42 days, no sugar. Finally the headaches are over and the one good thing about those, is that you remember how bad they are and don't want to go through them again. This helps with any thoughts of cheating....it's just not worth it.
Luckily, the crabbiness is over also, seeing that last month we began last trimester clinicals. I have a good group this year for the most part, but there are always a few, whew. We are rotating through maternal-child and they think they have died and gone to heaven. No NG tubes, barely a catheter, no patients with 20 different medications, and semi-happy staff nurses that like their job, and the babies...oh the babies!!! Pretty cushy. Until......OMG, how am I going to get that patient out of bed? What do you mean how? You go in there and tell her "we are getting up now"---I have literally had to push students into rooms, they are so terrified.
It has always amazed me, the wide scope of pain tolerance in people. I can have a mom, four hours post c/section that hops up out of bed and tries to clean her own room, and a mom with the easiest natural birth that wants to lay in bed for days. I teach my students that everyone is different and we cannot label one or the other as a difficult patient and that pain is whatever the patient says it is. They seem to have a hard time with that one. "But Mrs. Miller, she says her pain is a 9 and she is smiling and laughing" (we use a pain scale of 1-10, 1 being no pain and 10 being the worst pain you have ever experienced). And yes, there are people that are evidently experiencing the pain of a conscious amputation while sucking down chili cheese fries from Sonic, talking on their cell phone and fighting with their boyfriend, all at the same time. Is it our place to judge what their pain is? Nope, it is what they say it is. This is a hard concept for students to grasp, but they are getting it.
It's all about non-judgemental nursing care.
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