In Like a Lamb

And then it snowed six inches last night and I lost all hope.  But no, I'm sure that spring is coming.  I have to have hope that it is because otherwise I will curl into a ball of melancholy and only poke my (freezing) nose out to breathe.

* * *

As of 5 PM this evening, when my last assignment was due, I am officially on spring break!  This means that my first year of nursing school is now two thirds of the way done.  When we resume at the end of the month, we'll be doing units in pediatric, maternal-newborn, and chronic disease nursing.  I met up with an old Smith/Boston friend tonight on her way through New Haven.  We got coffee and I excitedly listened to the updates from her end.  When she asked me how nursing school was going, I felt a little at a loss for what to say.  Everything that springs to mind sounds trite and meaningless.  I think I spat out some brilliant summation along the lines of, "It's challenging and overwhelming, but really wonderful, too," which basically says a whole lot of nothing in eight words.  The truth is, I just don't know.  Trying to talk about nursing school from right smack in the middle is like trying to describe what the ocean is when you're barely treading water and there are no boats to be found.  I still wonder if I'm on the right path sometimes.  I think quite frequently that I will never be any good at this. I say the wrong things to patients, I get angry and frustrated with doctors and clinicians but say nothing and then hate myself for standing by.  I forget information that seems absolutely essential, and I lie awake at night, loathing my own privilege and not knowing what to do about it.  Usually, I feel useless.  Often, I feel worse than useless.  Challenging, overwhelming, wonderful - I could fill pages with meaningless descriptions and not say a single true thing at all.

Awesomesauce!

Emotionally, fall is hard for me.  But apples help.  And since making confection after confection of sugar-laden apple treats (like pie, crisp, bread, etc) would be even worse for my mental state and waistline than life already is, enter...applesauce (or awesomesauce).  Also, my crockpot?  Is winning.  So much love for the humble crockpot.

The players in this fine game: lemon juice (fresh is better, but hey), cinnamon, brown sugar.

And apples.  This isn't all of them, waiting to be chopped.  Only what was left by the time I thought to take a picture.

So.  I have a small crockpot, which means I can fit probably six or seven chopped big apples (the ones I had were the size of my head though, so I only used five).  For that much peeled, chopped apple, add the juice of half a lemon, a thinly peeled slice of the lemon rind (use a veggie peeler, and just oh so gently take off a 2-3 inch piece of the zest, without taking the pith with it), about 1/2-1 tsp cinnamon (depending on how much you like cinnamon), and maybe 2 tsp brown sugar.  Cook on high for 3 hours, or on low for 6 hours.  Stir occasionally.  Fish out the lemon peel at the end.  I stir it with a big spoon until it's the consistency I like (still kinda chunky) but you can blend it with an immersion blender if you like it super smooth.  Yum.  I've been putting this in my breakfast oatmeal lately, and it's positively swoon-worthy.

Tangential note to the above post: do you avoid cooking things that require lots of (albeit, mindless and not terribly difficult) prep work?  Like, for instance, peeling and chopping a pile of apples?  Because I did.  Like the plague.  I could kvetch about peeling and chopping a pile of root vegetables until you'd want to stuff sweet potato peels in your ears just to shut me up.  Since I don't cook a lot of meat, my prep work largely consists of just that: peeling and chopping.  And I lumped it into the same category as laundry and dishes and vacuuming and grocery shopping and all the other menial tasks that seemed to personally mock me with their necessity and their low rank on the ladder of difficulty.  In my head, it was like, "But whyyy do I have to do these things?  I have such other important, stressful, brain-busting things going on in my head that I need to be thinking about and mulling over and doing that it's just not fair that I would have to do something as silly as chopping apples."  Oh my gosh, right?  Get over it.  And then I read something about what we need to stop doing (in our twenties, but honestly, whenever) and this one hit me like a punch in the gut:

Stop treating errands as burdens.  Instead use them as time to focus on doing one thing, and doing it right.  Errands and chores are essentially rote tasks that allow you time to think.  They function to get you away from your phone, the internet, and other distractions.  Focus and attention span are difficult things to maintain when you're focused and attentive on X amount of things at any given moment. [source]

And then I got it.  Chopping the apples wasn't keeping me from thinking about and handling all of the other things in my head - it was exactly the time to be thinking about those things.  So tonight, I got out the pile of apples and my trusty peeler, and I told myself that I had until the dishes were done to think about being frustrated with how my last rotation went.  After that, closed topic.  The rotation is over, a new one is starting, it's time to move on.  So there I stood, methodically peeling and chopping, peeling and chopping.  And yes, at first, I fumed.  About my preceptor, and how much we didn't mesh, about how worried I am that I'm not prepared for my next rotation, and about how much I still feel like I need to learn.  I kept peeling.  I calmed down.  I chopped some more.  My thoughts shifted.  I smiled as I remembered the concert I went to last night, and how nice it was to visit my college town again.  And then, what do you know, half an hour had gone by and the crockpot was on and the kitchen was clean, and my mind was clearer than it's been in days.  Awesomesauce to the rescue.

And this is how we study...part II

Autumn has come to New Haven.  It now routinely goes down to about 40 degrees at night, and tops out around 55 or 60 during the day.  Making a long story extremely short, we're too poor to turn the heat on.  I'm not going to think about what we're going to do in January.  But for now, what we do is this...

Slippers.  Socks, two pairs.  Thick sweatpants.  Undershirt, long-sleeve shirt, sweatshirt.  Fleece bathrobe.  Blanket.  Fingerless gloves (because I still need to type).  Hat.  Periodic trips to the bathroom that involve lots of jumping to restart blood pumping to frozen extremities.  And spending lots of time at school and at the hospital where the cost of heat has already been absorbed by my loans.

Sleeping is a whole other issue.  Let's put it this way, sometimes we fight about who gets to have the cats on their bed because of the snuggling warmth they provide.

Stay warm, everyone!

Another Fall

Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub.

My heart beat pounds in my ears, and I rest my forehead against the cooler porcelain that edges the tub, closing my eyes against the bright overhead light.  The water rushing into the tub is drowned out by the blood rushing in my head.  Subconsciously, I begin to count my pulse, opening my eyelids to slits to glance at the second hand of my watch that lies on the floor, partially buried under the heap of my discarded scrubs.  Eighty-eight beats per minute.  My normal resting heart rate is around sixty-two.

Slow down, I implore the weary organ.  Please slow down.

Bon Iver plays faintly from the stereo, and I want to stay in the bathtub forever.  The water cools around me, my skin begins to wrinkle, and still I sit, wrapping my arms around and behind my knees to try to stay warm.

I blink back tears and wonder idly why I'm crying.  Why oh why can I not make it through these seasonal transitions without falling apart, I say in my head, I mean come on Cait it's fall, it's not the fucking end of the world.  It's fall, it's school, it's raining outside, it's we haven't been grocery shopping in three weeks, it's I can't see my bedroom floor for the mess everywhere, it's everything and nothing and who even knows.

The leaves have begun to blow in the streets.  In the predawn darkness of 5 AM, I can nearly see my breath.  It's fall again, and I panic.

They chose wrong.  They have no idea how wrong they were to pick me.  I don't belong here.  I will be in the 2% of my entering class that doesn't graduate.  How could they have been so stupid as to choose me?

My first patient, he's on contact precautions.  He has MRSA.  It takes me five minutes to gown up to go into his room, my preceptor nearly twitching with impatience at my ineptitude.  I find his pulse, and press down to start to count.  His hand jerks, his face grimaces in pain, and I realize that I've found his pulse on the wrist of the hand that has a fresh IV.  I want to cry, I feel so bad.  He offers me his other arm, and I take the pulse on his left wrist, awkwardly leaning over the bed.  I dig for my watch underneath my disposable protective gown, start to count, and give myself a talking-to.

This isn't about you right now.  You are going to fuck up.  You are going to fuck up a lot.  You need to get over it.  Look, he's already over it.  Get ahold of yourself.

And it's true, he is.  I take his vitals, and we talk about the operation he's scheduled for the next day.  He tells me about his fifteen-year-old grandson that called him just minutes ago to ask him to tell Nana, his wife, to make sure to drive safely home from the hospital because it was storming.  I ask him if he needs anything, make sure his call bell is within reach, and I tell him to get a good sleep because he has a big day tomorrow.  I fumble taking off my gown and gloves before I leave his room, and I idly wonder if I'll come down with MRSA from my first real patient.  I wipe my stethoscope extra carefully with the caustic bleach wipes provided outside his room.

It's 11 PM.  I feel like I've been awake for a month.

I go home, and climb in the bath.

Clinical is over.  Until next week.