Life gets busy...

Oh man life gets busy. So... this seems to be the thing to do (I've seen it on at least three blogs lately). I'm just going to post a magical little list of updates!

• I finished the last day of my phlebotomy externship yesterday. They let me do a syringe draw the last day. Which was exciting and not nearly as scary as I thought it'd be. So I should get my certification in the mail in a week or so!
• Midterms are going well so far. I got A's on both my Human Development and Microbiology ones. And an A on my last Human Development paper!
• We had a good General Conference Weekend. Jake's parent's came out here for Emma's baby blessing. Fun was had by all!
• We (or maybe just I) are(/am?) getting excited for Halloween. We have AWESOME costumes!
• We've had BEAUTIFUL weather here. Chilly in the mornings, but nice crisp cool fall days.

So... lots of things and yet nothing at all have been going on here. But things are going well. We're sure ready for Thanksgiving break though!

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.

Phlebotomy

So... I didn't used to like needles... at all. Whenever my mom had to go get her allergy shots, I'd hide my face in the little privacy curtain. Up until I was 18, whenever I had to get a shot, etc, they'd have to call in about two extra nurses to hold me down.

Which makes it even more surprising that I just finished a class to get my phlebotomy certification. For those of you slightly less medically minded folk, "phlebotomy" is basically drawing blood.

If you can get over the squeamish thing (I did, although I had a few doubts at the beginning of the class), its actually pretty cool. Everything now is really vacuum activated. They don't really use syringes too much anymore. So its interesting how all the equipment works.

And, I'm evidently quite decent at it! Which is the fun part!! Of all the sticks I've done so far, I have a 100% success rate on hitting the veins. I'm yet to miss! I've had two loved ones allow me to practice on them (Jake twice, and my mom let me do the butterfly on her arm).

I don't know if part of why I enjoy it is because I feel like I may actually be moving closer towards finally getting into Nursing/health care since its actually related? But I like it. And its exciting to me.

So anyways... I'm done with the actual phlebotomy COURSE. In order to get my certification, I have to complete a 40 hour externship. Which means I need to find some clinic/bloodbank/hospital/etc who will let me practice on their patients for free for 40 hours.

The Utah Valley Regional Medical Center (conveniently located a mere block away from my apartment) currently has a part time opening for a phlebotomist. Its an on call position. Not in the doctor kind of on call where you carry a beeper and they make you come in at 2 AM, but just the kind of on call where they'll call you if someone has a sick day or is going on vacation or something like that. So pretty flexible hours. And it starts at $10.65 an hour!!! Which is tremendous!!! I only make like $7.25 right now working at the Cannon Center. So that would be fantastic money for me. (and for us actually since we'll be married and trying to go to college and oh so very poor).

So anyways... Tomorrow morning I'm going to go to the hospital to talk to them. I submitted an application online. But I need to talk to them because technically I'm not officially certified. So I'm going to see if I can get the job, and if yes if I can just do my externship as fast as I can with them. (I figure if I just do 6-7 hours a day, I can finish it in a week). If I can't get the job... I'll still talk to them about the externship. I know at least one other girl from my class is applying for the position. But I'm hoping maybe the fact that I have my CNA (certified nurse assistant) license may give me an edge over her.

But yes. I'm going in tomorrow. I could really use this job. I'm excited about the chance of getting it. So... wish me luck and send a prayer or two out on my behalf in this endeavor! I'll update when I have something to report!

<3