real nurse stuff...

I have some fun nursing pictures so I thought I'd just give you all a little update on nursing school. These pictures are all from last year. If I'm in scrubs then I'm at the nursing home where we had clinical. Otherwise I'm at school practicing stuff like shots and drawing blood. Lucky for you I wouldn't let anyone take pictures when we practiced sticking tubes down our noses into our stomachs (NG tube...). This semester should be pretty fun. We're actually in the hospital so it feels a little bit more like a real nurse. Not to say being in a nursing home wasn't real nursing...its more what we did in the nursing home that didn't feel as much like nursing. Last week I got to watch some surgeries (brain surgery...was amazing...) and I'll get my own patient next week. Anyone who's close to me knows that nursing school has been quite an experience for me. I am definitely learning more than just what can be read out of a book. I'm learning about being guided by the Spirit, listening to my patients to truly hear what it is they need, being happy no matter how hard life feels, and so many other lessons. I guess out of everything I'm really learning about the art of nursing. Florence Nightingale said "Nursing is an art: and if it is to be made an art, it requires an exclusive devotion as hard a preparation, as any painter's or sculptor's work; for what is the having to do with dead canvas or dead marble, compared with having to do with the living body, the temple of God's spirit? It is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said, the finest of Fine Arts." That statement becomes more real to me the further I get in my schooling. The living body truly is amazing. It definitely takes a lot from the artist, its not an easy thing to work with, but it is the finest.