Restive State

I realize that it has been quite a long while now since my last post. School is more than just insane, work about the same and free time is relatively non-exisitent. Now I should be doing homework, but I can't. There is no way I can do that right now.
The perfect analogy I have heard to describe it all was this: in a 4 year program it's (the information) like drinking from a garden hose. In a 2 year program it's like a firehose. The sheer amount of information that is coming in does no justice to it all beacuse you barely have time to digest it. It becomes a random jumble of facts, figures, patholigies and medications. But when the light bulb goes off, there is a moment of clarity where it all makes sense, if only for a moment.

That moment came to me twice this weekend. The current study topic is cardiac & vascualr disorders. So between the actual disorders and the study of the circulatory system we're having in Anatomy, my head was swimming in information about that system. Friday night I'm checking out my assignment for Saturday clinicals and things are starting to click. I'm looking at the meds going, "ok, that's a diuretic and that's a beta-blocker, where's the ACE inhibitor" and thinking what these drugs were doing to the body. And the light bulb was burning bright. The pieces fell into place as I understood the diagnosis, the treatment and what was going on with the patient. For a moment, the clarity of vision and thought overwhelmed the aching burning of exhaustion.

Of course, when I arrived the next morning, my paitent had changed and all that work was for nothing. The clarity was a farce, nothing more than a glimpse of what could happen. But something far greater happened as a result of that. Too often you have so little time with your patients that you almost become robotic and job focused. You forget that instead of just treating the disease you are treating the person, the whole person, not just a collection of symptoms. That is more important that anything else. If we can't treat our patients, mind, body and soul, we're doing little more than assembly line nursing. It's not always easy or possible, but it should be a goal. My instructor said that we should always try to be present with our patients. To give that little bit of ourselves and our time to let the patient know that we are present with them, regardless. I came to the realization that I hadn't been doing that as well as I should have. Call it one hand on the door sydrome, or whatever, I realized there that I had not been doing that, and my patients could tell. So now it becomes my burden, no, my responsibilty to my patients to be present with them, even if it's just a little.

p.s. this was written over several days and may not be as coherent as I had orignally hoped, but at least something is out there.