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I’ve been meaning to post, really I have, but every time I think about starting I feel guilty and end up reading about respiratory function or thyroid hormones or watching videos on wound care. Tonight I am stifling and/or ignoring those nudges; besides, tomorrow is a holiday!
I had a revelation yesterday while Melissa and I were shadowing Chip, the Cardio-Pulmonary expert at the hospital ; people look at you differently when you are wearing scrubs, especially in the hospital.  They look at you as if you had a right to be there and as if you actually know what you are doing (which is not at all the case, at least not yet!) It was very interesting, and Chip was funny and very informative. I was having a little problem that day; my ears, particularly my right year had been completely plugged for 2 days. I had tried Q-tips, vinegar, peroxide and isopropyl alcohol in the ear to no avail. If I inserted my finger and pulled down on the ear canal just right I could gain a few seconds of clear sound. I explained my problem to Chip “I can’t hear unless I do this with my ear.” “What?” he asked. I explained 3 times before I realized he was messing with me. We watched Chip do a nebulizer treatment for a 4 year old boy. The little tyke was cheerful and friendly, despite having a nasal canula up his nose and an IV in the back of his hand. It was hard to get him to stop talking long enough to listen to his wheezing and rhonchi lung sounds as he showed off his very own yellow plastic stethoscope and offered us some of his cookies.
We saw Chip perform an EKG on an elderly man who knew exactly what was going on.  After the patient updated Chip on his symptoms he asked, “How is my heart? Am I in fibrillation right now?” After we left the room, Chip informed us that the man was a retired dentist.  A middle-aged woman in ICU needed an EKG as well. As he hooked up the leads, Chip was teaching us: the black one goes above the red one- smoke before fire. The blue one went above the green one-sky above grass. This one was the ground.  As he attached the ‘ground’ the patient suddenly yelled, “Aaaaah!” Melissa and I jumped three feet and nearly went into cardiac arrest on the spot. “Gotcha!” The patient was grinning at us. Sheesh!
It wasn’t terribly busy so Chip took a lot of time to show us the machines and tools of the trade. I was very surprised when this brilliant respiratory specialist had to take a smoking break. As Chip talked about secretions and mucus he told us a joke,”Here is how you can tell a nurse from a respiratory therapist,” he said. “You put everyone in a room with ‘excrement’ (word replaced to avoid pesky censors) up to the neck, then you hock a loogie into the room. The ones that duck are the nurses.”
At 11:00 AM our 4 hours were up and I left the hospital, determined to see a doctor about my ear that same day. After a little calling around, I got an appt with a nurse practitioner for a few hours later. UltraDad had some appointments of his own, and we met for lunch before heading our separate ways once again. After an assessment from the ‘doc’ the medical assistant put in some ear drops and irrigated my ears, removing a bunch of wax. Suddenly I could hear again! It was a miracle!
Today for nursing class, a couple of other people from the respiratory dept at the hospital came to our classroom and demonstrated a lot of the devices they use to help people breathe or breathe better. We also got a lecture on alveolar gas exchange and partial and negative pressures. Long ago when I had a bout of pneumonia I decided that breathing was a vitally important part of life that I usually quite took for granted.
Okay, time to wrap it up. You should really feel important. You beat out Senior Home Visit Assignment, Respiratory assignment and reading of 3 chapters in myNursing Fundamentals book to write you this post! More adventures later so stay tuned…..well, or at least check every couple weeks or so!

UltraMom