Halloween

I am SOOOO SUPER DUPER stoked about Halloween!!

Jake I and I are going to be Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley! Our costumes will be EPIC! We ordered real Gryffindor ties online. And we found black graduation robes at DI yesterday. WHICH WILL MAKE AWESOME WIZARD ROBES! All we need to do is make some wands!

Also, we have coupons for a Halloween Cruise on the Provo River! I guess it has lighted pumpkins along the shore and they tell you scary stories and the pirates attack your boat! And we get to go for only $5.

Also, I want to go to a haunted house. :-)

Opinions

Today during down time at the health center, I was reading yesterday's Daily Universe. As I worked my way front to back, skipping the sports articles, I came across the Public Opinion page. Regarding these opinions, I have two opinions of my own.

Opinion 1: These people are radical extremist crazy people who get worked up over little things that really don't matter in the big scheme of things.

So... that wording was slightly overexaggerated. But I'm gonna go with it to just highlight the differences between my opinions.

For example - there was a girl who wrote in about the HUGE problem of people walking across the grass on campus. Yes, perhaps it does kill grass which does waste some time and money. But... is it a big deal? Is that the most important thing you can think of to address in your community?

Opinion 2: Good for you for caring enough about something to try to do something about it.

Most people in the nation don't care enough about their community or nation to do anything, even something as simple as voting. I've never felt as though I were passionate enough about something that I was motivated to write to a public opinion page. But, I admire their commitment to a cause.

Which of these opinions dominates my view? Who knows? Depends on the day.

Silly Old People!

So old people are way stinking funny. Part of it is I think because they don't care what people think anymore (if they did to begin with), and part of it is because some of them are legitimately starting to go crazy. Since I work with old people right now, I decided that this post will just be a compilation of silly things old people have said to/around me. Unless otherwise specified, they are patients from work.

My own grandmother before her death, regarding some Nigerian refugees in her ward - "They was the blackest niggers I'd ever seen!"

A 70+ old lady after I gave her a snack - "I'm not pregnant!"

A little old man who realized his fly was unzipped - "Oh no! What if that monster had gotten out?!? BOTH INCHES of him?!?"

Old man as another CNA was getting him ready for bed - "What do you want to do now? Lay down and make love?"

Cute 103 year old lady - "You're far too pretty to be wasting your time here, you belong in Hollywood!"

Little Blind Lady - "You better look out... I saw something in this building... It had the head of a chicken... and giant mammoth tusks that came out in all sorts of shapes... And in its beak, it had a bunch of straw. That's not the sort of thing you want hanging around here, so you better watch out. Cuz one day you'll see it too!"

Little Old Man - "How old are you?.... And are you married?.... Are you pregnant yet?... Well.... its cuz you gotta start taking him serious when he pokes fun at you! That's how you get pregnant. You're just not taking him serious!"

Little Lady when I entered her room particularly quietly - "I'll start calling you Pussyfeet! You remind me of our school principal in Ohio back in 1939! You never heard him sneaking up behind you. We called him Pussyfeet!"

A man close to dying told his wife that he was going to make 450 cookies and that she could frost them. Because then they'd have them ready for the Cub Scouts!

AH..... soo many more funnies... But alas... its dinner time. I may just do posts like this periodically. Because they are just so darn entertaining!

Giving Stool

I'm now halfway through my externship. And even though it'll be great when its done (I'll have SOOOoo much more time!), I think I'll miss it. I'm really enjoying it and learning all these different things.

But anyways... This was just too funny.

A patient came in and we needed to run tests on a stool sample. So, one of the other phlebotomists gave him the specimen container and explained the procedure to him, told him where the bathrooms are, etc. Then, this humorous exchange took place:

PATIENT: How much [stool] do you need?

PHLEBOTOMIST: As much as you can give us.

PATIENT: Well, I'm a very giving person.

We managed to hold in our snickering until he left the lab, but then we all cracked up! We imagined opening the pass box to find a specimen overflowing from the container, that had all smooshed out as he tried to close the lid...

It took us several minutes to regain our composure.

Externing

I learned today what *exactly* an extern is. Or rather, why an extern is not an intern.

Interns - Generally have completed almost all of their training, and often get paid for their time.

Externs - complete hours as part of their training before graduating/getting certifications (i.e. a teaching practicum for education majors) and do not get paid.

I am an extern. A phlebotomy extern to be more specific. At the BYU Health Center. Go me! Which means, I finished a class training me to draw blood (in February, actually) and now I have to complete 40 hours of on site professional training/experience/etc.

It was my second day today. At the health Center (which shall heretoforth be referred to as the "SHC" or Student Health Center), they like their externs to just watch the first day. To get the hang of lab procedure and protocol, the set up of their particular facility, get used to their equipment, etc. I did get to practice on one of my coworkers though.

But, today was my second day! So after one more practice run on another coworker I got real patients! I only did 3 hours today, but I still got a good number of sticks in. I only missed once! But when the real employee tried on the girl whose vein I missed, she had a hard time too and kinda dug around. Which... really sucked for the girl. I felt bad. But, it kinda made me feel better about missing. But after about an hour to an hour and a half this morning, they let me do things pretty much entirely unsupervised unless I had a question or something. They said that is much sooner than they usually set externs on their own. Which means I'm doing a good job!!! :-)

But I've gotten to learn lots of interesting things during my two days so far. I learned the difference between a flu swab an a strep swap, I learned why you do NOT want urine tests for gonorrhea/chlamydia to be "clean catch" samples, I learned about the quantiferon test for foreign students who have receive the BCG Tuberculosis vaccine (they will have a false positive result to the standard TB antibody test used in America, so they have to do some different blood work to test them. And you want to purposely rupture the cells for this test, which is usually something you try desperately to avoid), and I GOT TO SEE A MOLE THAT WAS REMOVED FROM SOMEONE'S ARM!! Which was sweet. It was all gnarly and had all sorts of little arms and roots that anchored it into the skin.

Fun stuff. I'm excited for the rest of my time.

I should make more posts...

I should make more posts. I really like reading everyone else's blogs. So I should improve my own.