Ladies and Gentlemen....

I give you...

The First Sock



Yes, it is finished! It's far from perfect, but me and this sock will always have a special relationship.

Side note: if you want to get a lot of knitting done, go to East Texas. I went from where the ribbing ends at the cuff to being halfway down the foot in a single day. There was a scary moment when I started thinking for myself (instead of just following directions) and put the heel on three needles instead of two. But, I figured out how to fix it, carried on, and was rewarded for my patience today. I made a midnight run to WalMart just to get a yarn needle to graft the toes because I couldn't possibly go to bed when I was THAT CLOSE to being finished.

Pattern is from Silver's Sock Class, yarn is Regia 4-ply Landscape in the colorway Caribbean.

So now, without further ado, I must say...

Newbie knitters CAN knit socks!!

Getting it Right

One of my favorite things about knitting has to be the ability to completely fix mistakes. This has come in especially useful with my first sock attempt. I started knitting it with size 0's (which is tiny, like slightly wider than a toothpick size) because the smaller the needle, the more durable the sock. Well, since I'm a tightish knitter anyway, the sock would barely go over my toes, and wouldn't go past the ball of my foot. Considering that was the cuff of the sock, I decided that it was a lost cause and ripped the whole thing out to put on size 3 needles (slightly smaller than pencil size). This has proven to be one of the better decisions I could have made. I can knit much faster on the size 3's and they don't make my hands hurt. I have no effing clue if I'm getting gauge or not, but it is definitely a hell of a lot bigger sock. Can fit up my whole foot and around the heel no problem. What's freaking me out is that I'm just about to the point where I'll have to start the heel. The heel is the hard part. Considering it's been frogged twice already, I'm not wanting to shoot for 3 (or 10). Oh well, I freaking love the yarn - the striping is fantastic:


Ross said yesterday that it actually looks like a sock now. I have to agree!

Thanksgiving's coming up, and I have to say I don't much feel thankful. This could partly be because I have final exams coming up the second week after the break. I'm thankful I'm in nursing school, but the exams are a part I could do without. Especially the ATI nationally standardized exam. Although in my (extensive, with an SAT, 3 ACT's, 2 AP exams, aTEAS, and numerous public school EOI's under my belt) experience, the word 'standardized' means 'dumbed down', I have the feeling that this one will actually be a challenge. It's built to mimic the NCLEX, and even my brilliant mother had her butt kicked by the NCLEX. Also, it's over a massive amount of material compared to what I've taken in the past. It's just over the foundations of nursing, but when I think over all the chapters I've read this semester and that all of that will be on this exam I get a little woozy. Hopefully my test-taking abilities will not fail me. But I'm still going to study.

After Thanksgiving.

Dedication

This is an ironic topic for me, considering that if you judged me by my blog you'd probably come to the conclusion that I don't have just a whole lot of it. However, just because I'm not quite as dedicated to my blog as others seem to be to theirs, that doesn't mean that I lack this important virtue. So, in order to prove this to myself and to you, here's a list of things I'm dedicated to:

1) Nursing School
It's impossible not to be dedicated to nursing school and still pass. It's just not one of those slacker-friendly majors like philosophy or art history (sorry to those of you with those majors - but I've seen the workload of those majors from close friends and they are nothing compared to the first semester of nursing school). If you still doubt me, here's my textbooks for this semester:

Take that. Used, they were about $1000, and I have several more on the list for next semester as well. Tell me you wouldn't be a little intimidated by that. I know the bejesus was scared out of me and I was prepared for a massive workload.

2) Knitting
As has been discussed in previous posts, I like knitting to get away from all those books up there.

As an update on the sock situation, I did actually go up to the GYC and pleaded for help (those that know me will realize what an effort that was for me). The incomparable Margaret only had to rip out half of my progress so far to fix it, and it is now as perfect as it can be. Beats the crap out of my considering to start all over. It's taken me a week to get back to where I was before, but that's not all the sock's fault. Nursing school seriously cuts into sock knitting time. Good thing I have more than enough dedication for several things at once.

3) OKC Thunder
Okay, they're not great. I get that. But it's a big-name team for OKC and we've needed that for a long time. I cannot express in words how tired I am of OU and OSU football (my feelings run more to the form of wailing and gnashing of teeth). I went to my first game last night, and I have to say that I thought it was a good one, even though they lost. Also even though I don't know a damn thing about basketball. Apparently I forgot this when Ross called and said he had free tickets from work if we wanted them. After seeing the game, basketball is something I could get into, even if only freakishly tall mutants can play it well.

The Ford Center looked outstanding, and the place was packed! It made for a great crowd - it's a lot easier to figure out what's going on when you have boos and cheers to go by.

Fellow Okies: this is what a real NBA floor looks like. Add people for all the empty seats (we got there early. I have inherited the Pepper if-you're-not-half-an-hour-early-then-you're-late gene), and you have a smashing time. The Sam Adams my darling husband bought me probably also contributed to my level of fun-having. It was a close game, and we were ahead for some of it, so I won't complain about the loss too much.

So there you go. Three perfectly noble pursuits that I am dedicated to. However, I always meet people that have just a little more dedication sometimes than I do:

She's so dedicated, she's wearing a trash bag so she can walk in the pouring rain to class. I'd have skipped.

We're not mentioning my inconsistency

The first introductory nursing class I took at UCO was taught by a wonderful woman whose most enjoyable quality was her penchant for honesty. Since pre-nursing students take her course, naturally there were days when the class would ask her a lot of questions about what nursing school is really like. As I'm finding, she was right about 100% of what she said, but there's one thing in particular that really stuck with me:

"The secret to getting through nursing school is not studying every hour of every day, it's not being able to think critically, it's not the rapport you have with your patients, and it's certainly not sucking up to us instructors. The secret to nursing school is having a hobby that has nothing at all to do with nursing."

And she's been completely right. Nursing school saps your will to live, and I won't lie about that. Studying for three weeks straight only to get an 86 on a test is soul-stealing. Getting up at 5:00am for clinicals where you are yelled at, kicked, hit, bitten, and spit on by the residents you're trying to help would make even the most devoted nurse-to-be have second thoughts. Having a hobby that doesn't involve reading anything is priceless. It's like a vacation. My first attempt at a hobby, the glorious pink bike, fell through when I developed back issues that prevent me from riding it for now. So, I took up a nice, sedentary hobby.

Knitting.

I can see the image you have in your mind now: something like a fussy old lady with clicking knitting needles in her arthritic hands knitting an atrociously ugly sweater. And I don't blame you. That's exactly what I thought of knitting, too. Until my knitterly stepmother-in-law (that's like a double negative, isn't it? But I promise, she is extremely nice) visited from jolly old England and purchased a copy of Interweave Knits and left it strategically on the coffee table. I think she did this on purpose - I cannot resist reading anything that is on a coffee table. In it, I saw the most amazing stuff. Sweaters I'd actually wear. Cute, sexy little tank tops.

Here look:

Isn't that stuff that looks like you might actually wear??? It looks like it for me, I have a love of nice sweaters and anything warm.

And most of all: socks. Oh the socks. How my heart pines for thee.



So, to that end, I used my trusty Internet to track down a local yarn store. Paula (the contagious knitterly stepmother-in-law) in tow, we went and checked out this enigmatic little shop. Wall-to-wall yarn, I kid you not. The place was amazing. I may have begun to develop the knitter's disorder of yarn addiction, which is something you just won't understand until you've gone to a yarn shop (NOT the yarn section in WalMart, guys) and petted some quality wool. Paula bought tons of yarn, but I was still a little leery of this whole knitting business. Still had the mental image of the fussy old lady, I suspect.

Then, I found the Yarn Harlot. She is amazing. She's witty, creative, and everything opposite of the old lady image in my head. Reading her blog (and yes, I read every entry from Jan 2004 until now), makes knitting a lot less intimidating. It does not require perfection, and mistakes can be fixed (mostly).

The next day, I took a beginner's knitting class and, two months later, I have this:


Knitted it myself. I am so damn proud of it! I just sit and pet it sometimes, feeling smug. Since I do not have a sufficient yarn stash (or cash stash, for that matter) to buy enough yarn to knit a sweater, I started on that most abmbitious of knitting projects: the sock.



This little bit (less than an inch) took me most of the day yesterday to do. I had to learn how to put the stitches on the special double-pointed sock needles and then teach myself to pay attention enough to do the different stitches required for the ribbing. I'm trucking along, making sure my joins are nice and tight so I don't get gaps, when suddenly:



Gigantic hole from what I assume is a slipped stitch. Hopefully I can find a website that says how to fix it so I don't have to rip everything back and start again. :/

Despite the minor (and major) setbacks, I enjoy knitting because it is so unlike nursing school. You can go at your own pace, you're not comparing your knitting progress against others', and you don't have to read anything (unless you slip a stitch and have no clue how to fix it). My favorite part is that it's creating something tangible. After all these years where most of my life has been in one form of pixels or another, that's important to me.

So, my nursing friends, get a hobby, enjoy it, and take a step back every once in awhile to just enjoy life.

Human Balloon

It was one WILD weekend at work. We weren't totally full, but the patients we did have were sick enough to require a little extra care than our usual acuity patients do.

There really wasn't such a thing as a "good" assignment of patients this weekend. Not for the nurses or for us aides. If it wasn't a patient having frequent bathroom trips, it was confrontational family members or vomiting episodes.

However, there was one group of patients that was universally considered a really demanding assignment. And guess where I was Saturday? Yup, with that group.

The highlight of this group was a man whom I will call the Human Balloon. He had a unique condition, subcutaneous air (air under the skin). He literally looked like someone had inflated him. His face was all puffed out, his eyes were swollen shut because of the air under his eyelids, his hands and feet were puffed up; this guy had air all over the place. Actually he kinda looked like this:

Yes, I know I'm bad! But he looked a LOT like that (only with a midline incision on his chest from his CABG and 2 chest tubes). He actually would have been a cool patient to take care of except for the fact that he was a total dickhead.

I don't know if he was actually mentally challenged or just stupid, but this man would NOT listen to any instructions you gave him. You'd say "okay, step to your right towards the chair", and he'd go to the left and not listen when you'd say "okay....your other right". The nurse and I would literally have to shove this guy around to keep him from falling on his ass. But he could hear, definitely, because the second you said he had to get out of bed he'd throw a hissy fit. Then, the second you left him alone sitting in his chair, all fluffed up with his breakfast right in front of him, he'd throw said breakfast to the floor and immediately stand up and go into the hall, disconnecting his chest tubes in the damn process. Anyway, he was a trip and so was his family, but I persevered.

Then there was the very heavy lady who needed a lot of physical assistance to move around, the bedridden pooper, and the little old lady who was lonely and wouldn't stop talking long enough for you to gracefully leave the room. Now, I understand that none of these people could really help it and weren't doing it just to make my day bad, but all of them together made for a really busy day and left me wishing I could have done more for them, especially the lonely old lady. I hate days where I go home thinking of all the things I could have done if only I'd had more time, which is why I got out of Long-Term Care.

Requested a different group for Sunday (we're rotating this bad group around to different people), and the day was a ton better. Not nearly as soul-destroying and I got to do a lot of extra care on a lady who needed it.

The Human Balloon went to the ICU Sunday morning - apparently his respiratory issues got the best of him and he had to be intubated. I do genuinely hope he's okay, even after all the crap he put me through on Saturday. The ICU is probably the best place for him really, where he can be watched the whole time he's there. I get this funny feeling he'll be back soon, though...

Absentee

Work Ramblings

You know how lately I've been ranting and raving at the MRSA epidemic, right? Well, the hospital administration, in all their wisdom, has decided to join the other hospitals around the country and do something about it. Now, every patient admitted to a floor has to be tested for MRSA infection. Sounds cool, right? Surely if we catch it right when they come in we can isolate them right away and they won't infect anyone else, right? Sure, it sounds that way if you don't know anything about MRSA (and I didn't either at first, don't feel bad). I have a few problems with it though:

Firstly, many people are infected with MRSA but cannot spread it to other people easily. Usually, the MRSA has "colonized" and isn't virulent. I would be willing to bet a large sum of money that myself and my coworkers would all test positive, yet are not able to transmit it to any of our patients. This is why healthcare workers aren't being screened. We'd all test positive, they'd have to forbid us from coming to work and they'd find themselves with a very small number of working employees.

Secondly, and I've said this in previous posts, superbug infections have no place on a postsurgical cardiac floor. Period. End of discussion. Yes, it's nice to imagine working in Fantasy Memorial Hospital where every doctor, nurse, housekeeper, maintenance worker, and visitor washes their hands between rooms, but it ain't happening. We have to start allowing for some human error here.

Thirdly, it completely trivializes something that is deadly serious. I can't name all the times I've heard in report, "Oh he's on isolation for MRSA, but it's just a positive screen for the colonized stuff in his nose". Now, I'll still wear gloves when entering the room, but I'll be willing to bet that there's a bunch that won't at that point. The habit of treating isolation precautions seriously is now broken. You get some dumbass aide that assumes the isolation cart now means "colonized MRSA", and won't glove up for a shingles or actual MRSA patient. Congratulations, you've now spread the disease.

Yes, MRSA is serious business. Yes, I agree with the fact that sometimes the infection is hospital acquired from the "error" of someone not washing their hands and the hospital and employees should be held accountable for that. But this seriously isn't the way to do it.

However, nobody listens to me (unfortunately) and I fear that this is the way of the future. Medicare has stuck its greedy little nose into the situation and is making its money talk. "Beginning October 2008, hospitals will receive lower Medicare reimbursement if their inpatients suffer from 'hospital-acquired conditions' which were not documented as 'present on admission'." (article HERE). Okay, fine, this is understandable. It's the "you break it, you buy it" principle. Only here it's "you infect it, you pay for it". Again, good and right and fair in Fantasy Memorial Hospital. In reality, it has a few problems.

Most of the postsurgical cases my floor gets are open heart surgeries (CABGs.) They're given strict instruction during their stay (as well as constant nagging) to NOT use their arms to lift anything heavier than a gallon of milk for six weeks after their discharge. This includes using their arms to move around or assist with sitting or standing. Obviously, we get some noncompliant patients. They go home, don't bathe, and use their arms for everything they did before the surgery. Well guess what. They come back with MRSA infections nine times out of ten. It's their on stupid fault and no one can say they weren't educated constantly while they were in the hospital. Well, now they get a free 3-4 week hospital stay!!! Woohoo! NOT. There goes my yearly bonus. And the next 50 years' bonuses too. But Medicare damn sure won't pay for it since they didn't have MRSA when they entered the hospital before their surgery.

Healthcare theory and policy today and in planning for the future relies way too much on the intelligence of people. Politicians, including Clinton and Obama, spout that the only way to reform healthcare is educate people! No way people will get Type 2 diabetes if they KNOW they can get it!!! Bull fucking shit. There's not a smoker alive that isn't educated about what smoking does to them. The fucking warning's on the fucking box. But they do anyway! People today (and yes, I do actually include my obese self) see no reason to make sacrifices for their health. Educate all you want, they will still eat that Twinkie and get diabetes, smoke that cigarette and get COPD, drink a bottle of vodka a day and go into liver failure, and sit on their ass all day and get heart disease. Education is NOT the cure-all these idiots are spouting it to be.

Just because the patient didn't do what they were taught doesn't mean it's the hospital's responsibility when they very thing we said would happen, happens. It's a good start, but people need to start taking responsibility. And I think and exit MRSA swab in addition to the entrance swab is a really good place to start.

Musings

Okay, this made me laugh and I think I have to buy one to stick at the nurse's station at work:


Do ya get it?? It's the "superbug" (hence the cape) MRSA. I'm a nerd. I love the little ThinkGeek disease plushies, what can I say? :P

Just had to share that, you may return to your regularly scheduled programming.