How do you get rid of terrible back pain? Evidently you complain about it on the internet. 4 days pain-free…

See Ben’s blog.

I just got back from the flu clinic. My eyes are heavy and tired, but I’m wide awake inside. I hate when that happens, it makes for bad napping. The clinic was awesome and I’m really glad I went. KP had themselves ultra organized. After orientation and getting flu shots ourselves I strutted out to the assigned lot and found a table full of helpful cheerful people and supplies. I probably gave 40-50 shots over four hours. No one was cranky and except for some lulls due to slow traffic directing and slow vaccine supply refills, the day went smoothly. They even gave us a 30 minute break with a minor banquet of breakfast foods.

Had a fun Halloween cooking and dressing up. We had so many great costumes! My camera battery died out before the party started, so when Ben uploads the photos from his camera I’ll post them here. I didn’t get to bed too late. I should have been able to sleep from 11:30 to 5 am, but my back hurt so badly I woke up every hour. I’ve had one sided lumbar back pain for three weeks now. Aleve and other NSAIDS aren’t kicking it. It comes and goes too. The last two days were fairly pain free but last night and this morning were agonizing. I can’t wait for it to wear off; I read that back pain usually goes away on its own in 4-6 weeks. That’s enough complaining. Hopefully I’ll get some fun pictures up here soon. Nap time!

Today I’m doing paper work for the school nurses. Their office is located in the same building as a preschool. I have to walk down the hall to make copies and on one trip a poster caught my eye. It asked the students what is inside of a pumpkin? Next to each name was their response. About half of them were some variant on “seeds,” “goo,” or “seeds and gooey stuff.” But the others cracked me up:

• Eggs
• Cheese and salt and cabbage
• Seeds and eggshells
• Books and bugs and Clifford
• Glue and shoes and feet
• Scary
• Halloween and snakes and a bunny

This one was really fun! I’m not familiar with 7brides for 7brothers. And I think I was tricked on Guys and Dolls.

Like I said yesterday, I drove to Grand Junction a couple weeks ago to spend time with my family. There are a lot of pictures, especially of dogs, all posted on flickr now. Even a couple videos. I put a few of my favorites here.

I haven’t said much about community health nursing and that’s probably because it bores me. I think the only thing I have learned so far is that there are three levels of prevention and intervention: primary, secondary, and tertiary. I’m sure that tidbit of information will serve me well. Pretty much everything else I either already know or guessed using intuition to get good grades on our tests so far. Lots of group projects. You all know how I feel about those.

Clinical for this rotation is silly. From what I can tell it’s a total crap shoot whether you get a good experience based on the nurse preceptor they pair you with. Some people sit around for an hour in the morning waiting for the nurse, then watch them type on the computer for a few hours, then get told they’re done for the day. Some do busy work that the nurse does over again. Some were assigned to clinics where they were told to have a little spanish knowledge, but then find out that that’s ALL they speak there and they’re not prepared for it. Others are having an okay time with pretty good nurses. This includes me, working with school nurses. But we’re not getting enough hours. All the nurses at my location (I’ve worked with a few different ones) are great teachers and pleasant to work with, but they’re only there part time. However we’re responsible for getting 8 hours W/Th/F. It irks me that they hold us responsible for hours that they can’t assign to us. Also, even those of us with good placements feel like we’ve stagnated. Just halfway through and we’re bored, ready to move onto the next place. I think that’s because this placement is mostly about management. There’s little patient contact, mostly education (which the nurses prefer to do themselves), and a LOT of paperwork.

I figured out what I’m going to be for Halloween. It’s not that hip or specific, but I already have the parts for the costume. You’ll have to wait and see. Tonight I helped Miranda make the tutu for Azalea’s bumblebee costume. Who would have thought that my tutu-steaming skills would be needed again? We enjoyed my coconut-cardamom rice pudding and watched America’s Test Kitchen while we worked.

Tomorrow night I’m babysitting while the rest go to a haunted house. Wednesday is Movie Club, Thursday is the ward Halloween party and our mini 30 Rock party, and Friday is a big party at Brian’s (of course). I’m baking treats for movie club and Halloween too. It will be a busy week! To top it all off, I signed up to work a (literal) drive-thru flu shot clinic at Kaiser on Saturday. In Northglenn. Be there at 6:30 AM. The day after Halloween. It’s a crazy idea but I really need the hours (we get 8 hours for working 6!). Who knows? I may be so deliriously tired I’ll enjoy standing in the freezing cold car fumes, leaning over windows and stabbing people in the arm.

Last weekend I drove home to GJ for an impromptu trip home. Andy and his girlfriend were going to visit as Amanda drove back to Denver, and they wanted our dogs to play together. I couldn’t resist! It was a fun reunion not doing anything in particular but watch the dogs wrestle. Jem went ballistic with joy. I have lots of photos I’ll post later. I need to edit them down a bit and upload them, and it’s 10:30 so I’m calling it a night now. Sorry no fun photos this time, but I felt guilty about not writing for so long I needed to just write. (Usually I read it over and fix typos, but I’m even going to skip that this time.) Ok, one lolcat to say goodnight.

Here I sit 8 days before Halloween without a costume plan. I haven’t even carved a pumpkin. Sigh. I don’t know what it is lately. School isn’t too hard, as I’ve told several of you this rotation is pretty light on the clinical hours and assignments. Money is tight as usual, but that’s not the demotivating factor. I don’t know what it is that has me in a funk lately.

I’m stuck in my last class session for our Evidence-Based Practice class. We’re spending the whole 4 hours giving group presentations. My group is done (100%, thank you). There are four more to get through before I meet with my next group for another group presentation tomorrow. Group group group.

Luckily I have my computer to distract me by studying for my exam (also tomorrow). I’ll admit it, I wander onto the internet occasionally. Suddenly I’ve decided that I need to learn to spin yarn. Not only will it be a fun new craft, but maybe I can save money on good quality yarns for knitting! Am I silly to think that?

I found a class at Fancy Tiger that Ben says I can go to (as a gift!). Now I’m getting carried away, dreaming of keeping a couple angora rabbits to gather my own fibers and maybe work my way up to a pair of sheep.

Ok, the next group is starting (does acupuncture really help with chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting?). I better close up here and pay attention again. I think I would name my first ewe Annabelle.