Hi all! Happy Friday! Again, this is a lie. Well no. It is indeed Friday that I’m publishing this post, but I’m writing it on a Thursday. I like to get ahead of the game and be prepared. This week has been somewhat hectic. Things started calmly on Monday. Not much really happened. We had our variations in health class and our instructor gave us some pointers for next week’s exam. And then came our lab time on Tuesday. Man Tuesday was a long day for me. It started at 0730 hours. I was dressed in my nicely pressed scrubs and ready for a day of lab work and practice. We practiced bed making and some more pericare and bathing. Then we moved onto giving suppositories and enemas. I was only able to watch the example. I didn’t get a chance to practice it because I had to leave class early and take a one hour commute into Surrey. Not my idea of a fun time. Remember how I was supposed to have a crisis intervention course last Friday but it got canceled? Well, they rescheduled it for Tuesday at 1200 so I had to leave class slightly earlier around 1045. But I stuck around a bit longer because I wanted to see the enema example and suppository example and not miss out on class. So I left class at around 1110 and was rushing a bit to the train station. Luckily, our school isn’t that far from the station. It’s only like a three minute walk, maybe even less. It’s really close to two stations, Granville Station which has the Expo and Millennium lines and Vancouver City Center Station which has the Canada line. Since I was going to Surrey, I went to Granville Station and took the Expo line to the King George terminus station in Surrey. The trip takes you through Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster and then finally Surrey. On a good day, it’s a somewhat scenic ride as you travel through four different cities. But Tuesday was a dreary day. It was wet and drizzling. Anyway, after arriving at the Surrey campus with my classmate, we made our way to reception. We were a few minutes late and they had started the class. We found seats in the back corner. Dale, the instructor was a stout, large man and had the friendliest tone of voice ever. Which I think is a boon if you’re doing non-violent crisis intervention. You’d want to have a gentle and friendly voice. Anyway, we walked in while he was giving a self-introduction and an introduction to the one day course. There are also two day courses and four day courses that cover more material and is more in depth. So we sat down and listened to him give us stories and examples of real life non-violent crisis intervention examples. By this time, I was getting lightheaded and my stomach was growling from the lack of food. Luckily, Dale believed in giving breaks every hour to refresh and just get a breather from the stuffy, and muggy room we were in. So I took this ten minute opportunity to run out and grab a drink and a bite to eat. I bought an overpriced egg salad sandwich and a pop. I bought the pop and then I saw they had Powerade and I was like “Nooooo! I could have had Powerade!” Anyway, I went back to campus and found out there wasn’t a cafeteria so I just brought my lunch into the classroom and ate it in there. Six hours later, it was test writing time. Dale went over the main and important ideas and concepts. He explained to us that the questions are open ended and that he’s not going to mark you if say something else other than the right answer. He’s looking to see if there’s an understanding of the main concepts. I did fairly well on the test. I think I may have gotten one question wrong. Anyway, looking back on it all, sure it was a long day 0730 to 1800 hours but it was worth it. I learned how to perform suppositories and enemas and I learned about how to de-escalate a situation. I think in a tension situation I’d probably freeze up and not know what do to. It would be such a shock to my system. And on top of that, I’m the kind of guy who shies away from confrontations and tense situations. I was so tired afterwards. I just had this stare, this look on my face that looked like the life had drained out of me. Like as if a dementor came and sucked my soul out. I was walking and talking and doing the motions but I wasn’t mentally there anymore. I went home and just passed out. Oh another thing I missed out on, well not really, was the pharm practice test. I emailed my coordinator and I got a copy of the practice test on Monday morning to practice. I did this because I knew I’d be away after school on Tuesday and as such, would miss the tutorial session.
Wednesday came around pretty quickly and being Remembrance Day, we all had the day off from school. No lectures or group projects. Just a day to relax and remember those who have fallen in the line of duty. I didn’t participate in any of the memorial celebrations like the one held in Victory Square. Instead I bought some roses and drove out to White Rock with my family and paid our respects to my grandfather. We said a couple quick prayers and then hopped around the cemetery playing hide and seek with the grave markers. I was looking for my friend’s grandmother’s plaque. I finally found it by a tree. So then I said a quick prayer for her too. After getting home, I sat at my desk and did another pharm practice test in preparation for Thursday’s final rewrite. If I failed again, I’d be out of the program. So naturally, not wanting to be kicked out of the program, I worked hard on that worksheet. But it was pretty simple stuff.
Now come Thursday. We didn’t really do much on Thursday. My instructor briefly touched upon care plans for patients and that we’d be working on making on. But we didn’t actually make one. For the remainder of the class she gave us free time to do whatever work we needed to get done. I was like “What?! That’s it?!” But looking back on it now, I am grateful to have had this extra time to work on things. I’ve been procrastinating and so I’ve been putting off on writing several papers. So today during the free time, I started to read the case study and write about how the nurse performs her duties. Are they in line with the code of ethics as set out by the CLPNBC? I finished the whole thing in about half an hour and then I spent a bit more time going over my formatting and proofreading the contents. I nearly went over the page limit of five pages. It’s hard to gauge how many pages it will be when you’re writing in size ten font. Hopefully tomorrow will be the same and I will have free time to write my case study essay. Oh yesterday I came across a really cool concept, it’s a notebook with a magnetic spine and the pages have a magnetic strip that attaches to the spine and can be detached from the spine and relocated to a different section of the book. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/273274561/rekonect-notebook-the-magnetic-lifestyle Anyway, after the class was done. We had to rewrite the pharm midterm that we failed last week. Again the mark was 90% I was really nervous. But when I got the exam I took my time with it and worked hard on it. I read through every question thoroughly. After handing it in, it was marked on the spot. I got one wrong. I even circled it and was like, “I’m going to get this one wrong.” It was a stupid mistake. A mistake I made before. I just don’t learn. At any rate I passed and I was happy with that result.
It’s Friday! Rejoice my fellow Internet friends! So I had my MacBook all charged last night and when I got to class and opened it up, it was only at 98%! Much disappoint. Such sad. Very doge. Wow. That’s okay, the battery lasts like six hours now. A step up from the measly 30 minutes the old battery used to give me. I’m sure if I didn’t run so many programs on it, it would last even longer. So today’s class wasn’t much. We spent most of it working on project assignments. A lot of people brought their laptops to work on their papers. Some people went to the computer lab. Oh so I learned today that two people in my class dropped out. One didn’t pass the pharmacology exam and the other made a “death pact” with the other and agreed to drop out if she didn’t pass. So now our class size is smaller. That’s really unfortunate. I wish everyone passed. On the brighter side of things, one of my classmates has her birthday today! She’s still so young. So much potential for growth. That’s always good. Anyway, so going back to the class today, we were all working on our papers and different assignments. While working on our things, we also watched a show called Through a Blue Lens. It follows the interactions between police officers and drug addicts on the streets and alleyways of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It shows the extreme poverty they live in and the trials they have to endure each day. It was a really interesting documentary and a really touching one. There’s so much we take for granted each day, food, water, clothing, shelter and then on the flip side you have the complete opposite. Each day these people get passed by without a second glance and their lives dangle on a thread. Their addictions make it difficult for them to maintain a job and to maintain any sort of a stable life. And when they’re high on drugs, their lives are in constant danger. I remember a time when I abused substances and the damage it did to me. I still live with those scars and memories. I can’t begin to imagine what their lives are like. On another negative note, I hope my friends are all safe due to the Paris terror attacks. I just found out about it and it’s terrifying. I have a few friends in Paris right now. So yeah, that was pretty much my whole day in class. I worked on a paper and finished most of it. I just need to polish it up a bit. I was really tired so I went out and bought an energy drink. I got the tingles after I finished drinking it. I haven’t had that much caffeine in me in a long time. Anyway, after class I went out with a classmate of mine and we trekked out to Richmond. We went from Vancouver City Center to Brighouse station by Richmond Center. She had a dentist appointment there. So while she was at the dentist, I walked into Long and McQuade and shopped a bit. I saw the new Audio-Technica headphones and the Yamaha HS8. http://usa.yamaha.com/products/music-production/speakers/hs_series/hs8/ I also saw some ukuleles for real cheap! I want to get a ukulele and jam. Man my guitars are collecting dust now. I haven’t played them in such a long time. I’m so rusty now. Anyway, I wasn’t in L&M for long. My classmate came back and told me her appointment was cancelled and so we went for lunch. We went to a Szechuan restaurant. We ordered some cold dishes and a couple beers and called it lunch. After lunch, we went to Richmond Center to browse and wander a bit. Then after about an hour of pointless meandering we left and got back on the trains and headed our separate ways. I went home and she went to the gym. Now to polish up my paper and make it perfect. I have blood donation tomorrow. I’m really looking forward to that. I love donating blood and I’m going to say it again, go donate if you have the time and opportunity. It only takes an hour from screening to the actual donation and to when you can munch on FREE cookies and drinks AND it saves lives. You’re not losing out on anything if you donate. Please go donate blood if you have the chance; you can make a difference. http://www.blood.ca
Anyway, looking back on this week, I think it has been a very productive one. I got lots of things done. I went to Surrey and got my NVCI done. I wrote papers and made good use of class time. I maximized my time and got the most out of it. And I did all this without stressing out too much and completely destroying my morale. It has been a good week. I think I’ve, in a sense, recovered some lost time. I managed to balance work and relaxation without sacrificing and taking away from either one, which is a good thing. I hope to continue to do this in the upcoming weeks. I need to read some chapters for an upcoming exam. I will do that over the weekend.
Blood
Sweat
Tears
Effort
Exertion
Compensation
Relaxation
Energy
Expended
Expenditure
Money
Work
Tireless
Constant
Tangent
Coherent
Confusion
Priorities
Hierarchy
Order
Chaos
Anarchy
Messy
Calendar
Dates
Deadlines
Oh here’s a good series to watch! Human the Movie. It’s about…well…humans!
Another really good movie I watched on Netflix over the weekend was called Beasts of No Nation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beasts_of_No_Nation_(film)
remixboy 