Beth's Contradictory Brain

Early

Sorry for the light posting! Yesterday, today and tomorrow are the days I'm getting up at 2 a.m. to be at the hospital by 3:30 a.m. Someone in the hospital decided that doctors needed the lab results in time for 7 a.m. rounds. That means going to patients' rooms between four and five a.m. to draw their blood. Fun.

I have learned that I don't really want to do anything regarding in-patient care. I was pretty sure going into this that I would really enjoy dealing with people for, say, ten minutes at a time. I was right. One day last week I did my rotation over at the children's hospital. Again, not for me. Partly because it would be a year or two before I felt my skills were good enough to draw blood from little kids. And partly because it just broke my heart to see kids in the hospital, even in an out-patient setting.

Thursday is our final exam, then we just have half a day of more draws Friday. I'm pretty ready for the class to be over.

I don't have any solid info on a job yet, but will hopefully know something in the next week or two. I've heard it can take HR a while to process everything even if there's an opening.

Rainy Saturday

After a week of gorgeous weather, it's a very rainy Saturday. My Nerdstar has to go to drill this weekend, so I'm home alone all day. It's weird, just three weeks of going to this class makes it feel strange today to be home with nothing in particular to do.

Just one more week of this vampire class. I'm pretty ready for it to be over. I'm enjoying it, and think it's a really good class, I'd just rather it was paid on the job training.

Now I'm getting anxious about getting hired somewhere. There are rumors that they might hire the three of us looking for a job part time at first to do things like health fairs and filling in for people's days off. I'm not opposed to that. There are two other hospitals affiliated with the one downtown that are closer to home that my instructor is going to check for me and see if they need anyone. That would be even better.

There's also a lot going on with Nerdstar's job stuff. It would take a flow chart to sort it all out. On top of the re-enlist/don't re-enlist stuff, and the this unit or that unit stuff... Yesterday she got a call to go to an interview for a Postal Inspector job she'd really like to get. She first applied for a job like that about four or so years ago. Getting sent to Iraq put an end to that. But she recently found out that she could get a waiver and not have to start the entire process all over. (The process can take a year or two, with lots of tests and such.) She really wasn't expecting to hear back from them any time soon, so it's cool. All she knows right now is they want her somewhere on Feb. 13th and 14th - Monday she'll find out what city the interview is in. (It won't be anywhere near here.)

What's cool is I'm not at all stressed about any of it. For some reason I really believe this is going to be a good year for Nerdstar and I, especially when it comes to finally ending up in jobs we like. Part of my reasons for doing this phlebotomy class is that there are healthcare jobs everywhere!

Day 12

Today was the day we got to "shadow" the patient care technicians to see if it's a job we're interested in. I already knew I wasn't, and this morning cemented it. The PCTs do just that - care for the patients. They get their meals, bathe them, change the linens, and whatever else is necessary, including getting urine samples and drawing blood when necessary. Why would I want to add all that work when working in an outpatient draw center just drawing blood pays the same. Yes, I know, some people like the aspect of spending more time with patients... not me. I'm really, really good at being very, very nice for the short amount of time it takes to draw someone's blood. That's why I chose this route.

Our first of two tests was this afternoon. I got a 94, and I'm not even that happy with it because I had to answers right and changed them to wrong answers. I know, always go with your first choice! I did get the highest score in my little class of four :-)

I'm feeling pretty ready for this class to be done and to get a job earning actual $$ for the work I'm doing. Although, we do still have rotations at a children's hospital and on the regular hospital floors just doing early morning draws. And I do still need some pratice at drawing, just to get better at the harder ones. Tomorrow I spend all eight hours at the fairly busy outpatient station, so I should finish up my 100 required sticks.

Other than that just hanging out with my girl and the pets and trying to stay rested and not sick. Zinc really does help.

Two Down, Two To Go

I'm halfway through this vampire class. It's going just about like I expected. We started with three days of classes, and have spent the last seven days in the various "draw stations" "sticking" real patients. It's been good to rotate through the three stations because they have such different patient populations. One has a lot of renal patients, one has a lot of children and pregnant women (it's next door to a pediatric office), and the third has a wide variety. It's not as hard to draw blood from the elderly as I would have thought.

We have to do 100 successful sticks. As of now I have 81 successful out of 95 total, 85% success rate after only seven days is decent. Of course, I'd like it to be higher. It was interesting Friday in that I learned that if I really can't feel the vein, I'm not likely to hit it. The bad side is that since I'm still learning, I need to try, the good side is that I only try once and then let the pros do it. It's nice for me, but not the patient, when they have trouble as well!

Doing phlebotomy as a job is about what I expected as well. I really enjoy talking and interacting with patients on a short time basis. I like putting them at ease. What's funny at this point in my training is that I'm absolutely terrible at tying a turniquit!! Unfortunately, the patient sees me struggling with it and figures there's no way I'm not going to hurt them with a needle. Fortunately my "sticking" technique is nice and smooth and so far no one has complained of it hurting.

We have our first exam Tuesday. I don't expect it to be a problem. Then I think on Wednesday we get a lecture from a lady from a children's hospital and then later in the week we actually go spend a few hours at the children's hospital doing sticks with children patients. Having seen just a few already, I'm not sure I'm looking forward to that.

In addition to the children's hospital, we do a "shadowing" of a patient care tech and a ride along with the lady who does home draws. I'm really glad we get to see so many different settings to do phlebotomy.

Heh

This is why God created the internet...

Fall Out Boy home video.

Actual lyrics... not to be read without watching the video first!

found on Strip Mining for Whimsy

Hmmm

I'm too tired to really comment on this book, but I did put it on my wishlist and plan on reading it eventually!

Norah Vincent's Self-Made Man : One Woman's Journey into Manhood and Back. It's basically a Male Like Me book -- she disguised herself (rather convincingly) as a man named "Ned," lived that way for several months, and writes about what she learned.

Any initial thoughts?

Nice

Go thank Riding Sun for sharing this pic with us! Oh, and leave a caption at his site if you can think of a good one.

?

For any of you who have at one time or another spent time apart from your love... which is better - going away sex or coming home sex?

I'm thinking coming home sex.

Day Five

I was telling Nerdstar the other night, I just want to be good at something. It's been a long time since I felt like I was good at something. Certainly the last year or so of my last job, honestly, I sucked.

Today wasn't really discouraging, but it might should have been. I stuck about 18 people and only hit about 9 veins. Now, my saving grace is that I generally cause no pain. And this first week so I only try once and then let the pro do it. My pro for yesterday and today usually made it look pretty easy, but I'd say half of my misses weren't a piece of cake for her either. This particular lab gets renal patients and such. I'd still be happier if I'd hit more than 50% today!

Just so you know, if you're ever getting your blood drawn, yes, there are veins that are a little hard to find, but don't let any phlebotomist blame your body for their miss! Just the simple act of pulling the skin tight near the vein will make the needle going on a LOT less painful. And once in, the needle should barely move - and only forward and backward, not up or down or side to side. And never hesitate to ask that person to find someone else to try. At the hospital I'm training at the policy is one person gets 2 sticks, the next person 2 sticks, and one more person gets 1 more stick before calling the patient's doc to find another way to get the test.

So, one week down, three to go! Next week is all 8 a.m. to 4:30 and all day at the labs to do more sticks.

Day Four

I had a damn early start to my day today. I had to be at the hospital at 6 a.m., which meant my alarm went off at 4:30. Fortunately, I felt pretty energized all day, but now I'm starting to fade.

Today was my first day in the lab drawing real people's blood. I got 9 out of 10 sticks successfully. We have to do 100 successful sticks by the end of the training. I guess that's a pretty good start. Today I was in an outpatient little office within the hospital and this one lady usually works it alone, except when she's nice and helping out us students. I have to introduce myself and inform them that I'm a student and ask their consent. They were all very nice. I think I caused one or two a little pain, but nothing that anyone complained about.

I'm finding two things in my favor. One, I'm fairly confident. That helps me not have a shaky hand and helps me just get in there and do it. And when I had two back to back sticks that didn't go all that great, the next one was one of my best. It helps to know that just because one or two don't go smoothly, it doesn't mean the rest of your day is doomed. Two, I'm ambidextrious. Really, the only thing I do right-handed is handwriting. I've always done everything else left handed, drive, brush my teeth, bat. That means I can smoothly stick someone with a needle with my left hand - leaving my right hand free to do things like change tubes, release the tourniquit, apply the cotton ball, etc. Now, if I can just get patients to sit in the chair set up for lefties...

It's crazy that this is really only day 4 of our training. It seems like longer. I'll definitely be ready for a break this weekend.

Day One

Well, today was day one of official vampire school. It was a long day of lecture, but I really did learn a lot - mostly about what can go wrong when drawing someone's blood. I didn't know you could cause permanent nerve damage.

At the end of the day we practiced on a little skin like thing with various veins in it, then once on a fake arm that had actual liquids to draw out, then we went over to a draw station and drew each other's blood. I'm a little worried about finding veins by feel and not sight, my finger doesn't seem to be sensitive enough yet, but other than that I did just fine, as did my classmates.

Tomorrow and Wednesday are more lecture days, then starting at 6 a.m. Thursday and Friday I spend all day at a lab doing as many sticks as possible.

I really appreciate the 80% hands on learning they've set up for this class. We go to about five or six different settings with as many different people supervising us in the next three weeks.

I can only hope that all of the people I draw from feel like Eden did about her phlebotomist.

Note to self

Note to self... do not take Zinc on an empty stomach!

So today is an all day orientation for my vampire class (it's easier to spell than phlebotomy). Yesterday I started feeling a little head cold or something. Second note to self - stop sleeping with the window open when it's below 55 outside. I went and got some Zinc to try. We've been on a diet of sorts all week, and nothing ever sounds good to eat before about 10 a.m., so I had a really empty stomach this morning. I took my Zinc and hit the road. It's about a forty minute drive, and I got almost all the way there and had to pull over and puke - ugh! I honestly can't remember the last time I puked. And puking with an empty stomach, not much fun.

That was a lovely start to the day.

The orientation went well. I really like the two women giving the class. Although really, I think there are about four, maybe five, days we'll be in the classroom, all the other days we're spending all day actually drawing blood.

Monday we get to stick each other, just to get it out of the way. I'm not nervous yet, but I might be by then. It's a four person class, so that's nice.

Hook Em Horns!

WOW! What a game. Under a minute left, 4th down, one last shot at the game - and Vince actually runs it in himself. Wow!

I'm so happy for UT and Austin!

Ugh

I don't think I've mentioned just how much I hate cable news media lately. Yes, I watch it too much, which should be changing come Friday, but...

When you have 24 hours to do news, and news is all you do, I don't think it's too much to ask that they actually report news that is true. What major story have they gotten right lately? Since the 2000 election when they couldn't wait for real return numbers it's just been fuck up after fuck up.

What makes the mistake last night in the miner's story is that I can't imagine anything worse than all those minutes of such joy being shot to hell with the truth.

You just think they'd learn that by trying to beat the other network by 20 seconds and it resulting in egg all over their face that maybe it's better to wait and verify.

The other thing that bugs the hell out of me is the self imposed time restrictions - the, oh, I'm sorry we have to stop this discussion because we've got to go to X. You've technically got 24 hours, ok, maybe 14 truly live hours, there is more than enough time to actually report a story in adequate detail.

I'd guess the first thing to go in my newly restricted tv time will be cable news.

Another Must Read

Most people reading this have strong stomachs, so let me lay it out as baldly as I can: Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries.

That's what the war's about: our lack of civilizational confidence. As a famous Arnold Toynbee quote puts it: "Civilizations die from suicide, not murder"--as can be seen throughout much of "the Western world" right now. The progressive agenda--lavish social welfare, abortion, secularism, multiculturalism--is collectively the real suicide bomb. Take multiculturalism. The great thing about multiculturalism is that it doesn't involve knowing anything about other cultures--the capital of Bhutan, the principal exports of Malawi, who cares? All it requires is feeling good about other cultures.

Go read the whole thing.

Go Read

If you haven't yet, go read my girl's holiday tales and leave her some comments!

Rollergirls

Oh my. Did anyone else watch Rollergirls on A&E last night?

What's so crazy is that while Nerdstar was in Iraq, I met up with one of my blog readers and he knew a girl who was doing roller derby in Austin. Alas, Nerdstar and I never went to a match.

I had tried to watch Real World Austin just to see my beloved city, but I just can't stand the show anymore. Forunately, Rollergirls shows a lot of Austin and gives you a feel for the freak factor in the city.

One thing I truly enjoyed while we spent a few days in Austin was the diversity. I mentioned that we went to Hoover's for dinner one night. It's a southern cooking restuarant - the best chicken fried steak, great bbq, grits with breakfast, collard greens, etc. - it's own by a black man, and it's located in East Austin, the poor side of town. The night we were there, out of the twenty tables there were three interracial couples, one Asian couple, one black family, at least one Hispanic couple, and an Asian family of eight or so, with a wide range of ages and income levels. I miss that here in the Midwest.

Anyway, if you get a chance to see Rollergirls, check it out.

Happy New Year

I'd say we're home, but I'm fairly certain neither of us will ever consider anywhere in the Midwest home.

It was one incredibly low key New Year's, but we did manage to make The Kid happy by being there! This morning was all about loading up the car, one last trip to Whataburger and hitting the road.

We drove though Oklahoma today and say a tiny bit of the fires going on there. The sky was definitely smokey all day. About two hundred miles to the north here it had rained and is supposed to rain again tomorrow. I'd say the planet has the same trouble with weather as it has people - distribution.

I'm starting this year pretty optimistic that this year things will finally fall into place. We had this guy read tarrot cards for us in Austin and for me at least he seemed to confirm that. The last card was "the world" - regardless of what all it could mean, I thought it was pretty cool.

So, Happy New Year to all of you. May it bring you love and joy!!