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Feb. 25th, 2006 09:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fredericksDilemma: I'm supposed to be studying but am finding it impossible to make myself do so. Since waking up I've spent maybe 30 minutes reading my notes, 45 minutes shopping for dinner, 2 hours making dinner, and God only knows how many hours bullshitting in various forms. I'm nervous about failing and that nervousness is going to guarantee I DO fail; how 'bout that shit?
ETA Two hours later - I've done a marginal amount of studying. More web browsing than anything else. And, oh, new Justice League. *sigh* Semi-unrelated note: it's a bit sad to find out that authors you admire have more or less disowned books you enjoyed and still enjoy reading. Poppy Z. Brite's gone on record saying that she's "moved on" from works like Lost Souls and Drawing Blood, and that saddens me. I was just re-reading Drawing Blood today and I found myself bowled over by how *well-written* it is. I mean, yes, there are a couple of plot threads that are pointless (Zach's whole "being chased by the FBI thing" and, come to think of it, everything having to do with Zach including his female hanger-on) but stylistically things flow. I guess I can see why she'd want to distance herself from those works as it does play out as fanfic with the drama and the cutting and the goth singing and ideation but I still think it has more to do with her being embarrassed with the writing, sort of the way I'm embarrassed to go back and read the story fragments I produced back in junior high and high school. I don't know; I get the feeling like she's inadvertently shitting on the people that do read those books and like them. Or perhaps I'm being too sensitive. ::shrug::
ETA Twelve hours later *grin*: I get it now. Of course she's moved on. She's not in the same place emotionally and mentally she was when she could write the characters that populate those books. It's for her benefit too. Everyone was a little too beautiful and too perfectly broken (so all it takes is love to make things better)...most definitely the work of a young person. Ah well. Some of the characters are quite interesting despite all that. I was sort of hoping she'd revisit them. Maybe she will when she's much much older and can look back fondly on her body of work, the way Tanith Lee made a sequel to Silver Metal Lover a couple of years back (the sequel? not as interesting as the original, like those things tend to be).
Let me just post about my clinical day from hell. Then I won't have an excuse to keep pulling up the bloody "Update Journal" screen.
I didn't want to be there, as usual. I've had some time to think on it and I believe my aversion for clinicals stem from my lack of confidence. I run around with this idea that I'm a major fuck up and it stops me cold...as it's doing now. But I'll get to tackling that after I press "Send". The professor had six patients to divy up between the seven of us so I'd initially volunteered to be the "floater", as in I'd go from room to room helping out my fellow students as the need arose. That cop-out got squashed when one woman said she had to leave halfway through the session. I got her patient, a case that initially looked very easy. The information I got (a print out of his daily orders) told me at first glance he was 41 and in hospital for "renal failure". I deduced from his last name that he was English-speaking. Aside from noting that 41 was pretty young to be having kidney problems I was stoked; the population on our floor was generally older (hovering around 71 as an average age) and Chinese, meaning the whole language barrier was a major hindrance. I got the papers from the other student without enough time to sit down and look up the meds that the patient was on in my med book. I might have gleaned something if I'd taken the time to do so beforehand and it's something I'm going to make sure I endeavor to do in the future because it's just safe practice. But I'm digressing.
So we headed up to the floor and I checked in on my patient. I found him to be (thankfully) very lucid and chatty. Very very chatty. I introduced myself and told him I would be working with him that morning and then proceeded to ask him the standard "and why are you in the hospital this day?" It might sound idiotic but it's a basic assessment tool to find out the patients mental status and perhaps find out how they're feeling. This fellow told me oodles about why he was in hospital, using medical terminology that most lay people don't throw around. I stood there nodding, wondering if he also had undocumented mental health issues but if he did they weren't severe enough to warrant psychotropic meds. After listening to him for what might have been ten minutes (I asked him a couple of small questions here and there for clarification of course) I found myself to be somewhat perturbed. His attitude was "I don't care" regarding his pre-hospital medical condition. He mentioned being non-compliant when it came to taking his medication (which I assumed to be anti-hypertensives), actually using the word "non-compliant" to describe himself. When I asked him why he didn't want to take his medication he said something along the lines of "I'm just non-compliant". He also mentioned he was depressive but refused to take his medication.
When I left the room to do something related to care I got the feeling he was a bit of a hypochondriac but otherwise healthy. A healthy gentleman with renal failure on a whole lot of meds. Hmm. As I'm typing this up I'm getting angry at myself for having such poor technique and then I get angrier for maybe doubting myself because maybe I had *excellent* technique and did the right thing and...I'm losing my train of thought again.
Fast-forward to medication time. My instructor was with me (protocol) and we looked up the medications the gentleman was on. There were too many anti-bacterial and anti-protozoic meds and nothing for hypertension so we figured he had HIV or another immune disorder. I didn't end up confirming his HIV status until I had time to look up his chart. Finding out that he was positive didn't make me not want to work with him - in fact, it made me more sympathetic towards him. Everything he'd told me during the morning fell into place in a jigsaw/Tetris sort of way. He had a death wish of sorts: he never took his medication, he had renal problems but confessed to having a diet that consisted mainly or protein...things of that nature. I was glad I didn't pry into his business or make things awkward for him. I carried on with my day, making sure he was on the right diet etc etc.
Things went downhill shortly after 11:00. When I gave him his medication he mentioned that they gave him uncontrollable diarrhea (the no. 1 side effect of all of them was diarrhea) and he apologized in advance if he messed the bed. I was NOT looking forward to cleaning up anything but I kept it to myself. When I had some down time with him I went to help another student with her patient, and after a couple of minutes I heard housekeeping getting paged to my patient's room. There was only one reason why housekeeping would be called...and I was loathe to help them clean that up. After ten minutes had passed my guilty feelings made me check in on my patient. Housekeeping had yet to come and help him clean up; there was filth on the bed, all over the sheets, on the floor, on him (he'd managed to make it to the little port-a-pot by the side of his bed). It was not pleasant, but I sure as hell wasn't going to leave him there in his own mess. I started the laborious task of trying to help him clean up. Of course, as we're in the middle of this two of his family members decide to visit. He was naked, smeared with (literal) crap, on a filthy loo, next to a bed that...the less said about it the better.
Fine. I started cleaning, and when I completed the bed I started on him. Here's my stupidity at work - when I unhooked the IV line from his arm I didn't cap it or take off the machine. For the sake of time I simply unhooked it and had him take his arm out of his gown then hooked it back. That worked fine when we took off his clothes but the IV snagged on his gown when we were putting the new one on, completely messing up the line. Blood started to flow steadily from his line all over the place and...I freaked. Calmly, but I freaked. I'd been up to my elbows in crap and now I had to deal with blood. Of course, the fact that he was positive probably had a lot to do with it. But I'd also fucked up royally in general. And my gloves had chosen that moment to rip at the fingertips. Looking back on it I know that even if I'd capped the line like I was supposed to it would have probably still snagged and still gotten infiltrated, but that didn't comfort me then. I wrapped his arm up in a towel, made sure he was comfortable on the bed, and ran out to find someone to help me with the problem. Things got taken care of, but only after I had to leave. They ended up having to start a whole new line on him. I completely fucked up. Completely. And that guy probably thought I was frazzled because of his HIV status. I wasn't until the end. Not that that makes me feel any better.
So, I'm human? or I'm an asshole? I keep oscillating between the two when I replay the whole thing out in my mind. I think I was off my equilibrium because of the whole feces debacle and the grand entrance of the other bodily fluid just threw me over the edge. And I run around with no confidence as it is...God. Okay, I'm done.
Wow. This window has been open for three. hours. I think that's a personal record.
ETA Two hours later - I've done a marginal amount of studying. More web browsing than anything else. And, oh, new Justice League. *sigh* Semi-unrelated note: it's a bit sad to find out that authors you admire have more or less disowned books you enjoyed and still enjoy reading. Poppy Z. Brite's gone on record saying that she's "moved on" from works like Lost Souls and Drawing Blood, and that saddens me. I was just re-reading Drawing Blood today and I found myself bowled over by how *well-written* it is. I mean, yes, there are a couple of plot threads that are pointless (Zach's whole "being chased by the FBI thing" and, come to think of it, everything having to do with Zach including his female hanger-on) but stylistically things flow. I guess I can see why she'd want to distance herself from those works as it does play out as fanfic with the drama and the cutting and the goth singing and ideation but I still think it has more to do with her being embarrassed with the writing, sort of the way I'm embarrassed to go back and read the story fragments I produced back in junior high and high school. I don't know; I get the feeling like she's inadvertently shitting on the people that do read those books and like them. Or perhaps I'm being too sensitive. ::shrug::
ETA Twelve hours later *grin*: I get it now. Of course she's moved on. She's not in the same place emotionally and mentally she was when she could write the characters that populate those books. It's for her benefit too. Everyone was a little too beautiful and too perfectly broken (so all it takes is love to make things better)...most definitely the work of a young person. Ah well. Some of the characters are quite interesting despite all that. I was sort of hoping she'd revisit them. Maybe she will when she's much much older and can look back fondly on her body of work, the way Tanith Lee made a sequel to Silver Metal Lover a couple of years back (the sequel? not as interesting as the original, like those things tend to be).
Let me just post about my clinical day from hell. Then I won't have an excuse to keep pulling up the bloody "Update Journal" screen.
I didn't want to be there, as usual. I've had some time to think on it and I believe my aversion for clinicals stem from my lack of confidence. I run around with this idea that I'm a major fuck up and it stops me cold...as it's doing now. But I'll get to tackling that after I press "Send". The professor had six patients to divy up between the seven of us so I'd initially volunteered to be the "floater", as in I'd go from room to room helping out my fellow students as the need arose. That cop-out got squashed when one woman said she had to leave halfway through the session. I got her patient, a case that initially looked very easy. The information I got (a print out of his daily orders) told me at first glance he was 41 and in hospital for "renal failure". I deduced from his last name that he was English-speaking. Aside from noting that 41 was pretty young to be having kidney problems I was stoked; the population on our floor was generally older (hovering around 71 as an average age) and Chinese, meaning the whole language barrier was a major hindrance. I got the papers from the other student without enough time to sit down and look up the meds that the patient was on in my med book. I might have gleaned something if I'd taken the time to do so beforehand and it's something I'm going to make sure I endeavor to do in the future because it's just safe practice. But I'm digressing.
So we headed up to the floor and I checked in on my patient. I found him to be (thankfully) very lucid and chatty. Very very chatty. I introduced myself and told him I would be working with him that morning and then proceeded to ask him the standard "and why are you in the hospital this day?" It might sound idiotic but it's a basic assessment tool to find out the patients mental status and perhaps find out how they're feeling. This fellow told me oodles about why he was in hospital, using medical terminology that most lay people don't throw around. I stood there nodding, wondering if he also had undocumented mental health issues but if he did they weren't severe enough to warrant psychotropic meds. After listening to him for what might have been ten minutes (I asked him a couple of small questions here and there for clarification of course) I found myself to be somewhat perturbed. His attitude was "I don't care" regarding his pre-hospital medical condition. He mentioned being non-compliant when it came to taking his medication (which I assumed to be anti-hypertensives), actually using the word "non-compliant" to describe himself. When I asked him why he didn't want to take his medication he said something along the lines of "I'm just non-compliant". He also mentioned he was depressive but refused to take his medication.
When I left the room to do something related to care I got the feeling he was a bit of a hypochondriac but otherwise healthy. A healthy gentleman with renal failure on a whole lot of meds. Hmm. As I'm typing this up I'm getting angry at myself for having such poor technique and then I get angrier for maybe doubting myself because maybe I had *excellent* technique and did the right thing and...I'm losing my train of thought again.
Fast-forward to medication time. My instructor was with me (protocol) and we looked up the medications the gentleman was on. There were too many anti-bacterial and anti-protozoic meds and nothing for hypertension so we figured he had HIV or another immune disorder. I didn't end up confirming his HIV status until I had time to look up his chart. Finding out that he was positive didn't make me not want to work with him - in fact, it made me more sympathetic towards him. Everything he'd told me during the morning fell into place in a jigsaw/Tetris sort of way. He had a death wish of sorts: he never took his medication, he had renal problems but confessed to having a diet that consisted mainly or protein...things of that nature. I was glad I didn't pry into his business or make things awkward for him. I carried on with my day, making sure he was on the right diet etc etc.
Things went downhill shortly after 11:00. When I gave him his medication he mentioned that they gave him uncontrollable diarrhea (the no. 1 side effect of all of them was diarrhea) and he apologized in advance if he messed the bed. I was NOT looking forward to cleaning up anything but I kept it to myself. When I had some down time with him I went to help another student with her patient, and after a couple of minutes I heard housekeeping getting paged to my patient's room. There was only one reason why housekeeping would be called...and I was loathe to help them clean that up. After ten minutes had passed my guilty feelings made me check in on my patient. Housekeeping had yet to come and help him clean up; there was filth on the bed, all over the sheets, on the floor, on him (he'd managed to make it to the little port-a-pot by the side of his bed). It was not pleasant, but I sure as hell wasn't going to leave him there in his own mess. I started the laborious task of trying to help him clean up. Of course, as we're in the middle of this two of his family members decide to visit. He was naked, smeared with (literal) crap, on a filthy loo, next to a bed that...the less said about it the better.
Fine. I started cleaning, and when I completed the bed I started on him. Here's my stupidity at work - when I unhooked the IV line from his arm I didn't cap it or take off the machine. For the sake of time I simply unhooked it and had him take his arm out of his gown then hooked it back. That worked fine when we took off his clothes but the IV snagged on his gown when we were putting the new one on, completely messing up the line. Blood started to flow steadily from his line all over the place and...I freaked. Calmly, but I freaked. I'd been up to my elbows in crap and now I had to deal with blood. Of course, the fact that he was positive probably had a lot to do with it. But I'd also fucked up royally in general. And my gloves had chosen that moment to rip at the fingertips. Looking back on it I know that even if I'd capped the line like I was supposed to it would have probably still snagged and still gotten infiltrated, but that didn't comfort me then. I wrapped his arm up in a towel, made sure he was comfortable on the bed, and ran out to find someone to help me with the problem. Things got taken care of, but only after I had to leave. They ended up having to start a whole new line on him. I completely fucked up. Completely. And that guy probably thought I was frazzled because of his HIV status. I wasn't until the end. Not that that makes me feel any better.
So, I'm human? or I'm an asshole? I keep oscillating between the two when I replay the whole thing out in my mind. I think I was off my equilibrium because of the whole feces debacle and the grand entrance of the other bodily fluid just threw me over the edge. And I run around with no confidence as it is...God. Okay, I'm done.
Wow. This window has been open for three. hours. I think that's a personal record.
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no subject
Date: 2006-02-26 06:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-26 06:29 pm (UTC)They had a panel on the growth of yaoi in this country with some of the people in the industry yesterday but, again, I didn't end up going back. Double pooh. BUT I was intrigued enough with the whole phenomenon thanks to you to order a couple of copies of a series from Amazon "Fake" I think it is? My other LJ friend said it was pretty good and it got rave reviews over on Amazon so I figure it's worth a shot. You're my expert on this stuff - have you read it? Did you like it?
Directly re: your comment - I suppose you're right.
re: Ms. Brite - I liked Ghost and Steve too. I wonder where she would have gone with them. I really do wish she goes back to say "hi" to them in the future. As her work is, as I'd like to dub it, "more mature" in nature (the main difference as I see it being the couple she's writing about in Liquor are around her age and have been together for years) she could really do their relationship justice. But she seems rather defensive when people mention they like her earlier works and wonder if she'll write about characters from them.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-26 09:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-26 11:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-26 11:45 pm (UTC)Saiyuki - not yaoi but has some hints. It is a retelling of "The JOurney to the West" Very good story and excellent art.
I'm a big fan of Gravitation but it's a little wacky.
Desire and Antique Bakery these are put out by DMP so they are bigger and cost a little more. Also Only the Ring Finger Knows is good, very sweet. Viewfinder or Your My Loveprize in Viewfinder (I can't remember what the English title is) by Yamane Ayano is good but it has non-consensual sex and bondage in it so...the artwork is gorgeous! I met Yamane sensei she's awesome! How could I forget the one that started it all for me! Yami no Matsuei or Decendents of Darkness by Matsushita. It is translated by Viz and up to vol. 9 is available. Awesome storyline, I think you'll like it! I'll think of a few more. The problem is yaoi isn't really about plot. Yaoi is an acronym for no point, no plot, no climax. Most stories are full of angst and pretty boys doing naughty stuff to each other. Also most of the really good stuff hasn't been translated officially into English. I'll send you some zip files of stories I really like if you want. You can download free comic viewers online. I'll email you a list of all the stuff I think is good.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 12:41 am (UTC)That makes me sad. I like some potatoes with my meat, dammit. I'll keep my eyes peeled for the titles you mentioned. Zip files would be lovely. Give me a couple of days, though, before I start procrastinating even more. They'd be a wonderful Thursday night present, methinks. *grin* You're awesome, btw. Would you like that screen/scroll I mentioned if I can find it again?
no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 01:01 am (UTC)