Who’s your inner superhero?

Did you know that everyone has a superhero inside them?
It's true! In fact, most people have a different superhero inside them every day - and it's only by getting in touch with your inner superhero that you can attain your ultimate potential. Fortunately for you, we've spared no expense to create the ultimate polypsychotronic transdimensional superhero identity calculator, so that you no longer need to wonder who you really are today.

Here’s what I came up with:
Name: Light Woman
Secret Identity: katydid
Special Power: Psionic Fart
Transportation: Magnetic Scooter
Weapon: Meson Blunderbuss
Costume: Silk Pajamas
Sidekick: the Professor
Nemesis: Melvin the Clever
Tragic Flaw: Clumsiness
Favorite Food: Olives

Ok, hold up. Olives are ok, but who would choose that as a favorite food?!
If I made my own it would look something like this:

Name: Super-Strugglin' Student
Secret Identity: Katydid
Special Power: Snorts when she laughs - which will render all enemies powerless because they laugh too
Weapon: The mighty #2 pencil
Costume: Galaxy Blue Scrubs by day/ Ceil Blue scrubs by night!
Sidekick: Trichosiderin, the redheaded Super-Straight-A Student
Nemesis: Flava-Flav & the Evil Alarm Clock
Tragic Flaw: (i'll keep clumsiness here) & add scatterbrainedness (is that a word?)
Favorite Food: Starbucks White Mochas! (hey in my world that's a food!)

Just for fun... what would you be??
http://www.humorscope.com/hero.html

Midget tossing!

Ok, last week in clinical... well I've got a lot to say, but don't have the time or the drive to type it all out. There's one part though, that I just can't omit: The midget copping a squat. (yeah midget!!) I don't give a F*CK what you say or how PC you want to be - It's ALWAYS funnier when there's a midget involved.

Christin had a midget assigned to her. (CLASSIC!) He was very old, very disoriented, & very incontinent! She asked me to help her change the bed. His wife stepped out of the room to give us some space to work. We were halfway through the process, when he looked at her & said he had to pee. I almost died of laughter when she tried to get him to the bathroom! Turns out he needed a lot more assistance than she thought. He was too weak to stand up by himself, so there she was trying to hold him up - while he stood in the middle of his floor and peed everywhere! Then he crouched down & squatted like he was going to do a #2. Meanwhile, she was still trying to hold him so he didn't fall over. You should have seen the expression on Christin's face as she kept leaning to look and see what was going to come out. (thank freakin' gawd nothing did!!)

As he was squatting and "ugh-ing" (like he was trying to push something, lol!) he was losing balance. We lowered him to the floor so he wouldn't fall. We were trying desperately to clean this guy up & change his linens quickly - all in hopes that his wife didn't come back to the room to find him sitting on the floor soaked in urine. It was enough to drive us into hysterics!

Dietary knocked on the door to deliver the breakfast tray. I leapt to the door to take the tray before I had to explain anything. I told them, "Here, I'll take it. This room is a mess right now, you don't want to come in!" I didn't lie; it was a mess. It was quite a sight to behold, though: Midget down! He didn't even know what was going on... he just sat there on the floor, soaking wet, tapping his feet - just as non-chalant as could be.

... I'm not even going to tell you how we got him back in bed.

Apostrophes where they don't belong?

Took a test in micro today. Thought I was doing pretty well, up until about question 38 ~ then I just hit a wall. Should have READ chapter 8. There was a lot of questions about plasmids and stuff... oh I was so lost. Didn't know just how lost I was until I was talking to Coots after the test. There were all these questions about F+ and F- & F' .... I was calling the last one "F apostrophe" ... Apparently it's "F prime". Yeah, that's how lost I was. Whoops.

Math for 3rd Shifters

Crazy weekend. New math equation. More important than E=Mc2:
Full moon + Friday night = CHAOS
Going to mark every full moon on my calendar from now on.

That's all for now. Going to bed.

Post-Scantron Amnesia?

Once again, I've managed to go almost ages since I've written.

Was tickled by the fact I read about an ERCP on Wed in class, and actually had a patient at work on Saturday that was going in for an ERCP. (Endoscopic Retrograde Cholangiopancreatography - read about it here). You can teach me all you want about lab values and chemical reactions... it goes in one ear and out the other. Sometimes it stays long enough to make it onto the Scantron form for the next test, but the knowledge dissipates quickly. Now, give me something where I can apply it, and we're talking! (I should be knowing those lab values by heart, too. I'm just kinda spoiled by the fact that every printout I've ever seen has H or L next to the abnormals!!) <~~ I need to paste flashcards around the house or something -because I can guarantee those values won't be bolded on the NCLEX!

Had a meeting down at the Red Cross last week... meant to write about this last time! They're seeking volunteers to commit to 3 weeks deployment for disaster services. Felt awful, but had to tell them no. There's no way I'd be able to make up 3 weeks of class. I guess the Red Cross is pretty desperate... new volunteers don't need anything special; all they require is a 2 hour seminar on "disaster services". I think the "seminar" only entails watching a video. They aren't even requiring special skills or proof of immunizations... nothing! (Trust me, we asked!) Everyone who is qualified in our chapter is already gone to Texas & Alabama, etc. We're on standby in our area for a local MASH shelter to be put in place, as the existing shelters are getting close to full. I let the volunteer coordinator know that I'd be glad to volunteer at the local shelter anytime. ..btw, i don't know why they call it a MASH shelter. Doesn't that stand for Mobile something Surgical Hospital? *shrug*

Oooh!!! I almost forgot about this one... Last week I did my clinicals at a local clubhouse for mentally ill adults. About 90% of their patients are schizophrenics. I had a ball... it was SO not like when I got sent to the psych ward at the hospital. These people were not in crisis, but rather in a state of maintenance. Totally a different story from what I saw before... and yay, none of them looked like Frankenstein! (thank GOD). So one of the activities during the day was a poetry therapy group. Fascinating! There's this guy who is prior client - a paranoid schizophrenic, I think. He is interested in poetry, and comes in once a week to lead a poetry-writing & exploring workshop with current clients. So he shared Dickinson's "I'm Nobody" and asked us to write a poem starting off with "I'm Somebody" instead... Great idea - esp for a therapy session! Ok, so I participated, of course! (You can't just sit and watch them... it really would be rude). The guy asked me to read my poem, and (HA!) criticized it. Said it was "Too Prosey". I didn't think it was a critiquing session, but rather a poetry therapy group.
I just thought that was too funny... No, my feelings weren't hurt. I was a bit shocked at how bitterly he disliked it, but really just wanted to laugh. I took a poetry writing course in college about 8 or 9 years ago. I know that there are things some people are going to like, and some people are going to scrunch their nose at. The best part was watching all the clients react to his words... they looked like they were so defensive for me!
By the way, I had a blast listening to what others' wrote. It's kinda funny how you can see elements of the issues they're battling in their writings. It was like opening a little window into them. If you ever get the opportunity - drop on in to a poetry therapy group! I'm sure it won't disappoint!

That's it for now. I've got a test on NG tubes & GI disorders in the morning, so it's off to study-land!

All the waters in India

Tomorrow I go to a halfway house for "mentally ill" adults for my clinical. From what I understand, the majority of the pts are schizophrenic. I'm actually pretty excited about this. The people I've talked to that took this last semester had nothing but good things to say about the experience. I have no desire to get into psychiatric care, but there's a lot to be learned by exposing yourself to the experiences. God knows the nursing office has no problem floating me down there, so I'll take the learnin' while the learnin' is good!
Oooh ... plus I get to go with Coots - this'll make even a sucky day pretty good... just love that gal! Somehow she & I have managed to have clinicals together for the last 3 sessions. (Not this time, though) She & I work well together. ~ I'll be glad to be with someone that's nonjudgemental at this place. *eyeroll* you can only imagine what comes out of some of the student nurses' mouths when they talk about mental illnesses.
Oh, and we can make beds like it ain't nobody's business! ... if all else fails in life, we can get a job cleaning hotel rooms?

Last week in Micro we cultured stuff off our bodies & the environment. 3 off the body & 3 off the environment. Today we got to look at what grew. I chose for my body: my nares, behind my earrings, & under my breast *(It was really hot, & I'd been sitting out in the truck studying, so I had a bit of sweaty action there! ... i know, i know, TMI. Well if ya don't like it ~ as i've always said, see that little X in the upper right-hand corner? Click it!) Anyway~ for the environment, I swabbed the eyepiece of my microscope, the sole of my shoe, and the sponge we were using to "disinfect" our desks with. (I put disinfect into quotes, because if you saw what all grew on the sponge culture, you would wonder what the hell the disinfectant was made of, too!) I wish I knew enough about this stuff to identify what we actually grew. It was hideous. 7 days in an incubator really brings a LOT out. And the samples had a certain je ne sais FUNK to 'em. Ick. I felt so dirty...