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emmydecker
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Name: Emily
Birthday: 9/18/1985
Gender: Female
Interests: God is the center of my life, first and foremost. He is the most important thing to me... so if you want to know a little about me, get to know Him first.
hmmm... Other than that, I love talking to people, playing games, hanging out, etc. I enjoy learning about medically related things, literature and history. I love to read... and to sleep :-) Unfortunately, don't have much time for either... hehe.
Expertise: 3/4 RN :-)
Occupation: Student
Industry: Medical
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  emmydecker
Yahoo:  emmydecker
Member Since:
7/7/2004
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| Well, after a rather long hiatus here I am! I should be studying,
actually, but I've decided to do this instead. I am afterall on
the only break I will get for the next few years. I graduated
this December and when I say graduated, I mean I simply walked out of
my last exam and I was done. The actual ceremony (which is in
fact just that: ceremonial) will be in May along with the rest of my
class, but as far as courses, gpas and stress goes I'm done 
I love that smiley. I have yet to take the NCLEX (the nursing
board licensing exam) and will do so as soon as I get back to the
States. So in a sense I don't really feel done yet.
In other big news: I have a job! I will be working as an RN (if I
pass the boards-- please pray for me!) in the Medical Intensive Care
Unit at the Cleveland Clinic. It's where I did my preceptorship
this past semester, so it may sound familiar to you loyal
readers. I'll be working in the same unit, which is nice because
I know the floor and most of the nurses. Granted I know the night
nurses the best, but hey, I can get to know the other ones as
well. I will be working day-night rotation which means two weeks
of day shift (7am-7:30pm) and then two weeks of night shift
(7pm-7:30am) and the cycle continues. My first day is February
5th... it's so soon! I get back to the States on the 28th, so I
have a few days to drive back up to Cleveland from my grandparents, get
acclimated to the States and begin the transition from 17 years of
schooling to "real life." The more I think about it, the more
anxious I become, but I know God has brought me this far and He'll help
me through the rest.
Right now I'm in the south of Turkey hanging out with the family.
We were up in Istanbul last week (which was just so wonderful) and now
we're back on the outskirts of a village with all the little
goats. It's been nice to relax and play games and watch movies
but now, since my older brother left yesterday morning, I need to sit
down and study for the boards. How do I cram 4 years worth of
material into two weeks is beyond me, but I have been going over
practice questions and such since September, so that is helpful.
Well, I will get off and do some practice questions now since I like doing that better than reading the textbooks. 
I'm enjoying catching up on blogs. I cannot even describe to you
the last few months of the semester. I have never been that
stressed in all my life (and get stressed easily). There were
times I went 60 hours of being awake with only 5 cummulative hours of
sleep in those 60 hours. It is a sheer testimony to God's grace
that everything was finished and here I am today  Well, cheerio and I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful day.
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| It's almost 4:30 in the morning and I am finished with my school
writing for the night. I worked in the MICU last night and so
slept from 8:30am-3pm today and am still up. I work tomorrow
night, which is why I am still on this night-shift sleep
schedule. I think I'm gonna go sleep now though, it has been a
tiring week and it's taking its toll on me. I know I keep saying
this, but it's true: I have never been so overwhelmed in all my
life. I don't think I've ever had this much work to do
either. However, on a hopeful note, I was reminded tonight by God
that He has brought me thus far and won't He carry me through to the
end? All of a sudden I had all these flashbacks of certain scenes
from high school and the past 3+ years and He showed me that He brought
me through those hard times. He will get me through the next few
weeks and months.
I haven't heard anything about the job... but then again I don't feel
ready to graduate, so I guess that's ok for now. I want to be
done with school, (I've been in school straight since January, I think
it's ok to feel this way at the moment). At the same time, I
don't want to be done because that means I'll be on my own as a real
nurse with huge responsibilities caring for the sick and dying- and
that scares me. I am torn. I do not feel ready. The
Lord knows best and He will get me through this, of this I have no
doubt. It's just a little frightening right now. I guess I
just don't have the energy right now to even think about
finishing. I'm thinking that I will just have to take one day at
a time till December. Otherwise, I might need to invest in some
paperbags to breathe into once in awhile
Does anyone else out there have trouble breathing at times when they're
stressed? I seriously can't breathe and have heaviness on my
chest quite frequently. Is this ok? Ah well, I'm still
alive and will just keep taking deep breaths 
Well, diplopia is setting in, and so it is my cue to retire to my
beckoning bed. I think I'll be up "early" (as in noon) to finish
writing this paper, then I have a meeting, then back to the hospital
for another night shift! I have over 200 hours so far... but it's
feeling like I'll never get the 336. Oh well, somehow they'll add
up and when that day comes, I will be much relieved =) I'm just
remembering Psalm 77 and how He has helped me in the past and so He
will help in the future. Now I'm officially going to bed.
Good night all!
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| Yesterday is a day marked in history for me. I applied to my
first real nursing job. Let's just say I'm scared and this is it:
it's real life. Is this what growing up is about? I
might be a nurse in a few short months and the thought of that is
slightly overwhelming, if not scary. But as many of people have
told me, it's supposed to be exciting as well, so I guess I'll get
excited over it I just don't feel ready yet. It seems
so much farther away than it ever has because I have so much to do
before now and December/January. I honestly don't think I've ever
felt this overwhelmed in all my life. I'm sure after this
semester is I'll be more excited for this new phase in my life
In other news, I'm still working night shift usually three times a
week, putting in almost 40 hours a week at the hospital, and then going
to school and working on homework from this semester and last semester
(oops!), I'm still working at the nursing school (during the day
though! woohoo!), planning and general stuff for chi alpha, studying
for the nursing board exam and then trying to prepare for "real
life." So that's my life in a nutshell. As I said before,
I'm extremely overwhelmed, but that's where God enters the
picture. He really is my only rock and stronghold. So I
keep getting up each day (and night as the case may be) and trusting
Him. I'm in good hands.
That's all for now, I'm gonna get back to studying... have a great evening everyone.
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| Adding to the morbidity of my writing... the day after I posted my last
entry, I had to do CPR for the first time on a patient in the
hospital. He began coding (going into cardiac arrest) at 0640,
right at change of shift, and all I could do was watch. He wasn't
my patient and I really did not know where to find the defibrilator or
the epi or amiodarone, so I just watched, since that is what my
preceptor told me to do. The CTA and another male nurse started
doing chest compressions on the guy. They then asked me if I had
ever done CPR (chest compressions in this case, since the respiratory
therapist was bagging the guy) and I said "no..." so they told me to
get some gloves on and start.--I can't describe it to you. I know
probably by the end of my career I'll have done this several times and
will have gotten over it this feeling, but right now it's still
weighing on me. It didn't even seem real, like it was another
scenario we practice during CPR class. The two guys who had been
doing CPR before had already broken the guy's ribs, so at least I
didn't have to worry about that. I was pushing as hard as I could
on the patient while the doctor was cutting into his skin to put in
chest tubes. Blood was coming out of the patient's nose, this
chest, fluid was oozing out from every orifice. I have never seen
anyone look so ghastly, to be quite honest. I wasn't tall enough
for the bed, so I was doing the compressions literally on my tiptoes,
(not good leverage, let me tell you) and soon I just let the CTA and
the male nurse take over. The patient didn't make it, but no one
really thought he would. They all told me to do CPR "just for the
experience." The docs were doing the code just in case he made it
with no real hope that he would. He was only 63. The
hardest part about this is seeing the family run up to the floor and
seeing them collapse and sob as all this is going on. It's hard to
describe the pain you see and the own pain you feel as you're watching
all this take place. I don't even know the patient's name and I
can't get his face out of my head. What's harder to get out of my
mind is seeing the wife's reaction to all of this. She was trying
so hard to be strong. I wanted to tell her it's ok to grieve, but
I think she knew that already.
As I was walking out of the hospital later on, I had to call someone
just to talk and process this- even though it was 7:30 in the
morning. So my dear younger brother was the receiver of my rather
depressing call. Rarely have I talked to someone so encouraging
as he was that day- so I just have to say that I am very blessed to
have as wonderful brothers as I do. I hadn't cried yet from
clinicals, even after seeing all this death, so I surprised when I
choked up while talking to Joel. I just think it's strange that I
am so shaken up by this and I don't even know his name.
It's hard to fight feelings of guilt when I leave the hospital.
I'm healthy, I can take care of myself and I'm not grieving at the
moment so it's hard to not feel as if I should be hurting right now
just because there are so many who are. As I mentioned in my
previous post, I hope I never become callous to this and I hope that I
will be able to empathize with and comfort the family even after I've
seen hundreds of these deaths. I'll only be able to with the
Lord's help though, that much is certain.
Well, I'm off to finish doing my laundry, write a paper and then see a
musical tonight. I work 4 out of the next 5 nights starting
tomorrow, so it's gonna be a little busy for awhile, but then I get
another almost full week off, so I'm not going to complain. Hope
all is well with you, God bless.
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| It's been a long while since I've updated... I suppose all I've done is
go to work at clinicals and sleep... that IS pretty much all I do
now. I have three 12.5 hour shifts a week- all at night shifts,
7p-7:30a, so my sleep schedule is not one of the regular senior college
student. The part I don't like is that I work different days each
week, so there is no consistent schedule. The other part I don't
like is that I now sleep during the day- when all my friends are
awake. I like to be around people and so this is a new experience
for me- I'm alone all the time! ach! It's a wonder I am
surviving... =P Other than that I absolutely love my
preceptorship. I love the MICU and the nurses and I am so blessed
with a wonderful preceptor. I really look forward to going to
clinical- which is... well, not normal for me So that's been good.
Clinicals have been really challenging mentally and emotionally.
I work in an ICU where most people come on the brink of death and then
die a few days after they get on the unit. The first night I was
there we had 4 people "expire" (that's the term that is used I think
it's horrible), including one of our patients. Most of the time
they withdraw support (take them off the ventilators and do not try to
attempt anything else "lifesaving") and the family is there while the
person passes, but sometimes it's fast and all of a sudden, they're
gone. I feel like I'm getting callous. I feel desensitized
already to this.
I took care of a patient for two shifts this week and felt like I
knew him- I knew what his tidal volume breathing was, his hemoglobin,
his white blood cell count, little things that no one else would know,
but I didn't know who he was as a person. I just feel like I
missed something because I took care of him for hours and hours and
never got to know him as a person. He died Friday night. We
had a different patient assignment that night, but I slipped into the
room to say good bye before his family came back from their
hotel. The secretary had paged them over the hospital system
because his rhythm was looking ominous and his passing would be
soon. The whole time I took care of him for those 25+ hours
earlier this week, I felt like he wouldn't have wanted this; he
wouldn't have wanted to be intubated, on a ventilator, sedated, needing
central lines, an A-line, and ten different medications and IV
drips. I felt like he was in pain and uncomfortable and I
honestly was hoping that they would withdraw, just so that he would be
out of his misery. But now that I think about it, I'm just
sad. I was there when he was admitted to the floor 3 weeks ago
and I watched the anesthesiologist intubate him and I held his hand and
told him that he was ok and to be calm... and then he was sedated and
on the ventilator ever since that day. He wasn't even my patient
until this past week, so I'm not sure why I'm so affected by this right
now. It just makes me sad how I take care of someone and
never get to know them and then they pass away.
It's just weird to think about death so much now. It really makes
you think about how you live your life because it most definitely can
be taken away in an instant. I know when I leave the floor in the
morning at the end of the shift, that I will never see some of those
patients again because they'll die during the day. It's just a
different way of living and it's made me really think about the future
and the urgency that I have to tell others about the Hope that is
within me. I hope I never become callous to death and never not
have compassion for someone and their family. It's hard when you
have never really "met" the person and only know them physiologically
but still care for them. Sometimes I feel like it's a waste, like
I wasted all that effort in cleaning them, suctioning out their mouths,
turning every 2 hours to prevent skin breakdown (breaking my aching
back in the process), giving meds, everything, and for what? They
die just a few days later. But it's not a waste and I can make an
impact on a person, even if they never know it- their family might be
touched by the care, who knows. It's just hard because sometimes
I feel like my efforts are in vain. So now I must remember to
have an attitude of compassion and perseverance and pray to prevent
callousness from taking over my fast desensitizing heart and to
remember to do everything in love, as Christ commanded us.
Well, that was longer and extremely more confusing than I expected- my
apologies for my lack of eloquence and stream of consciousness
ramblings. I'd be very impressed if you got through all that.
I'm off to bed, and then to sleep for as long as possible
because I work tomorrow night. I love having an excuse and an
actual need to sleep in
Oh, and fyi- Pepsi is a miracle drug. It gets me
through every night- it's so good for staying awake and giving me an
extra boost of highly concentrated sugar and energy. Ah, I love
it. Alrighty, that's all I have for now. Have a very good night!
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