Crackpots or clear-headed realists?

Found an old "survivalist" book from twenty-five years ago (copyright 1980), and was reading the introduction.

Got kind of a kick out of this excerpt:

"It'll be possible, perhaps, in twenty years to make some sort of judgment as to whether our preparation for survival were simply the actions of a group of crackpots or the well-planned preparations of clear-headed realists who perceived the threat in time and took effective measures to deal with it." - Checklist for Survival by Tony and Jo-Anne Lesce, p. 2.

Heh.

Raising my Serotonin

A fellow classmate and I were talking today and decided we're not suffering from PTSD; we're suffering from NSSD - Nursing School Stress Disorder.

I am SO burned out it's not funny. I remember back in Nursing 101, we all this "deer in the headlights" look, and now it's the 1,000 yard stare. It's almost palpable. When the instructor says, "Oh, and there's blah blah blah homework blah blah whatever," you can feel the exasperation and exhaustion from the class as a whole.

I've got eight more weeks in this term, then State LPN boards, then start the RN portion in Spring. I figure if I can get through the rest of this term, Spring will give me a new outlook on it - a new start - and I can get through that. Then summer off - working as an LPN - and maybe I'll be refreshed enough to jump into Fall with renewed vigor. That'll get me to the last RN term, which I can just muscle through, much like I had to muscle through 100,000-word books I was writing, even when I didn't feel like writing them.

Anyway, I guess I'm just venting here; they say that increases serotonin levels. As stressed and burned out as I am lately, I could use all the serotonin I can get.

A Bargeload of Stuff

Finally, I have a day off and a few minutes to sit down and catch up. It's been a hectic month, as I knew it would be, between the nursing program during the week and EMT-IV training on the weekends.

The IV training has gone well, but my hands did, indeed, get all beat up. I've got some pictures, but haven't gotten to them as yet. I hope to do so today, if I get that far down my to-do list, but it's about item 30, so odds aren't good. I'll get to it eventually, though, since next Saturday is the State test and then class is done. That'll give me my weekends back, and I should be able to get caught up a little.

The nurisng program's been going apace. The whole Care Plan and Cover Sheet thing is a bit overwhelming this term, since we typically get our patient information on Wednesday afternoon (by going to the hospital and checking the sheet), then have to spend about 6-8 hours of research doing care planning, lab values, pathophysiology, etc., so that everything is ready to turn in at 6:00 a.m. on Thursday when clinical rotations start. This week, however, I'm headed to a kidney dialysis unit tomorrow, so no patient data is needed (yay!), giving me today off. Bad news is, after my dialysis rotation, I have to pick up patient data for Friday, and spend all Thursday after clinicals doing the CP. *sigh* It's like trading a full day off today for a full 16-hour day of work tomorrow. Dunno if that's good or bad.

Lastly, I got toned out Saturday night to a structure fire up in the hills. The house was fully involved when we pulled up (E-24 was first in, which was kind of a fluke), and my partner I were first to throw water on it. Being first in means we got blocked in by the multitude of other apparatus that parked behind up (it was a long, winding, muddy driveway), so we were one of the last out. We were on scene from about 8pm to 1am, then had to clean up the engine and gear, do some paperwork, etc., when we got back to the station. I was totally beat by the time I got to sleep around 3:30am, and could barely crawl out of bed at 7 when my alarm went off for the EMT-IV class. Top that off with ill-fitting boots that put massive blisters on both feet, and I was a bit uncomfortable the next day, sticking IVs into people on a moving ambulance!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not whining; but I don't think I recover quite as fast these days as I did when I was 25. :)

Anyway, The Daily News carried a couple blurbs about the fire, if anyone cares:

Firefighters find body inside engulfed mobile home in Kelso

Victim in fatal house fire Saturday identified as Rocky Parsons of Kelso

The Hellions - it's not what you know...

A few years back, I got invited to join a small group of gaming/weapons/military/GURPS enthusiasts in an online forum called the Hellions. I posted about them once, I think, but thought it was time to give 'em all a big fat public thank you and kudos. They helped me tremendously on several books, including all the WWII stuff, GURPS SWAT, and more. Those books wouldn't have been the same without them.

Anyway, one of them recently stated that we were "just a bunch of guys hanging out." That may be.

But this short exchange on the forum today made me realize what an amazing wealth of information is available when you have the right friends:

would someone now have a .454 cartridge lying around you could weigh for
me? I still need the thing's WPS for HIGH-TECH . . . Thanks!

Less than an hour later, this reply shows up:

My uncle Robert says his Magtech 260gr JHP weighs 26.94g on his postal scale, plus or minus 0.06g based on the five he weighed for me on the phone.

Okay, I know very few of you out there reading this care about that piece of information, but the fact that I'm part of a group of guys that can answer that sort of question that fast is very cool. What's even better, is they're all great guys and though they're scattered from New Zealand to New York to Europe, I'm proud to call them friends.

Thanks guys. :)

Big Mistake, Ange

Like everyone, I get way too much junk mail and an abominable amount of spam. I used to get those annoying telephone solicitors before I canceled my home phone and went strictly wireless. And now there's even rumors floating around about allowing telephone soliticing to cell phones as well.

But I'm a little disturbed by a new phenomenon - junk text messaging. US Cellular itself - my provider - once sent me an "advertising" text message. I complained loudly and vociferously at the local office, and they said they'd recieved many complaints and were trying to tell "corporate" not to do that. I think they must have listened, because they've not repeated that stupid idea since.

But then tonight I got a text message that read:

Call NAVIGATE WIRELESS your newest US CELLULAR agent and see how to recieve a $5 gift cert from Taco Time. 425-3573 and ask for Ange

What an irritating, asinine, idiotic thing for someone to do. Not only will I never use "Navigate Wireless," but I'll warn my friends and enemies both, to avoid them. In addition, I filed a complaint with US Cellular's corporate office, and will telephone the offending text messager tomorrow and rant up a storm until they blink in disbelief and stare gape-jawed in stunned silence.

I despise junk mail advertisers. I abhor spammers. I think telephone solicitors are rude and offensive.

And now I have one more group of idiots to add to my list.

Fun to Say, Not Fun to Have

Well, tomorrow's the big IV practicals peer stick day. What that means is that I have to get 10 successful IV starts tomorrow to pass the clinical portion of the State EMT-IV test. Who do I get to stick needles in? My fellow classmates!

So that's not so bad, right? Except they'll get to stick 'em in me too. So I figured I'd better write a quick blog entry just in case I get big blown veins, hematomas, phlebitis, a pyrogenic reaction, or whatever.

I'll bring my camera, and if we get any good blow-outs, I'll try and post a pic or two.

(Okay, truth is, I'm probably just going to end up with a bunch of tiny needle holes in my hands and arms, but it's fun to say the word phlebitis.)

A fundamental primer on assisting the facilitation of tertiary education through radical alterations in dispersion of textbooks based on essentially unsound word and sentence selection on the part of authors of the aforemention textbooks, by Brian J. Underhill, EMT-IV, SNLCC

I started back in nursing theory today; Nursing 104, to be exact. I got myself psyched up, pumped to get finished with the LPN portion of the program, and was trying to convince myself I'd do all the reading, and not complain about the assinine assignments or pointless blah-blah-blah of most of the textbooks.

So tonight I hunkered down with my copy of Introduction to Community-Based Nursing by Roberta Hunt. And within - I kid you not - 3 minutes, I was rolling my eyes and shaking my head in disgust.

When I wasn't trying to keep from nodding off.

Can't any nursing author write in plain English? And what's with this obsession with words like "facilitate" - perhaps the single most overused word in nursing texts?

Lemme give you a couple excerpts - these, from a single page, chosen simply because it's what I was just reading:

"Community care differs from nursing care provided in tertiary care settings." Tertiary care settings?

"The assessment process is intended to assess the client." Well... duh!

"It is a continuous process that occurs in the context in which the response occurs." I don't even know what that means.

See, I don't mind reading a book that's poorly written, and I don't mind reading a book that contains information I already know, and I don't mind reading a book that is nothing but common-sense stuff anyone should already know - but when all these things occur in a single book it's really hard to plod through page after page after page.

I bought $250.00 worth of books for Nursing 103, and never cracked open a single one. Seriously. The two that came shrinkwrapped? Still in shrinkwrap.

C'mon you nursing experts out there. Let's get some good textbooks into the classes.

And stop saying "facilitate."

Monkeybars are for Monkeys

Okay, maybe no one else will think this entertaining, but my pager went off last night about 1:30 a.m. I know what you're thinking. It's New Year's Eve, right? Drunks, car accidents, domestic violence... oh, no, not this call.

Dispatch said there was an "animal caught in some playground equipment" and Engine-21 was dispatched for a "Public Assistance" call. Fortunately I wasn't on Engine-21, so I stayed in my nice warm bed and wondered at the call.

Turns out someone's rotweiler got his foot caught and the owner couldn't get it loose. People... please don't let your pets play on the playground equipment in the middle of the night.

Unless you own a monkey.