9/5/06
"day 6"
Hey, I just got back from taking Malachi to the airport. That kinda made today a long day, but I wont complain, it was alot of fun having a friend out here to do stuff with. At one of the checkpoints a cop looked and saw that I was from WI and he looked at me like I was crazy for being there and he asked me what I was doing there and I told him and he said that I would make alot of money as a PT and I said I hope so and then I drove away. It was a good chat.
Anyways, today was my first 7 AM day and my first day with my CI, Liz. She's really nice and today was alot more interesting. Also, working at 7 isnt so bad. I mean, I wake up at 5:45 which is slightly painful, and I have to go to bed early, which I dont like at all, but after I eat lunch I only have to work 2 and a half hours.
Today I got to do ultrasound, which is not very exciting, but at least I got to do something! Liz isnt like Marie in that Marie was always asking about what I am learning in school and if a patient had a question she would ask if I had learned of anything new about what the patient wanted to know. Liz doesnt seem as interested in that so I'm having to bite my tongue so that I'm not an annoying little girl that thinks she knows everything.
I got my first "You look like you're in high school!" today.
I forgot to tell you what Marie told me last week. We were talking briefly about patient goals, which we are required to always ask the patient for, and she told me about the weirdest patient goal she ever got. This lady had shoulder problems and she had a big pet snake. Anyway, she wanted to get enough range of motion in her shoulder so that she could hold her snake so that she could start showering with her snake again.
I saw three different patients in the ICU today. I'd never done that before! The first guy had just been MAJORLY drugged up on Morphine and so he was almost entirely unresponsive. The only thing we got him to do was wiggle his toes. And he only did it once. The rest of the time he was pretty much falling asleep or...something.
The second guy was kind of funny. He had gone into the ER this weekend with a headache and pretty quickly ended up having brain surgery to remove a tumor. Anyways, given he had just had part of his brain removed, he had this silly smirk on his face the whole time. And he was mostly with-it. He knew his name and his age and some other stuff, but then he thought it was 1988 and at one point Liz mentioned to him that he was in the hospital and he was very suprised and she said "You had surgery, did you know that you had surgery?" and he answered that he thought he had heard someone tell him that. But he would say funny things too, he was fun. The nurses said that he tries to escape. It's really interesting how PT's and nurses interact. We are kind of instructed on how to treat nurses when we are in school, but its still interesting. It's practically like there is an unspoked rule for PT's that is don't speak unless spoken to. We move around them and try not to exist because God forbid we should be standing somewhere that they need to walk through. Anyways, after you are nice and invisible for a while one of them might talk to you and then you get to enjoy nurse-hang-out time for a little bit where they tell you their stories of each patient. The third patient seemed to be unable to talk and hardly able to think and then right when we were saying goodbye to him he screams out "WHEN AM I GETTING OUT OF HERE?" It was almost scary. For two of the rooms we had to 'gown up' which made me wonder what exactly I was gowning up for.
Alright, I have to go to bed in 45 minutes, so I'm gonna go. Love you!
Lyndsey
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Oh man, I sure am glad that I work in a hospital where the PT's and nurses get along and work with each other! I forgot about that, haha. And I've totally gotten over "gowning up". I now know why I'm doing it each time (and realize that my instructor at that hospital should have helped me to know why I was then). And the main thing I think about when I do it now is... ugh, these darn gowns are so hot! I swear, even my fingers sweat when I have to gown up.
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