Kristen, SN BYU

I just got back from volunteering at the Utah County Health Department free clinic. Besides being a very rewarding service opportunity, it was significant for another reason. It was the last time that I wore my student nurse uniform. Since September of 2004, I have been wearing the standard blue scrub pants and white top with my nametag. I can clearly recall my first clinical and how I ironed my scrub top the night before to make sure it looked crisp and professional. Quite a contrast from tonight when I pulled my wrinkled top from a pile of dirty clothes and covered it with a sweater.

I couldn't help but feel nostalgic as I took off my student nurse nametag for the last time (just like I did when I took off my missionary nametag for the last time). There is something comforting about having the word "student" on your nametag. It is like saying, "Teach me, teach me, make sure that I get to see anything interesting and explain in detail what you are doing." New nametags await. Now I get to be responsible for all that information that I learned in my years as a student. I can't help but think that there will be times that I will wish that I could just put on my student nametag again.

Conference to coast to coast

What a great week it has been! On Saturday, I got to go to General Conference with Jessica, a good friend from the nursing program. I don't anticipate that I will ever again live so close to Salt Lake City so I was really glad to be able to get tickets (thanks cousin Leslie!)

Early Sunday morning I flew to Seattle. What a fabulous city! I am really excited for the chance to live there. This isn't a great picture of me but you can see the beautiful view I had from the park down the street from where I was staying.

Lukcily, I didn't come away empty-handed. I got two job offers at the hospital where I was interviewing--one in medical/surgery and one in nephrology. Due to the high number of interviewees, I need to make my decision by tomorrow. Barring a revelatory dream tonight, I am planning on taking the job in nephrology. Now all I need is a place to stay. :)

And now I'm in Maryland. It is very lovely! I presented my poster this morning at the National Conference for Undergraduate Research. We are planning on going to Ocean City tomorrow night and possibly DC on Saturday. I'm so lucky to get to travel so much!

You can probably see that the top of my poster looks rather jagged. My professor had brought my poster along with another girl's who presented also. When we tried to unroll the poster this morning, it was sticking to itself. It must have gotten wet and then dried to itself (which is strange because it was in a waterproof canister). It ripping and tearing as I unrolled it so I just tried to cut off the top few inches since that is where most of the damage was. Oh well, most of it was okay.

Skedaddle to Seattle!

So this morning, I had a great interview with my top-choice hospital in Seattle. They really like me and are strongly considering hiring me. The only problem is that they are interviewing all of their candidates in the next two weeks...much earlier that I was planning on coming out. Well, to make a long story short, I found a great deal on a flight from Salt Lake to Seattle a week from Sunday. I'll just stay a couple of days, flying home Tuesday night. My flight back to Salt Lake lands exactly 8 hours before I fly to Maryland (early Wednesday morning) for the National Conference for Undergraduate Research.

It is going to be a very busy week! In the meantime, I need to finish all my projects and papers that are due before I leave. I'll be in Maryland on the last day of classes so I need to be finished with all of my semester work before I leave for Seattle. As my newest brother-in-law is fond of singing, it's the final countdown!

IV Thearpy

One of my clinical goals has to been to be able to start IVs. This is one of those things that you just can't practice on anything except real people so it is something that I haven't had as much experience in. I have only gotten one in so far and have missed two other times.

Thursday night (well really Friday morning) around 4:00 am, one of our patient accidentally pulled out their IV and needed a new one. I tried twice and missed so my nurse put it in. I was feeling rather discouraged at this. I really wanted to get that in! I had been working some pretty long hours at the hospital last week (and going to school in between) and I think that exacerbated my emotions a little.

My nurse was so nice- she saw that I was a little upset so we went into the breakroom and she let me practice putting an IV in her! I got it on my second try and it made me feel a whole lot better. I took a picture of her with her IV in on my cell phone but I haven't been able to figure out how to transfer pictures from my phone to the computer (maybe I am missing a cord) so you get this cartoon instead.

Foot in Mouth...

I seem to have trouble finishing my sentences today which has led to some misunderstandings.

First, I went with my sister Emily to stuff wedding announcements tonight. We stopped by her future sister-in-law's house for her birthday party. The mother of house introduced herself to me and I was trying to say, "I'm Emily's sister, Kristen" but I got as far as "I'm Emily.." and she shrieked and thought that I was Emily and engaged to Richard. The real Emily was quite indignant at my attempt to impersonate her.

Then our home teachers were over tonight. They asked what was going on in my life. I was trying to say, "I'm working the night shift at the hospital and defending my honors thesis tomorrow." However before I could finish, one of them asked me a question. I stopped in the middle of my sentence to answer, so it ended "...and defending my honor."

EuroEnglish

I stumbled across this the other day and couldn't help sharing it. I first heard it when I was on my mission in Germany and it reminds me the beautiful language that German really is.

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5 year phase-in plan that would be known as "EuroEnglish": --In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c".. Sertainly, this will make the sivil sevants jump with joy.

The hard "c" will be dropped in favor of the "k". This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have one less letter.There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with the "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20% shorter.In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e"'s in the language is disgraceful, and they should go away.By the 4th yar, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaning "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.ZE DREM VIL FINALI KUM TRU!!

I just love Germany!

Burning the Midnight Oil

I'm doing my capstone internship on a medical-oncology floor. I worked days at first but it conflicted too much with my school schedule so I switched to working nights (7 pm- 7 am). I really enjoy working this shift- I think I hit my peak around 3 am. Last shift, I started an IV around this time and it went in perfectly. Even if it is throwing off my circadian rhythm a little, it is a great experience!