Author: eaumaison (Page 171 of 210)

How could I resist Amanda’s list of the top 100 foods every omnivore should try? She has a pretty impressive span (see what I mean here). Let’s see how I compare. The foods I have eaten are in bold with a -. The foods I’m discounting for religious purposes have an X. Links take you to a description of the food.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

-1. Venison
X 2. Nettle tea
-3. Huevos rancheros
-4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
-6. Black pudding
-7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
-9. Borscht
-10. Baba ghanoush
-11. Calamari (yes, I tried fish)
-12. Pho
-13. PB&J sandwich
-14. Aloo gobi
-15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
-17. Black truffle
X 18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
-19. Steamed pork buns
-20. Pistachio ice cream
-21. Heirloom tomatoes
-22. Fresh wild berries
-23. Foie gras
-24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
-27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
-29. Baklava
-30. Bagna cauda
-31. Wasabi peas
-32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
-33. Salted lassi
-34. Sauerkraut
-35. Root beer float
X 36. Cognac with a fat cigar
X 37. Clotted cream tea
X 38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
-39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
-44. Goat’s milk
X 45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
-47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
-49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
-51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
-54. Paneer
-55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
-56. Spaetzle
X 57. Dirty gin martini
X 58. Beer above 8% ABV
-59. Poutine
-60. Carob chips
-61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
-65. Durian
-66. Frogs’ legs
-67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
–68. Haggis
-69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
-71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
X 73. Louche absinthe
-74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
X 76. Baijiu
-77. Hostess Fruit Pie
-78. Snail
X 79. Lapsang souchong
X 80. Bellini
-81. Tom yum
-82. Eggs Benedict
-83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
-85. Kobe beef
-86. Hare
-87. Goulash
-88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
-91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
-93. Rose harissa (common in African cooking, so I’m pretty sure I’ve tried it)
-94. Catfish
-95. Mole poblano
-96. Bagel and lox (well, not the lox, but I’ve had my chances so I’m gonna count it)
97. Lobster Thermidor
-98. Polenta
X 99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
–100. Snake

I have eaten 61 items. 13 items are disallowed alcohol, coffee, or tea.12 items are seafood which anyone can tell you I detest. But I’ve actually tried 3 of them. Ha! I beat Amanda’s 59 even with her my fish handicap. I think it helps to have a husband who likes exotic foods. To sum up:

• 61/100 or 61% total
• 61/87 or 70% of allowed items
• 58/75 or 77% of non-seafood, allowed items

Not bad for someone my age I should think!

I’m off for two weeks from school – normally one week but thanks to the DNC coming to Denver we get until Labor Day to put our books on the shelf.

My clinical was fantastic. Great instructor, great staff and patients, interesting experiences, pretty much all you could ask for. I got to spend my last day in the surgical ICU, what a treat!

This weekend Ben and I are headed to NYC with Brian in tow. We’re going to stay with some friends in Brooklyn for a long weekend away from dusty old Colorado 🙂 I can’t wait!

Yeah, this is a short, kind of lame post. I waited too long since clinical to write, so my interest in revisiting it is low. I’m loving that my house is clean, my kitty is in my lap, and I spent 2 hours today watching Scrubs and knitting. How about some quick stats as a final note on my Med/Surg 1 experience?

Number of MRSA swabs taken down to the lab: 11
Number of times I almost fainted: 1 (PICC line insertion = YOWCH!)
Number of old men I showered: 2
Number of times I yanked up my compression socks per day: 7
Number of nurses I shadowed: 6
Number of lungs auscultated: 7
Number of times I washed my hands: 288 (give or take)
Number of times I applied soap thinking it was alcohol rub until it failed to absorb: 3
Number of times I entered vitals in the wrong column of the flow sheet: 5
Number of times old men winked at me: 6

Not bad considering how long it’s been since I’ve read/seen Shakespeare.

I got to babysit Azalea this morning. She thought Jem was hilarious.

Another really great day at the hospital. In the morning I took complete care of my patient (same as yesterday). I got to talk to the family about discharge a bit. I did my first IM injection – a pneumonia vaccine. My nurse was patient and gave me good feedback and tips afterward.

I did a gastric tube feeding for a different patient’s lunch. I listened to his belly while we squirted in air to make sure the tube was in place. I aspirated the contents from his previous meal, measured, and put them back in. Then we flushed with water and I gave him lunch. You just pour in the can of liquid slowly and let gravity draw it down into the stomach.
As we watched it flow the patient said “Did you hear about the tomatoes?” Hmm no, we said. “This man was known for growing these beautiful red tomatoes. His neighbor asked him how they got so big and red. Well, he told his beautiful neighbor, every night I take off all my clothes and walk around in front of my garden, and my tomatoes blush this pretty red color. What a great idea, she said, I’ll have to try it. So that night she took off all her clothes and walked around her garden. The next morning the man asked her if it worked. Well, she said, my tomatoes are still small and green. But you should see how big and long my cucumbers are!”
Imagine that you’re pouring lunch into a guy’s stomach down a tube while he tells you raunchy jokes. What a surreal experience. Oh, and he followed up with two more to finish the meal (but they weren’t as funny).

Once my patient was discharged around 1 pm I could only roam. Our unit was pretty quiet so Darcy, my clinical instructor, scouted out something exciting for me to do. In the meantime there was a COR code call (cardiac/respiratory arrest). Darcy was on the COR team so she grabbed me and we ran down together. We were the first to arrive since it was the unit right below us, but immediately there were 20 or 25 people there – COR team, medical teams with students, nurses, respiratory team, lab people, the works. I couldn’t see much but I could seem them start compressions and bagging (breathing), and they tossed yellow gowns in the room because he was another MRSA dude (isolation is an afterthought in an emergency). I was shooed away soon, but I couldn’t see over the heads anyway. I later learned the worked for 15 minutes but weren’t able to save him. It was so exciting and adrenaline fueled, I’m really pleased to have been able to see how the response team comes together and what exactly makes a COR response.

But the excitement didn’t stop there! Ok, it was more mellow, but very interesting. Darcy let me follow around the IV nurse in the surgical and medical ICU’s. The character of each floor is pretty unique. I must say I preferred these types of units. We checked various IV’s (peripheral, central, PICC) for infections and dressing changes. She found a guy I could try an IV on, but then the Cath lab got a patient and they thought that would be a more unique experience so I switched over to cardiology. The patient had come into the ER late that afternoon. They put a catheter up his femoral artery to his heart to get angiograms of his coronary arteries. He had a few 18 year old bypasses that were full of plaques. So then they placed a filter, used a balloon catheter to place a stent, removed the filter, and checked perfusion. I sat outside the lab behind a glass wall with the record keeper. She explained what was going on while we watched both live and on the monitor images of his heart. I’m almost ashamed to say the sweetest part is that I was sitting in a chair for the whole two hour procedure. My poor legs!

So interesting, so much to learn. At some point during the day I had a couple epiphanies.
1) I’m so much happier being here learning all these new things, compared to where I was last year and the year before, stuck in administration and management. It’s definitely a sacrifice and struggle, but it’s definitely worth it.
2) I’m so grateful to have a healthy body myself and for my family. I’m so glad I’m not the one visiting their parents in the hospital. I’m so glad I don’t have to help my husband eat breakfast, take a bath, or use a urinal. I hope and pray we continue to be blessed with healthy, functional lives.

My first 12 hour shift actually working the floor start to finish. My legs are exhausted but I made it. The nurses were more receptive to help and at times enthusiastically assigned us new things to do. My patient was recovering from a cat bite on his hand. It looked terrible! Very swollen, hot, and red. He also has “a bit of Alzheimer’s” (seems to be my disease specialty lately), but just pleasantly confused and flirtatious, so it was easy to deal with. Made assessments a bit harder, but at least he’s interesting, right?

So some cool new things I got to do:

* Soaking the wound, then dressing change with an ace wrap (I love putting on ace wraps. I was a little sad that I didn’t have more injuries in dance so I could wear them)
* Administered meds using the computer scanning system
* Finger stick glucose test
* IV insertion (Failed, actually. Despite my dad’s excellent teaching both of my two tries blew. Weak veins. Always blame the patient, right? My teacher got it in by taking off the tourniquet as soon as we were in the vein to release the pressure).
* Bladder scan to check PVR (post void residual)
* Came to the rescue with air freshener after my patient had BM all over the bathroom. Psych. Not so cool.

I did plenty of other more mundane things like vitals, linen changes, helping with ambulation, etc. All in all a good day. Let’s see how I feel after another 12 hours tomorrow. I might turn out to be an 8 hour shift girl 🙂

I read my myriad of blogs using Google’s Reader. It allows me to share interesting items with other Reader users. Recently I figured out that it dumps all my shared items onto its own webpage, so non-Reader users can see what I browse. I added this page as a link on the right bar, “Rachel’s Shared Items.” It’s a smattering of weird and interesting articles, pictures, and videos. I tend to share items often, nearly every other day. So it will be updated much more than I get a chance to update this site. Enjoy!

This is just a quick update. I really don’t want to type a lot but I feel bad for not posting much lately.

Adult 1 is awesome so far. We’ve covered cardiology, fluids, respiratory, and ABG’s in just 6 sessions. Needless to say these are pretty intensive days and I’ve been exhausted most nights – hence not posting much. We also have lab where we’ve learned really basic care for trachs, ostomies, chest tubes, PICC and central lines. Most of the learning is going to be in clinicals.

Today was my first clinical. Most of it was spent in computer training and orientation to the unit. For the evening I was assigned a super nice patient to do vitals and assessments. My patient had MRSA so I got pretty fast at gowning up. But I had to chuck my pen and folder at the end of the day because I had taken them into the room, forgetting that they would be contaminated then. I need to learn to memorize vitals like a waitress memorizes orders.

Left the house at 6:30 am, got home at 9 pm. Dad is probably thinking “welcome to my world,” right? The school week is done for me now, I have 4 days to study and catch up on housework before returning on Monday.

I just want to mention how great Ben was today. He watered my plants since I was dashing to leave this morning. He waited until I got home to share dinner together and even offered to pick up a blizzard treat before I got home. He listened intently and patiently while I chattered about my day. It’s nice to have someone to come home to 🙂