Roommate Dinner
Last Wednesday, I went down to American Fork and ate at Applebees with my old roommates Shannon, Stormie, Bethany, and Kellie. That has been the hardest part of moving to West Jordan, I really miss my friends, and especially those girls I lived with. It was super fun to be with them and laugh and act silly (although most of the silly was coming from Bethany).
Park City with Kellie
On Monday Kellie and I went to Park City to ride the Alpine Slide. I am almost embarrassed to admit that despite the fact that I live 15 minutes from Park City, I have never been before. But oh well, I guess there has to be a first for everything. Anyways, it was totally fun. I highly recommend the Alpine Coaster. While the Slide was fun, the Coaster flew down the mountain. Totally adrenaline rush, plus there was the beautiful mountain scenery. So much fun. Afterwards we went to Main Street in Park City to eat and walk around. I think this may have been the first time that I haven't gotten lost trying to find Main Street, so that was quite an accomplishment. After that we went to the Factory Stores, and I bought cute pink shoes. I really like having a real job, so that I can finance my addiction to cute shoes.
Kellie has the best pictures, but I did take one of myself while I was going up the Alpine Coaster. I'm still trying to perfect my self-portrait technique.
Tomatoes
One of the exiting things about my apartment is that I have a patio. I decided to take advantage of this and bought two tomato plants and a gerber daisy in June. While the daisy died, my tomatoes have done well. I've already had two ripe ones, with a few more on the way. It makes me feel so domestic to grow my own vegetables. Even if they are tiny and small in number.
Work
So work has been crazy the past two weeks. I like working three shifts in a row, and I just finished one this morning. I am really enjoying my job, but Thursday morning, I was not feeling too peppy after getting chewed out by the morning nurse because I didn't take a blood sugar on a couple of babies that were too small. Both had been eating great and had maintained their vital signs well, so I didn't think that it was a big deal. While I was greatful to learn that I needed to take blood sugars on the small babies, the nurse was very untactful and almost downright rude while I was giving her report. I was almost in tears when I got home, and that never happens at this job.
When I went back last night, there had been a mistake on the schedule, so I had no patients. It was easily fixed because one of the other nurses wanted to orient in the nursery anyway. This nurse was the charge nurse, and she really did not want to give me the patient that had received a blood transfusion because "I was too new." Well, after some thought, I remembered that I had taken care of a transfusion patient before, plus I have been a nurse for over a year, if you count my experience as an LPN, which I do, and additionally, I probably had more clinical experience in one semester than some nurses have while in nursing school.
Two of my patients I had taken care of previously, and both of the recognized me. The one was downright estatic when I walked in the room because her day nurse (who just happened to be the nurse who thinks I lack experience) had ignored her pages and she had been in pain for a few hours. My other two patients were fairly ill considering I work on a unit with mostly healthy people, and their previous nurses had failed to give them very important medications, so I had to fix those messes. By the end of the night, two of my patients expressed their gratitude that I had been their nurse and had done so much to help them.
Stuff like that really makes nursing worth it. When you really think about it, the most important person in the hospital is the patient, and as long as they are happy, you are doing your job. I came home this morning on cloud nine.
