below is my parents and sister. I don't know where I was, maybe in jail.

And I remember the clown from my childhood. Grandma always had a lot of clown paintings and figurines around her house. It's amazing we weren't too terrified to go over there.

After O'Donovan's yesterday, I drove out to St. Charles for my Aunt Lynda's surprise birthday party. It was one of the best executed surprises I have ever seen; she had absolutely no idea. It was fun, and I was glad I had the free time to get out there and spend some time with people I don't see very often.

Here she is holding her grandson, Katcher, who is either my second cousin, or first cousin once-removed. Nobody has ever been able to explain to me what the difference is.

Trupe's daytime birthday lunch at O'Donovan's, a very family friendly bar. There were at least a thousand children there, but none quite as cute as the kids at our table.

Today I helped out with orientation for the incoming Graduate Entry Program. Exactly one year ago, I was sitting in the 3rd floor lounge with a similar bunch of strangers, wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into, if I would be able to afford to live, how many of these people I would end up hating/barely tolerating/becoming friends with, and in general felt nervous, intimidated, and totally excited.

So far everything has worked out; I'm 99% sure I made the right decision.

I was floated down to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit today. The nurse I shadowed was caring for a baby boy that had been born at 25 weeks, and was 1 lb. 11 oz. at birth. The Pampers Preemie diapers, pictured next to my hand for scale, were huge on him. His blood pressure cuff, also pictured, is not much bigger than a Band-Aid.

I was born 6 weeks premature; I spent the first few weeks of my life in a NICU incubator. If I were born today, my chances of survival would be very high, but in 1977, my chances were considerably less. I got sort of choked up a couple times today, thinking that I was lucky to make it, and how terrifying it must have been for my parents.

Day One of my OB rotation. We had orientation and a training session in the HR department. In the statement I signed, it said something about not publishing anything about the hospital without their written consent. I'm not sure if a photoblog read by 15 people counts as publishing, but I feel compelled to protect the identity of the incredibly beautiful women's hospital at which I will be spending the next 5 weeks.

We also took a tour of the various units involved in the process of having a baby. This is a section of the Triage Unit where women in labor walk before they are brought to Labor and Delivery, complete with soothing nature videos on the giant TVs and a color changing wall.