The Nursing School Years

I was just thinking back on those good ole' days of nursing school today. I have no idea why, but I was and all the fabulous things that went on then. I remember it being so stinking hard and studying all the time. You have to know that at BYU (and most schools) the major is predominately female, not only that, but over-achieving females. That in itself led to some pretty funny situations during nursing school. So for all my nursing school friends here are some of my classic BYU Nursing School memories.
-Barbie and I making up our "nursing school song"
-the day I passed out, hit my head on the wall, and had a doctor catch me (so embarrassing!!)
-working in the Neuro ICU with Kim
-all our nursing labs where we learned all our sweet skills on each other like shots, IVs, drawing blood, NG tubes, physical exams, blood pressures, etc.
-studying my brains out!
-writing a ton of papers, journals, patient summaries, course summaries, research reports, blah blah
-the day my Nursing preceptor made me cry in L&D, that was awful (I've gotten a thick skin since then)
-my patient that had triplets
-the Burn Unit at the U of U
-all the funny (and scary) stories from the State Mental Hospital and the day we did the Schizophrenia exercise, that was so scary!
-my Capstone clinical at Shriner's Hospital, those kids were so stinkin' cute!
-driving the many hours to and from clinical, so early in the morning and late at night!
-my favorite clinical instructor, Ron!
-Graduation Day, when the Dean of the Nursing school read my
Essay for her graduation address
-taking care of all those cute (and sometimes mean) old people at the nursing home
-working with Barbie at Crestview
-hating that you were totally waking up your poor post op patient at 7 am because your clinical instructor always wanted you to be "doing something" for your patient. I remember trying to hide from my instructor or trying to act busy because my patient told me to leave him alone and let him sleep
-eating really good lunches with the drug reps
-wearing the "Sympathy Belly" in our L&D lab, that was funny!
-staying at my Aunt's house on the nights before clinical so I could get an extra 1/2 hour of sleep
-the first baby that I watched be born
-the first person I watched die
-Nursing conferences
-giving flu shots
-communication lab-all the crazy scenarios we had to talk ourselves out of
-the day my nurse had to catch a baby by herself
-learning A LOT!!!
So that's just a few of the crazy memories from nursing school. There is so much more to tell, but a lot of it is just too long, too boring for you, or too gross to post. Sorry, if you really want to know, just ask me. I'm full of great stories. So to all my blogging/nursing buddies, I hope you enjoyed this blast from the past. This picture is of me with a few of my friends working on SAM our automated patient. It was always fun to work on him. He had pulses, a heart beat, breathed, blinked, and he could be programmed to do all sorts of scenarios. Unfortunately at the point that this picture was taken, we were losing him and Kim was doing CPR. I think that Barbie can attest to this one, that people don't look this happy and laid back in a real code. But we were just naive little nursing students back then. Those little smirks were wiped right off the minute we had RN stamped next to our names. Those days were filled with so much stress, hard work, and so much fun all at the same time. I am so grateful for all the preparation it gave me to be a great nurse and now a great mom.