Weekly Friday Update

It was an exhausting week.

Monday and Wednesdays are lecture/classroom days. Thursday and Friday we go out to clinicals.

This is how classes are going: Wednesday I had two exams. I decided not to study for the second exam, but instead read through the material that it covered while I ate my lunch beforehand. I wasn't worried about failing since I could fail the exam and still keep my A in the class. But The Brain still works: I got a perfect score on the exam.

This machine on campus that dispenses horrible coffee for $0.75 has been my BFF this semester.

If you're thinking about asking how clinicals are going, this is how clinicals are going: Yesterday morning I spent 40 minutes feeding an old, blind woman a third of a cup of oatmeal. She could manage to lift her sippy cup of juice to her mouth on her own by using both her hands, but she could not manage to feed herself otherwise.

This morning I put makeup--lipstick, eyeshadow, blusher--on a woman who is in a wheelchair and who is so awful that almost no one wants to work with or even be near her.

In the three weeks we've been at the clinic, I've seen five family members visit the nursing home--no, sorry, seven. Two women kept vigil by their dying grandmother's bed for hours. Two breezed in and out of their dying mother's room, staying less than five minutes. One visits her brother a couple of times a week. One visits her mother nearly every day. One came today to have lunch with her 96-year-old grandmother.

The facility where I'm posted has next to nothing in terms of supplies. The few supplies they have are kept under lock and key, including the alcohol wipes. I hate having to wait around for the one blood pressure cuff or the non-functional thermometer, so I got on Amazon and ordered my own blood pressure cuff, pulse oximeter, and temporal thermometer. I even bought my own alcohol wipes. This works for me. For the nursing assistants who run the place and who make $9 - $10 per hour to do it, it's not feasible to spend $50 or $60 to buy their own equipment. That's nearly a whole day's work (after taxes) for them. Not worth it.

(I'm continuously amazed at how much the nursing assistants do in return for so little. I would not do that job for what they get paid. They feed and bathe and dress patients and change adult diapers and clean rooms and make beds for about what fast food workers make.)

We are assigned one patient at a time. My last patient slept all day, or most of the day. My new patient sleeps all day, or most of the day. I recognize what's going on; I did the same thing when I was gripped by depression. Doctors' mania for prescribing antidepressants like Zoloft for every patient seems to have passed--or the drug companies have stopped advertising Zoloft and rewarding doctors for prescribing it.

None of this, not one bit of any of this, surprises me.  Some of my fellow students are shocked by the place. Some of them see old people as "so cute" (an attitude which I find patronizing). One woman in my group thinks it's not the corporation that owns the place that is at fault, it's that the people who work there don't care enough.

We've all been told that we are to be at the site no later than fifteen minutes before we start (at 6:30 a.m.). If we are, we risk an absence. Two absences means we have to go before a board to appeal in order to remain in the program. Three absences means that we are out of the program, no appeal possible.

Today we had a substitute clinical instructor. She called in the morning to say her car wouldn't start and could one of us come and pick us up. So we sat around for 40 minutes past our 6:30 start time while that got done (we aren't allowed to work without our clinical instructor). An hour after we finally started our day, one of the other groups texted us. They were waiting for their clinical instructor (the one who issued the repeated warnings about how we must never, ever be late). They waited two hours until she finally showed up. It's the third time she's been late.

So that's how clinicals are going.

And I think I'm getting a cold.

In outside school news:

We got the garden cleared out somewhat and one of the goals for my upcoming two-week break between terms is to help David get some planting done. The last couple of days it's been cold and rainy, which I love, but which can be quite gloomy.

Dave and I went out for ramen on Wednesday evening. (Was it Wednesday?) The young woman who waits tables in the evening there is very sweet and lovely and covered, but covered with tattoos. Her hands and fingers, arms, neck, face, every visible part of her is tattooed. I don't know why I mention it, except that it is still somewhat shocking, even in this day and age when everyone and their grandmother has a tattoo, to see such extensive tattooing on a young woman--especially one working in an establishment owned and run by Japanese. There's a backstory there we've yet to hear.

I am so exhausted. Today I got home from clinicals around noon, had a snack, then took my brother to run some errands. I was going to take a nap when I got home, but instead Dave and I decided to make an early dinner (it was around 3:30 in the afternoon!) and eat. Then I lay down and slept for a few hours. I've been awake a couple of hours now and I need more sleep, but I'm hungry again...