The Facts of Life

My phone just rang, singing out the theme song to "The Facts of Life". Yeah, it's cheezy, but it's 80's retro-cool to me, and I've had it programmed there for a few months now. But today it just seems kinda fitting..

It's been a while since i've posted anything new. Mostly I've just been preoccupied - school is taking up a great deal of time. But there are other things too... I think last time I posted I was getting ready to spend my clinical rotation in L&D (Labor & Delivery). I spent two days there, and in those two days, I watched two births: a vaginal delivery, and a cesarean section. (is that how you spell it??) Anyway, it was pretty amazing. During the vaginal, i was completely amazed. Wanted to cry for about a half a second, but knew better. (have to keep your composure in front of the patient & family!!) The C-section was amazing as well, but an altogether different experience. .... I found myself more watching the doctor perform the surgery, and how the mother was tended to & sewn up than watching how the baby was cared for. *guess that's the med-surg gal in me!*

I'm not even going to talk about high risk... it kept me busy, and there was a lot to do. But I wouldn't be able to start to talk about much because the #1 patient I had was a story in itself. HIPAA, ya know. *shaking head* But I will say, when you hear "there really are people like that out there"... that's one of THOSE that I had! (*ha!)

Last weekend at work, I got to see the other side of life... DEATH. We had two patients die on my floor during my shift Sat/Sunday. It was both my first, and my second postmortem. The first one happened just as I was walking onto my shift. I had never met this patient before. The second occurred at the very end of my shift... I knew this patient a little bit because I had been helping take care of her the last 2 weekends. I walked in the room to perform oral care on her when I realized she had gone. (I'll have to post the whole story in another post ... started to type about it the other day on my home computer, but never posted it).

So yeah... that brings me to today - I just spent the last 2 days in the newborn nursery with brand new perfect babies, after cleaning up and toe-tagging two others over the weekend. "The facts of life"

for those not retro-cool enough to remember it:
The Facts of Life
You take the good,
You take the bad,
You take them both
and there you have the facts of life.
The facts of life.

There's a time you gotta go and show
You're growin' now,
You know about the facts of life.
The facts of life.

When the world never seems,
To be living up to your dreams.
And suddenly you're finding out,
The facts of life are all about you.
All about you.
You, All about you.

It takes a lot to get em right,
But you're learnin the facts of life.
Learnin the facts of life.
Learnin the facts of life.
Learnin the facts of life.