Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Stephan's First Day...

As a nurse by himself on the floor! Since the Montana license came through yesterday, he was able to go out on his own today with no supervision. Here's what he has to say about his first official day as a nurse....

Ouch! I wish the words were coming to me, but after a whirlwind 14 hours, I'm fried. I had 8 patients today...all day. For some reason, two got parked in the ER. Luckily, no other ERs came in today...cuz we only got two beds in the ER. Anyways, everyone was very helpful and I was only about a step behind all day. I made some mistakes, but in the immortal words of my dear old dad..."not bad for a rookie." I got lots to learn, and I look forward to the day when the learning curve isn't quite so steep, but I've found a good place to learn with good people. The variety of patients and conditions is a challenge too. Today I helped take care of a person w/heart palpitations, another suffering from seizures, two people w/emphysema, one patient w/terminal MS, one w/a bum gall bladder, and a patient w/possible brain swelling. Needless to say, I'm looking up a lot of drugs, asking a lot of questions, and wearing out the soles of my shoes.
I gotta get to bed so I can try again tomorrow.

There are other funny stories he's not telling you because he only types with two fingers and we don't have all night. We got the Illinois license in the mail this morning, and are slowly making progress on the scholarship application. It's something I didn't even imagine would be a possibility this time last week. We're sending thank you cards to the people at both the Montana and Illinois licensing boards who helped get this all done. We don't live in our house yet- maybe this weekend!

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