Adventures at Puppy School

(This is homer when he was much younger- I need to find my camera cable to download new pics!)

We've had Homer for about 3 months now and we have just enrolled him in puppy school. Unfortunately, we were misinformed about keeping him "protected" from other dogs until he'd completed his vaccines, so we are a little late to start the training... Ideally, we would have enrolled him sooner, but better late than never...right? RIGHT???

Overall, I give him a B+ in terms of good behavior and manners. I'm sure Bryan gives him a D, haha. As he's gotten bigger and older, he's grown more defiant and less afraid of exploring (and getting into trouble)! The incessant morning barking at everything from cars and birds chirping to a sudden shift in wind direction would send him into a fit of barks. For being only 10 lbs he's a noisy little boy! To make it harder is the fact that 9am-2pm are my prime sleeping hours after work. And no you didn't read that wrong, I get about 4-6 hours of sleep per day now.

So, we enrolled him in the first puppy school offered... all the way in Pacifica!It's not technically a puppy class, per se. It's for dogs aged 5 months and above that have never had formal training.

We've been to 1 class so far and I'm quite impressed by our little Homer. He was easily the most well-behaved doggy in the class (except for the 6 yr old, overweight Labrador that looked like she'd rather be at home sleeping on some couch). Maybe it's his intimidation with bigger, louder, meaner dogs. Maybe he has just been waiting for the opportunity to show us his aptitude for tricks. Either way, our expectations were a bit too high for our young pup. In the span of about 30 minutes we successfully taught him his name. (Maybe he knew it before, but he wasn't always willing to come to us when called). We also taught him "sit", "watch me", and "settle".

He's still treat-motivated. String cheese, to be specific. And walks are still challenging, but we see improvement everyday and Rome wasn't built in a day, right?

Will keep the Puppy school updates going...who knows what he will know by week 6 of 6!? Maybe by then he'll be driving himself to puppy class :-)

Half Way Done!

I've completed 14 out of 24 shifts of my new RN training.

I'm also done working on day shift...on Friday I will start training on the night shift (2300-0700). I'm nervous about changing my circadian rhythm, trying to sleep during the daytime, and just managing to stay awake past midnight!

I'm also sad to be leaving the people who work on the day shift. It's like I'm starting a whole new job with different staff, different hours, and a totally new set of priorities than the day shift. It will be interesting, to say the least.

I have learned quite a bit so far as a nurse. I've seen a lot of different patients come through. Patients recovering from strokes, end stage renal disease patients on dialysis, congestive heart failure patients, patients with pacemakers, GI bleeds, stage 4 pressure ulcers (ouch!), alcohol withdrawal, severe allergic reactions....

I'm also proud to say that I'm starting to decipher the mysteries of reading EKG strips. When I was supposed to learn those in my med-surg class I did the bare minimum, telling myself "Just pass this test, you will never end up working on a unit where you're required to interpret EKG's" Now, about a year later all of my patients are on telemetry and it's MY JOB TO INTERPRET EKG STRIPS every shift, and monitor my patients throughout the day! So now I plug along every shift. I have my own set of calipers and I reluctantly read my strips every shift. I see if the QRS intervals march out, I measure the PR, QRS, and QT intervals and determine the rhythm. Then I write down my findings in black pen and initial it. Just like Dr. Cooper told us to do :-) Maybe 1 day I'll actually enjoy EKG's...

A few other things I've learned so far:

- Make sure you have all of the information ready BEFORE you call the MD about a patient

- Trust your gut. If something doesn't seem right, it's probably not.

- Think about all of the supplies you'll need and gather them BEFORE you go into the patient's room.

- Your patients are only human. You are only human. Your colleagues are only human. Some people have bad days. Don't take it personally.

-When you have free time- DO YOUR CHARTING! You might not get the chance later.

- There is always enough time to gown and glove/get a drink of water/go pee/adjust things to a comfortable height/take your lunch break/ask for help moving a patient, etc. You only have 1 body and mind and it should be your priority to take care of them.

-Nurses are really superstitious. Don't say "Wow, it's such a slow day!" unless you want to have everyone glaring at you. Plus, then you will probably have a busy shift.

- I actually know a lot more than I thought I did, but...

- I don't know what I don't know (and that's ok, as long as I keep asking questions)

More to come once I start working the night shift, sleeping during daylight hours, and essentially become a vampire...

Exhausted!

I am exhausted these days!

I've just started my new job as an RN at El Camino Hospital. I love my unit, literally every staff member I've met is nice and helpful, AND I'm making moolah again. However, I come home every afternoon completely wiped out. Right now I'm training on day shift (0700-1530) and in a few weeks I'll switch to my regular night shift (2300-0730). Everything is going very well, but it feels like everyday I'm bombarded with at least 50 new things to remember while trying to get back into nurse mode after an 8 month hiatus from bedside nursing. It is physically and mentally exhausting; feeling the persistent nervousness that goes along with knowing how easy it would be to make a mistake and potentially hurt my patients. Let alone remembering multiple things at 1 time.

I saw an episode of Nurse Jackie (such a good show, check it out on Showtime if you have the network otherwise I found it online for free-shhhh) where the student nurse shadowing Nurse Jackie says "I got into nursing because I wanted to help people, but I feel like I'm just slowing you down." That statement hits close to home- it was the way I felt throughout my clinical rotations and I've experienced it intermittently during my training. But I have to admit that every day I learn a little more, each day I can do a new task independently, and with every shift I gain more confidence.

Nurse Jackie responded to the student nurse by saying "This job is wading through a s*** storm of people on the very worst day of their lives. The fact that you care puts you way ahead of hundreds of other people. So go cry in the bathroom if you have to, but you're doing fine."

I haven't had any breakdowns yet (I'm not counting the breakdown I had at home because that wasn't during work). Let's just hope none of my patients go into VFib or anything...at least not for a couple of weeks.