I C U

Last week I had my volunteer orientation in an ICU; this week I get to do my first full volunteer shift there. The prospect is somewhat petrifying. I've volunteered in hospitals before, and a fair amount of my current and former jobs have involved interacting with outpatients, but I've only ever really worked with people who are doing fairly well. I mean, many of them were terminally ill, but if they were in a position to be talking to me, they were stable. But last week, I saw ventilators, I saw notes that this patient or that patient was unresponsive, I saw code carts on what seemed like every corner...

I'm a Nervous Nellie. Everyone who knows me learns that pretty quickly. I'm looking forward to doing this--while two of my three main career interests would involve working with outpatients, the third might not, and I'd like to get experience interacting with people who are actually, you know, sick. That being said, I worry about how to react in the event of something actually going wrong. For example, if someone becomes unresponsive and I think they're having a heart attack, do I hit the code button? Or the staff assist button? Or do I run screaming into the hallway? Now, probably what would actually happen is that some sort of alarm from one of the hypothetical patient's machines would start going crazy and people would rush in before I figured out what to do anyway.

Välkommen! 환영합니다! Mabuhay!

I'm not sure if I've ever seen a blog with a great first post; if I have, clearly it wasn't particularly outstanding (or I would have remembered it). With that in mind, I'll avoid trying to make this post really profound, and instead just give an introduction.

I want to go into nursing... I think. I thought for a little while that I wanted to become a doctor, until I did a cold, dispassionate cost-benefit analysis and realized that the training process was not worth it to me, even with the prestige factored in as a benefit. I have a BA in Impractical Studies, and I'm currently trying to decide between applying to PA school and applying to some variety of nursing school--accelerated BSN? BSN/MSN? Graduate entry RN/MSN? BSN followed later by an MPH? Or PhD? The options are dizzying. I'm pretty sure nursing will win out (if not, I guess I'll have to change the blog title to NonPAreil or something cheesy like that). As of right now, I want a career that combines clinical work with research, but I could do that even if I just get the RN alone, I suppose, so that doesn't really narrow my options down.

My main interests within healthcare so far are women's health (I'm more on the Gyn side than the Ob side), primary care, and neurology. That being said, I think I could be convinced to become interested in almost anything.

Right now, I work as a research assistant at a large university. I've been thinking about becoming certified as a CNA, just to get some practical experience (and so that I can stop volunteering! ha). I've volunteered in a couple different capacities, and I might be starting a volunteer position in an ICU soon, which should be interesting.

Things I love include but are not limited to: cheese, math, opera, and my spouse.