NeuroGate 2008

Sigh.  

Once again, I start a posting with a deep breath and a pause.  It's been a mentally and physically exhausting week.  Ever reach Friday and quietly deep in your soul rejoice that with the weekend comes a "reset" button of sorts?  Ever reach Friday after a trying week and have one tiny insignificant setback make you crumble?  "Yes" to both for me.  What a week.

A great friend of mine is a high school English/literature teacher (right?!?).  A while back, she had some cheating going on and had to deal with it.  Well, apparently nursing students do it too.  I'm not going to go into more than a couple of sentences detail about this because I have a lot of good friends involved in everything and even I'm indirectly involved.  Let's just say a 4th semester student sent a 2nd semester student her study guides from the second half of our course.  Emails went out from there and now pretty much the majority of my class is somehow linked to this material.  Well, word got back to professors and program directors and the proverbial poop hit the fan.  It's ugly, staff is mad/sad/disappointed, reputations are tainted and it's mentally and spiritually draining.  I will say that I am OK, and my grades and rep are intact.  But it's a tough lesson learned.  When I told the Tall One that night about what happened, he just sat there and said, "Whoa.  It's like... NeuroGate."  Well said, well said.

But on the upside, I went to the ER on Thursday as a student and what a kick ass good time!!!!  I didn't think I would like it, but it was great!  It was ridiculously slow at first, so we sat around.  And then the elderly with their chest pain and nausea started showing up.  I got to do my first blood draw.  It's a good thing they make us wear gloves because I made a terrific mess.  Yeah nursing students!!!  I got to see some sutures put in, talk with lots of patients, play with IV pumps... and then it happened.  Possible heart attack in progress!  That staff was on it, and they were ready for that guy when he came in.  He was way too young to be on the verge of his SECOND heart attack in TWO years, but there he was and within 10 minutes of arrival he was carted off to surgery.  Pure excitement.  What was my job?  I held some pillowcases and moved an EKG machine out of the way.  Yeah nursing students!!!

My right ear continues to heal, I guess, but my left ear and all its illustrious history has gone on strike and I'm having trouble convincing it to come back.  So, I called my fantastic ear doc that has been with me since I was 10yrs old.  Believe it or not, 22yrs later he's still seeing patients.  But in that time, he's also become well-reknowned in his field and quite the expert.  He's a little busy because the next available appt for me is May 28th.  I made the appt and then hung up my phone and shed a few tears.  Not what I was hoping for at the end of my week.  I can't get in to see him within a week or two?  I have to wait over a month?  Bwaa-ha-haaaaa, sniffle, sniffle.  I think what I need more than an appt is a blended tropical frosty beverage, some suntan lotion (SPF 45 of course), and a spot on a beach under an umbrella in a warm locale.

Four more weeks until summer...