Still Running

This past Saturday Eric and I ran together outside. We've figured out that if he runs on a "recovery" day, it works out okay. He can pretty much speed walk alongside my run! We went to the trail off Isabelle between Boulder and Erie. It was great! We had really nice weather. Somewhere around 55F and sunny! I have never been trail running before or done hills. This run had both! We ran 4 miles. I had to stop about three times for a brief walking break but I felt pretty good about my performance anyhow! I think I ran it in about 45-50 minutes.

This Sunday, March 14, will be my first running race. I'm not really "racing" so much as just trying to finish in a respectable time. It is a 7k St. Patrick's Day race. I even took a day off work for it. My goal is simply to run as much of it as I can, and finish in under an hour. Ideally, I'd finish is 44:00 or less, but I recently read the course is hilly. Since I have a total of one hill run under my belt, I don't have great expectations if that's the case.

As for the rest of life...I'm on Spring Break now. The weather hasn't been very nice this week, so I'm not even getting outside to climb. I've have however been working on my application to the University of Colorado Hospital. They have an amazing Graduate Nurse Residency Program. I'd love to be a part of it, but it's very competitive. They have a whole year of training and special stuff for new grads. I'm applying to any of the ICU units, oncology or transplant. I'd be happy working anywhere though. It's a really long application process.

Well, I'll report back after the race!

Running

I've decided to start keeping a blog about running. The reason is because I've recently started running and have experiences a lot of up's and down's. Mostly down's, but I'm determined to stick with it. Eric got me a Nike sensor for my Ipod back in December. It come with a little chip that goes in your shoe and a receiver that plugs into your Ipod. It then records the distance you run, the calories you burn, and an average pace. It is a very cool and motivating thing to have. It links you to the Nike website and allows you to track progress.

So, back in December I started a run/walk program. This was great because I was on winter break and really didn't have much going on. I felt like I progressed fairly well and was able to run a mile without stopping for the first time in my life. I was feeling fairly positive about this running business. From the beginning I was excited about the idea of participating in the Boulder Marathon in September.

Then school started. It has been very difficult to continue running three or four times a week, climb, work, go to school and do clinicals. I've been able to run once a week. Sometimes twice for the last few weeks. Time is a major issue, as is energy. I figure keeping a blog when I'm frustrated or feeling particularly good might help my motivation. So this will be my first entry. The following will be training reports.

MacBook PhotoBooth

These photos are from PhotoBooth on my new Mac. I guess it's not technically new anymore, but at the time of this photo it was. My computer died last November and I became the proud new owner of the new MacBook.

I'm a terrible blogger!

So I've been a terrible blogger. I blame nursing school. Luckily, I'm approaching the end. Maybe I'll actually be a better blogger in the near future. For now, I thought I'd post a couple of pictures from our Holiday Party. My parents came out for Christmas a couple weeks early and we had a dinner party. It was a lot of fun! We had our neighbors Dustin (and his sister), Steven, and the Fuller's (Jim, Deb and Alaina). Our friends Jacinda and Cory, and Erin also came. So with my mom, dad, Eric and I we needed to rent some tables. Mom made two turkeys, and we spent almost two days cooking side dishes, pies, cookies, and making drinks. It was a lot of fun and I can't wait to do it again next year. This photo of my mom and Steven cracks me up! I can't even remember what they were doing, but we were all a few drinks down!.
So, as I enter my last semester of nursing school I feel a bit like a tornado! My head is everywhere. I'm taking community health and nursing roles the first half of the semester. I think I'll like community health since I was very interested in pursuing a public health degree before I decided on nursing school. I'm hoping my schedule is easy enough this semester to allow more time for recreation. I have Mondays off, Tues and Wed class and clinicals on Thurs and Friday.

The second half of the semester I have practicum, which is where we work three 12-hour shifts with a preceptor per week but don't have classes for the most part. We only meet three times during those weeks. Then, I graduate...May 9, 2010!

My new endeavor is running. I'm trying hard to not let it impact my climbing, but I've decided to do a marathon (or a half if I can't pull off the whole...we'll see how training goes!) The Boulder Marathon is in September, so I figure I've got lots of time to get ready. I've been running some, and it's going alright so far.

Okay...soon I'll write a blog about the wedding. I'm a married woman now!

Medical-Surgical Nursing

The first eight weeks of Spring semester managed to fly by, leaving me exhausted and feeling a little brain dead. My rotation was at St. Anthony's North in Westminster, Colorado. There were a few really great things about this rotation. First, it was a very short drive, about twenty minutes. Second, I had a great clinical instructor. I was hesitant at first, because my clinical instructor was a guy, and I thought he'd be really hard and for some reason I had the irrational fear that he would be arrogant. He was anything but this, and having him as a clinical instructor was a great experience.

I was really hoping to have some oncology patients, but most of my patients were post-surgical carotid endartectomies or liver failure (from alcohol). A carotid endartectomy is when there is a clogged artery in the neck that needs to be cleaned out and a stent is sometimes inserted to keep the artery open. My liver patients (and I had several of them) were usually young (40-60 yrs) and having multiple organ failure. I was astonished at the number of end-stage organ failure patients we had. I also had a couple of patients who were admitted for another reason, but turned out to be alcoholics and the only way we found out was about 30 hours after they were admitted they started having tremors, sweats, hallucinations, etc.

Highlights of this past rotation were probably removing my first JP drain (this is a long plastic piece of material with holes in it that runs along an incision site to help with draining after surgery. It has a little "grenade" bulb at the end to collect drainage and is emptied). To remove it, I just clipped some stitches and pulled it out! It was crazy. The tube was about seven inches long and accompanied by a huge blood clot that scared the crap out of me! I was also able to practice starting I.V.'s, although never on a real patient. My friend Erin, and another student, graciously allowed me to practice! Eric will have nothing to do with this.

Unfortunately, we lost two of our six students this clinical for one reason or another, so that was kind of sad. This next eight weeks our class is divided for the first time since the start of our program. Half of us are in psychiatric nursing while the other half of us are in pediatric nursing. This past eight weeks we have all successfully passed pharmacology also! Yay!!!

Spring Semester Year One Nursing School and Wedding Planning

Above is a picture of the "Save the Date" Eric and I sent out via email to people over the weekend. We have been meaning to get save the date's out for awhile now as some of our friends have already made plans for six months out! It was a good feeling to have completed this task, as it has been weighing on our minds for quite some time. I was very excited to find this one on Evite.com. It was very easy to use and best of all, FREE!

Today was my first day back to nursing school. I've been a little anxious about starting this semester for a few reasons. First, I really could have used another week off of school. I managed to keep myself very busy over break and certainly wasn't bored yet. Secondly, I've heard horror stories about the Medical-Surgical rotation. We have a lot of material to cover in eight weeks. Clinicals start next week and I'm sure I'll have lots of exciting stuff to write about in a couple of weeks.

This morning I woke up to snow...lots of snow. This wouldn't be a problem except that I think all the snow plow drivers in Colorado were still sleeping when I have drive to school. It took me two and a half hours to drive twenty miles to school this morning. Needless to say, I was among the half of the class who showed up very late for our first Med-Surg lecture. The good news was that on the way home the skies were clear, roads were dry and traffic was moving freely. Poor Peanut has to get used to being home alone all day again.

Toady all 72 nursing students had to sign up for our service learning sites. I haven't officially gotten mine yet because they added a Boulder site which worked out great for me. We have to complete 20 hours of service learning at a nursing home over the course of the semester, keep a journal and write a paper about social justice in the elderly population. We originally had only three service site options, all of which were a 45 minute drive for me. I was ecstatic when they decided to add a site in Boulder. This will make it much easier for me to complete my hours.

Tonight Eric and I are taking it easy. I'm writing this blog as a way to stay awake past 8pm. We have both fallen asleep on the couch several times already tonight. Poor Eric had to move all kinds of heavy stuff around in the snow today with his ultra motivated supervisor today and is exhausted. I apparently had a rough night of sleep filled with anxiety as I kicked him all night in my sleep and kept grinding my teeth! Guess I am a little stressed about Med-Surg! Well, tomorrow is another big day! I'll write more when I have pictures and something more exciting to talk about!

Christmas Presents!

Our Family Christmas Photo! Eric got me a new camera for Christmas, so we had lots of fun taking photos and videos. Peanut on the other hand, didn't understand the need to wait for the timer in our group shot, so I had to pin her down! After we opened presents we enjoyed egg nog with brandy, mashed potatoes, turkey for Eric, beans and Fruits of the Forest pie. I think we watched "A Christmas Story" four times! And of course, there's no better way to round out the day with a climbing video!

Peanut loves to open presents! She got her stocking opened all by herself and promptly destroyed her stuffy!



























Eric showing off his new pants, shirt and drawing model! We both got razors from my mom, which for some reason, made for great photos!