Search and Destroy

Thought I'd drop a line.

Finished classes. Whatever. Advanced Med surge was groovy but Nursing Professional Role was like sitting in cold diarrhea 3 hours a week.
The highlight of Role was when one of the instructors, who happens to be a shop steward for SEIU decided to give the collective bargaining lecture. She pointed out the good and bad of the union, relatively objective in an unobjective way. She talked about her political work, her constant advocating for more pay, better treatment. I asked her why the newly negotiated contract took specialty pay away from the critical care nurses to give regular floor nurses a raise. And why was she telling the class that she helped negotiate a raise for everyone. She stared at me for like a minute. And then she said, "We read the contract wrong. We're working on it." Oh. That's cool. I guess it's okay then.
And then she went on with her political missionary-martyrdom position for all nurses. (I just totally made a sex joke) But all anyone heard was that she received free trips to D.C. for meetings. So then the class started jumping all over her shit for taking free trips to D.C. The obligatory and perpetually righteously indignant African American chick said, "Maybe the specialty units wouldn't have lost their pay if you hadn't been taking free trips all over the country!" And then she looked around at the class and said, "You know?" Comedy.

I can safely say nobody made a point that stuck in the ensuing argument. It made me happy. A little piss to warm the diarrhea, as it were. Cuz the bottom line is the SEIU is gonna do whatever the fuck the SEIU wants to do. Negotiate. Right.

So all I got left is an 8 hour clinical competency scenarios exam. It should be called "really fucked up sick people and their incredibly depressing life stories case studies" but the test is compromised of 22 fucking case studies of ridiculously sick patients.
Here's an example:
Patient #1: NAME: Mr. RandyDickhead
AGE: Can't tell
RACE: Annoying
Wt: Fat. Really fuckin' fat.

C/C: RUQ pain, 10/10 radiates to R. flank and chest. N/V x 3 days, dysuria, fever, HA, blurred vision.
DX: Adrenal Paraganglioma
Urine: bili:0, Ket:0, Blood=neg pH=6.5, urobili=1.0, nitrate=0, glu=0, color=red, clarity=clear, S.G.=1.016, epithelial cells=>30 Bact=none
Then I get a bunch of the most incredibly fucked up labs of all time, and a bunch of intentionally contradictory and poorly written med orders, you know, like how it really is at cccccounty. Then onto priority nursing dx, nursing interventions.
But the whole thing seems far fetched. Like, I get it, pheochromocytoma but blood in the pee-pee? That's a bit of a stretch isn't it? Bloody piss because of an adrenal tumor? Do I have to change my diagnoses to Decreased renal tissue perfusion? Anybody out there? Can you guys enlighten me?
Why do I need to think about this shit?
So is the life of a nursing student.

I've pre-emptively changed the name of my blog as you can see. It's sort of like, you know, to psyche myself up for the NCLEX and subsequent employment. And it should solicit more hate from the haters.

Licensed 2 ill.

Hope you guys are doing well out there. Cheers.