Big Changes

Big changes are coming in my life, and as everything is starting to come together I am getting more and more excited about what lies ahead for my future.  I will share more with you all soon.

But for now, I am staying busy with my temporary job giving flu shots, which has been an interesting little job for the past two weeks.  I spend nearly 10 hours a day running a flu shot clinic, and give about 10 shots a day.  Yes, that is right my friends, that equals about 1 shot an hour.  For TEN HOURS.  Good thing graduate school is filled with plenty of reading to occupy those extra hours.  And good thing I'm now a good two weeks ahead in school.

Stay tuned for more!

Its Official...

I'm a REGISTERED NURSE!! woohoo!  I took the NCLEX, which is the nursing licensure exam, on Friday, and was able to get my results today.  A big fat PASS!

I cannot even explain how excited and relieved I am!  I feel like I can finally enjoy the rest of my summer, besides applying for jobs.  I am moving in two weeks, and was able to pack up almost my entire apartment between yesterday and today.  I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it is going to be a great rest of the summer!

For now, I am off to celebrate my new title :)

Officially a Graduate

Well hey now!  Sorry for my brief interruption this weekend, but as a I said earlier, it was my graduation weekend!  I graduated from UIC's College of Nursing with my BSN, as well as from UIC's Honors College.  Now all I have to do is pass the NCLEX-RN exam and I will be an official nurse!  Let me tell you...I cannot wait for this exam to be over.  I still have appx. 4-6 weeks before I will be able to test, so right now I am taking a review class to prepare.  School the week after graduation=no fun.

Here are some pictures from the weekend:

Before the Honors College graduation

After the nursing graduation

The fam :)

I will be back this week with more beautiful design photos.  I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!!

I Need Some Help!!

To all you moms out there...I need some help!  This week I start my pediatrics clinical rotation, and as part of our paperwork for the class, I have to do a teaching project on a child.  I'm using my boyfriend's neighbor to teach, and I'm teaching him about the importance of brushing his teeth (as identified by his mom...he hates brushing)!  He's 7 years old...and I want to make it fun so that he actually will want to brush his teeth.  Here is where you come in...any suggestions that you have done in the past to help inspire your kids to brush their teeth?  I have been looking online everywhere, and I'm not finding any great ideas!  Let me know if you have any!!

A Little Bit About Me

So, I have been blogging for about 9 months now, and I have loved it everyday.  I love reading new blogs and sharing my thoughts and opinions, there are some many amazing people out there that the blog world allows you to interact with.  Crazy!  I'm really trying to expand my blog right now, and I have recently decided to work with  Wacky Jacqui's Designs to have my own personalized layout.  I finally found some time to contact her today, and I can't wait to see how it will turn out.  So stay tuned for a new look!

I decided to share a bit more about myself today, because I like to know a little bit about the bloggers I follow, so I figured you might too :)

1. I'm a nursing student living in downtown Chicago, and I am currently in my last year of undergrad!  Woo-hoo!  Although I complain about school all the time, I actually really do like being a student, and I know I am going to love being a nurse.  

2. Come winter break, I am going to be applying to grad school.  Ahhh, scary I know.  I'm applying for a double masters in Women's Health and Midwifery, which has been my passion all my life!  I remember when I was really young seeing a TV show where triplets were born, and my obsession began!  My Barbies, my doll house people...they were regularly pregnant and giving birth (or what my idea of all this was).  It's stuck with me ever since, and I can't wait to start this journey.  

3. I have a secret (or...maybe not so secret) love for interior design.  A lot of my blog is about inspirational design that I find, because it is the only place I can share these beautiful pictures.  I think it is so fun to transform a plain room into a beautiful place to be, and you can constantly change it as your loves change.  You can design beautifully on any budget, you just have to be willing to work hard at it.   

4. Coming from my love of interior design, I have recently taken to painting furniture.  I love all things white, and over the summer, I began to take this love and put it to work.  I found several old pieces of furniture (Goodwill, some laying around the house, some even garbaged picked) and transformed them to work for me.  Feel free to scroll through my older posts to see some of the transformations, and I have a few more to share!

Well...that's just a little bit about me.  I hope you continue to enjoy my postings, and as always, I love new followers.  Thank you for taking time to stop by!

xoxo, Erin

Nursing

I know I've said this before, but this semester I'm doing my women's health clinical rotation for nursing school. For a long time, I've thought I wanted to work in Labor and Delivery, but you never truly know until you are in that clinical situation. So far, I've loved every minute that I'm there. We are in post-partum most of the time, which is pretty boring, but I got to go to L&D again today. Its just amazing!! I had such an exciting day. I got to watch an epidural being put in (OW!!) and then I got to start a Foley catheter for the first time ever. Then I was in the delivery room with a woman who after 2.5 hours of labor and a vacuum delivery, had a healthy baby boy!! So exciting, I get such an adrenaline rush from it all.

I can't wait to go back tomorrow and see the mom and baby in postpartum. For now...the studying/homework continues. Is is summer yet?!

It's A Boy!!

This semester, I am in my Women's Health clinical rotation. Normally, we spend our time on the postpartum floor, which is a little boring to say the least. For the most part, its full of healthy women who just want to be left alone to spend time with their new baby. But for the last two days I was fortunate enough to be able to go to labor and delivery and see two babies born!! Both of them were healthy baby boys! The first day it was planned that I was going to go (we get to go to L&D once during the rotation and see a C-section once), but the second day was pure luck. I had a patient who was admitted to ante-partum for observation, and then they decided to move her over to L&D. So while my patient was sleeping, I got to go observe the birth of another patient. It was amazing. I want to be a midwife in the future, so these were the two best clinical days I've ever experienced.

Clinicals, Day 1

So...it was back to clinicals today. I'm not gonna lie, it was nice having a break from them during winter vacation, and it was hard having to get up at 5:30 this morning to start going back. BUT, I managed to force myself into bed around 12:30, and after a restless night of sleep (because I am paranoid that my alarm is not going to go off, so I wake up all throughout the night), I made it up and out the door by 6:15. Yuck. Clinicals this semester are at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, and what a hospital it is. If you live in the Chicagoland area and need any sort of surgery/medical procedure done...that is your place to be. All private patient rooms, state of the art everything...its wonderful.

I had a stresfull day today though. Our computer login's wouldn't work, so we basically spent the first hour of the morning standing in the hallway like lost children trying to figure out where to go and what to do. I've never felt like more of a student who knows nothing before. Finally, we were able to get started, and the day went by fairly quickly from that point on. Bed bath, hanging IVs, vital signs, assessments, medications...the usual for a nursing student. The biggest suprise of the day was that I was told my patient was a man...and when I walked into the room, there was a woman patient sitting in the chair! Oops, looks like a little mix-up by the instructor.

I forgot how uterly exhausted being in clinicals makes you. My friend said that other day that each time we go to clinicals is like starting a new job, and the more I think about it, the more I see how right she is. It's very stressful to feel like you don't really know what you're doing, I just feel so out of place sometimes. But we are learning a lot, and it is something that will definately become more comfortable in the future. Also, how many nurses are with just one patient for the entire day? ZERO!! So having only one patient can make for a long day sometimes, I think my patient was as worn out as I was by the end of my shift.

Highlight of my day... my patient saying that she "didn't order any nurses." She didn't understand why we were there, she simply didn't order us. I forgot hospitals are becoming the new restaurants...

:)

All in all...it was a good day. Now its time to start on the dreaded clinical paperwork, when all I really want to do is curl up in bed and sleep. Grey's and Private Practice is on tonight, might have to be my excuse for not getting everything done. We're back tomorrow morning bright and early again...and then its the weekend. Let's just say, I can't wait!