Surgery

Today, while on the ward I was "spoked" out into theater, I got to watch surgery. It was scary and not something I would want to work in, HOWEVER it was bloody fantastic to see, one operation was the filling away of inflamed cartilage in a patients knees, it was a laparoscopy so in terms of blood guts and gore there wasn't much on offer, and it was very interesting, to see all the bone and cartilage, and fluid and how it all sits together, but - watching a man file away at some cartilage was horrible, however good it is for the patient, it still looked like they were raping her knee. I was demoralised and feeling sad I hadn't enjoyed it, especially since I was looking forward to going in to watch some surgery, but a saviour came in the form of Bob the anaesthetist, who sent me off to Theater C, after the first knee had been completed, theater C had a hemicolectomy, the removal of a portion of the colon. This was far more up my street.

The colon is part of the bowel, and so before surgery the patient must have an enema to "empty the field" it was only after I had left the theatre that I realised that this particular patient had been admitted by me this morning, and I had watched him have his enema - not glamorous or exciting but I did like the circle of life quality of my day! Seeing the guts of this man out on the table was incredible, however many diagrams and photographs of the internal organs one sees, you never realise how much there actually is inside of you, in terms of sheer volume, there is shed loads let me tell you! I'm amazed that it all fits in, it makes you think "OH - that's why I haven't got a flat tummy!" because there is so much inside of you that makes you work, I mean you could fill buckets with the amount of stuff there is going on in there - honestly! I'm quite small a person, and I'm amazed that there's room.

Before the first surgery I helped to put the patient under, I held, the mask in place, and pushed the tube to help her breath once she was anaesthetised into her windpipe. If you want to know what one looks like: it looks like a rubber vagina on the end of a tube ... obviously!

I'm just about to come to the end of my first placement, and it had honestly been a completely fantastic fortnight, I've learnt skills, I've made friends, and I've met so many great patients who I hope are all now well on the way to recovery! I've met the worlds sexyest anaesthetist this side of anywhere, (who doesn't wear a wedding ring, and I've put my colleagues on the task of finding out if he's married haha!) and I've learnt the pain of putting TED stockings on patients, TEDs are the work of the devil and are evil to put on people, (think insanely tight flight socks) but are useful in preventing DVT's.

Oh - and I've become the queen of doing blood sugar testing!

Today is why I became a nurse!

Not a particularly original topic for my blog I grant you, but none the less. Today, the 4 mile round trip on my bike in the pouring rain at 6:00 was all worth while, it's so easy as a student nurse to get bogged down with exams and assignments that fill our lives, it's easy to feel useless and shitty when you have no idea what you're doing - but today a patient almost died, and I helped save his life, not much, I mean I wasn't performing open heart surgery or anything, but I was on hand, and taking obs and when the family were crying and thanked us all as they left, I though - yeah, I did that, that's why I want to be a nurse, to look after people.
I'm no fool - I know that it wont always be so easy, and the outcome wont always be so good. And in all honesty, that patient was seriously ill - us saving them now, isn't going to give them another 20 years. But we did a little something - and sometimes that's all you can ask for!

Being a real nurse for a fortnight!

I've been a little down recently - I don't really feel much like a student nurse at the moment, a prime issue with an academic course for a practical occupation of course is that you spend an awful lot of time studying things and not an awful lot actually doing things.
But on Monday - Monday will see me on my first placement at our local hospital! I'm very excited - I have a uniform (which is very exciting since the mayhem of getting it in the first damn place ) - I have a fob watch - I have a slightly grumpy mentor  and now - surely - maybe - possibly - I'll start to feel more like nurse!

The heart of the matter

Firstly - I apologise for being so rubbish at posting - things have been getting a bit on top of me up here!

I have issues with the nervous system - it, and the endocrine system are very interesting don't get me wrong - and when they go wrong they really do go wrong. And they do they go seriously wrong - so clearly to learn about them is important ... however - they are an enigma, a mystery and one hell off a confusing thing.

The heart I love, the heart is a mechanical thing, it's a pump, it's fantastically simple and a truly beautiful thing - hell I can even draw a picture of it!! (You'd never guess that I got a B at GCSE art would you!?)

But the nervous system is a whole other kettle of fish! It's a complex system of electrical impulses running through your body - it's fallible and brilliant but so so so very confusing, tied in with the endocrine system - a crazy ass mixture of hormones that are all reliant on one another and interconnected in a way that to me is just double Dutch!  But hopefully - in time, it'll all come clear in the end ... I hope!