More bad news.... and back on prac

Well this past two weeks has been shocking. My best friend who is also my sister in law was diagnosed with breast cancer last week and had her breast and lymph nodes removed on Wednesday morning. It has been pretty busy with visits to the hospital, being with her for tests and helping with her 2 kids. Her family and friends have been awesome. I stayed with her yesterday while she had bone scans. She had had her organs scanned that morning. After the bone scan which took about an hour, they redid the scan of her knee and then took her off for xrays of the knee, by this stage I was getting pretty worried but the specialist said she was all clear apart from the breast and lymph nodes. She is scheduled for Chemo and radiation later this month so fingers crossed she is on the up and up.

Uni has been a bit so so. I finally finished and handed in 2 of my major essays. One of them was ok, the other was a total waste of time, glad to say I am certainly not the only one who felt that way. A couple of my mates were struggling so I helped them finish off their assignments too. I am out on prac next week at one of the semi-local hospitals. There is a possibility of an Emergency Department placement but I know that lots of my colleagues also want the ED so fingers crossed I am lucky. I look forward to getting into the swing of things again.

Feeling a bit ho hum so will go do some reading I think

Clinical Prac, More Clinical Prac and back to Uni

Well I have just finished my first 2 weeks of clinical prac for my final year. I have to admit that apart from the initial apprehension about my abilities as an RN I am really starting to feel like a nurse.

I have spent the past 2 weeks community nursing with one of the more prominent community nurisng providers. I certainly got some great exposure to different patients and especially some interesting wounds. I really didn't know how I would handle dressing my first fungating malignant tumor but I handled it fine, I just kept thinking to myself, I am really helping this patient and if nurses weren't willing to do it who would? and ofcourse I breathed through my mouth!!! I did lots of interesting patient cares, for lots of interesting patients.

Whilst I never imagined that community nursing would be what I would like to do when I graduate I am grateful for the experience and for the wonderful preceptors who treated me with respect and shared their knowledge and experiences.

I am back at Uni now and have tried to settle into research for my next 4 essays. I have practically got one of them done now, and have moved onto the next one with gusto. I feel totally lost with the topic which is all about communities and the Jakarta declaration etc and I feel uninspired and can't really imagine how it all relates to the reality of nursing practice.

The year is really flying by and easter is just around the corner. The kids are on holidays at the end of this week which by the way I am not on my uni holidays till they go back to school - Hooray for family friendly studies!!!!! NOT.

Well best get back to researching this rediculously complex paper.