Well, today has been a long and interesting day for me. I received my "annual" review today (even though I have only been working for 6 months) and passed. Yay raise!
On a more disgusting/sad/interesting note, I had a patient last night with a stage IV pressure ulcer. As a nurse, I absolutely hate to see things like that because it means that the person with the wound has not been being care for properly, whether via ignorance or neglect. It had just be debrided two days previously. The day nurse told me in reports that there was "no visible drainage" on the dressing when she checked it "just before shift change". Ha! This nurse is notorious for being terrible, and for good reason. I went in to assess this patient around 2030 and the dressing was soaked. Not only was the dressing soaked, but the disposable pad underneath her bottom was soaked through as well. Clearly I had to do a dressing change. Essentially it was a very deep wound packed with lots and lots of moist gauze. I kept pulling and pulling and gauze just kept on coming out. The smell was horrific - worse than a carcass rotting in the hot summer sun. I can't even describe the smell. The aid and I just looked at each other and we each had to turn away a few times to catch a breath of fresh air.
Anyway, I finally get to the end of the gauze trail and what happens? A big old glob of purulent green drainage comes rapidly oozing out from lord knows where. I irrigated the wound about 3 times and the oozing would NOT stop! I ended up just repacking it and dressing it because who know when the ooze would end? I can't be irrigating wounds all night! I should also mention that this was wound week for me. Between the three nights I worked, I had about 5 dressing changes, which is unheard of for me. It also confirmed my ideas that I would possible like to be a WOCN. I love gory stuff, as awful as that sounds.
Anyway, switching gears now. My birthday was about two weeks ago and I received some money and gift cards. Normally I am the type of person to run out and either buy impulsively or buy something I've been dying to get but haven't wanted to spend my own money on. Recently though, I have been working in becoming more minimalistic and less consumeristic. I've been thinking long and hard about things before I buy them. I had a few things that I kind of wanted, but didn't want enough to actually spend money on. I also thought about putting the money towards my loans, but in the long run it wouldn't have made that much of a difference and I would have rather enjoyed the money as the gift that it was. I finally decided tonight to pursue something I've been toying with for a while - learning to program through Treehouse. I signed up for the two week free membership, so we'll see how it goes for a while. I have enough gift money right now for 2 months of membership. According to their "track" timeline, this means I could finish the track in 1 hour per day for two months.
I'm currently signed up for the Web Designer track, since it seems to be the "internet for dummies" type of course. You learn HTML, CSS, and I think maybe some other things. I'm pretty excited about getting into the nitty gritty of it all. The first video I watched, while very informative, was very slow and tailored towards what I imagine to be the elderly who have just booted up their computer and stumbled upon this website. Yes, I know what a dropdown menu is, and yes I know what ctrl+S and ctrl+R do. Ok, thanks. I get that you need to know your audience, and those are very useful pieces of information for people who need them, but as I said, I'm ready to jump right in headfirst! Maybe after I complete this I can even get some side work to pay off my loans. Who knows!? (I feel like that might be a long shot at this point though.) At any rate, I'm excited to be learning something new. I am still beyond in love with Duolingo and about halfway done with my Spanish tree (I can read "40% of articles!" according to them) so perhaps I will push on through French and German until the release of the Russian tree. I think that will be challenging but highly interesting.
Anyway, that is my life at the moment.
