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Being a patient is a difficult task for me.
I’m used to being the leader, the provider, the organizer, the nurse, but never the patient.
But when the diagnosis of a brain tumor stops you dead in your tracks, you have no choice but to become a patient. Then again, I should know better. As Six Until Me and Chronic Babe have already taught me, We Are All Patients.
The intention was to return to work on Tuesday following my appointment on Monday. I was supposed to go in and get a release, but instead I got admitted to the hospital.. again… So that makes for 3 admissions for this particular ailment. Then again, I guess a brain tumor isn’t just a routine illness.
Considering the fact that I had been sleeping 16 hours a day, all day, staying up all night, having absolutely no energy, and drinking nearly my weight in water every day, it probably was the most appropriate choice. Needless to say, I was a bit upset about it at the time. I really just want to get my life back in order,and frequent hospital admissions aren’t exactly the routine in my life.
I had been pining for a Mac for a couple of years now. Several times I came very close to buying one, but just couldn’t bring myself to part with the cash. I’ve always heard that once you go Mac you never go back. But after my experience with a MacBook Pro, I’m hear to tell you that “Once you go Mac you never go back” is Totally Whack!
Choosing the right nursing school is one of the most important decisions you will make regarding your career. Potential employers want to ensure that you are qualified to properly care for clients, so you will want to choose a program that offers quality education in current nursing practices. When making your decision, here are some things to look for.
In my years of bedside care I often had to go outside of the 30 minute window for timed medications for the benefit of the patient. Most of the times these times are arbitrary anyhow. If a medication is ordered once per day it doesn’t really matter what time of day the patient gets it. It should fit within their normal routine not within what the pharmacy schedules it. I never once received any sort of reprimand for my medication timing. I often had to request the scheduled times for medications be changed by the pharmacy, but many times I had to give the medication at a different time and documented the reason why.
Recently I was hospitalized for a week in a large university hospital. In those 7 days only one of my nurses spoke English as a first language. The rest of the nurses had thick accents. I couldn’t pinpoint where exactly, but Haitian if I had to guess. Their accents made it difficult for me to understand them. I also noticed they often seemed to have difficulty understanding me. It was no uncommon for me to have to rephrase my questions or requests in order to get a response from them that was appropriate. Even after rephrasing my questions, their most common answer was “I’ll have to ask to doctor.”
So now that I have had the surgery and I am sitting at home, tumor free I have a wealth of emotion of commentary I need to filter through. I’ll be honest with the fact that I’m really quite annoyed to have had a brain tumor and had to deal with it. I think most people would be. But I’m also annoyed with other things and I am not sure if I have yet had the time to take into consideration all relevant information to make a decision about how I feel about many of the scenarios brought about by my pituitary macroadenoma and the surgery to remove it.
A CAPTCHA is a program that protects websites against bots by generating and grading tests that humans can pass but current computer programs cannot. For example, humans can read distorted text as the one(s) shown below, but current computer programs can’t.
The term CAPTCHA (for Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart) was coined in 2000 by Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, Nicholas Hopper and John Langford of Carnegie Mellon University.
There are several ways to start out on your journey depending upon your academic and financial standing right now. If you’re not sure if you’re ready to jump right into a traditional 4-year Registered Nurse (RN) program you can get an Associates Degree in Nursing (ARN) at a Community College, which takes about 2 years, or start out as a Licensed Practical Nurse (or Licensed Vocational Nurse in California and Texas). LPN programs can run as short as 12 months and make a great place to get your feet wet and possibly work while you go back to school to get a higher degree. To be honest, with the high interest rates of student loans and tough admission standards, starting out by getting your LPN or ARN is a good way to see whether or not you truly want to be a nurse, make a little money while you’re going to school, or even get your job to help subsidize your tuition for further education.
The executive director of the Iowa Nurses Association made a comment on the American Nurses Association’s facebook page in response to other comments made on a wall post by Terri Polick questioning the censorship of the ANA. This representative of the Iowa chapter of the ANA essentially called Vernon Dutton (a nurse advocate and social media enthusiast) an ass and questions his credibility and motives.
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