Is it just me, or does my head look extremely big in that photo? Well, my head is a little on the large side thanks to my fathers german engineering, but it just looks ginormous in that picture!!

Anyways, onto some more interesting things...

This week in clinical I got to do a few new things. Well, 2 to be exact. The first was taking out a catheter. For those of you that are not familiar with catheters, they are a tube that is inserted up the urethra (pee hole) to drain urine from the bladder. This gentleman that I was doing this one was quite a nice guy. I was asking him what it felt like and he said it was pretty weird. He never really had the sensation of a full bladder, but he could feel himself peeing. I would think that would be a weird sensation because he's lying in his nice warm bed, seemingly peeing himself but it goes into a tube and into a resevoir. He was on some diuretic drugs (pulls the fluid out of the body and into the urinary system) because he has had some heart problems in the past and he has also had bad edema (swelling) in his legs. All together he lost about 5-7 litres of water from his system, and was so happy that he has normal legs again. When the were edematous, his legs looked like elephant's legs with very swollen legs and balooned feet. So anyways, I deflated the baloon (there's a baloon that the nurse fills with saline to keep the tube in the bladder), and then just pulled it out. I have totally been sensitized to this sort of thing now. At first it sort of grossed me out, but I have to do these things to help my patient.

My second new thing was giving this crazy huge IM injection. It was for this poor old guy that has syphilis. It was 2 injections with one in each butt cheek. It was a rather large and daunting needle with this white penicillin-B paste. I wouldn't say it was a liquid, it was more the consistancy of glue. Imagine having that injected into your butt cheeks - not my idea of fun. And this elderly dude was so skinny that I was afraid that I would be stabbing it into a bone or something because the needle was 2 inches long. Now I've stabbed my bone with a stapler once...it freakin hurt. It sends this shard throbbing pain that centralizes around the stabbing at my finger, and then goes all the way up the arm. I can't even remember how I stabbed myself, but I'm glad no one was around to see my blond moment.

Anyways, I'm getting tired and have some reading trhat I should get done for tomorrow's class. I've been trying to keep up with the readings this week because I really want to get good marks. So far I have two classes that are 90+% so that's great! I hope to get lots of bursaries next year because I've been given the short end of the stick with those my last 2 years. However I'm so broke that the government showed some pit and "forgave" $2500 worth of my 20 something thousand dollar loans. I'll take what I can get!

So long for now~