First week of CT

My first week of CT is over!! Thank God! It was a very long and stressful week. I went to school all day then work all night, plus extra hours because one of the girls was sick this week. The classroom part of CT is not fun at all. The teacher goes really fast and we had 2 quizzes the first day of class and 2 quizzes and a test on the second day. I'm not a slow learner and I don't consider myself to be a dumb person but I can't keep up with that lady. She assumes we already know everything so she just flies through it. Whatever though. As for the clinical part, I LOVE IT!! They are already letting me scan patients and I'm actually getting the hang of it. The two techs I'm working with let me do everything, they don't push me out of the way and take over so that's really nice. They even let me start an IV by myself today and they weren't even in the room so I think they were a tab bit impressed. But since they grade me, I'm kissing tail all semester. Sometimes you gotta be the one to jump up and clean the room and help patients to the bathroom if you want a good grade. I'm OK with that though because I love the patients and CT is sooo interesting! I love radiology! I'm so glad it's Friday though!! Kyle moves into his new apartment tomorrow, yay! I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Home at last

My Mom was finally able to come home from the hospital today. She still has a little bit of fluid in her lungs but that will go away with time. We are ALL so glad we don't have to spend another day at that hospital. Now everybody has to catch up on some much needed sleep. One thing I did learn very quickly is that it is a completely different experience when you are at a hospital working verses when you or a loved one are there as a patient. That may be one of the reasons this was allowed to happen, to show me how to care for my patients even more than I did before. Now I have been in their shoes and I know how frustrating it can be when you want answers and the staff seem to be moving in slow motion. I feel like I learned a lot and I am so glad my Mom is home where she can finish recovering.

In wedding news, Kyle and I had our outdoor engagement pictures taken last Friday night so hopefully we can post a link so everyone can see them soon.

I have clinical orientation tomorrow and start classes on Monday. I'm so ready to get this school thing over with. I hope everyone else has a great week!

Not such a hott weekend

Well this weekend was nothing like we had planned for. My Mom went to the ER Friday morning because she was vomiting, had lower back pain, fever of 102, bad headache, bright red face and hands, basically just miserable. At first they thought she had meningitis so they wanted to immediately do a spinal tap and made her and my Dad wear masks. I thought that was a little extreme but they got some lab work back before they did the spinal tap and realized it wasn't meningitis, they diagnosed her with a severe kidney infection. So the ER doc told her he would give her some antibiotics and send her home. Well after 3 hours and her symptoms were getting worse, they realized they were wrong and that she needed immediate help. So they sent her to a room on the floor where she just got worse. Her pulse was 130 all day Friday and her standing BP was 80/50 and the nurses were understandably very concerned. So finally about 7pm Friday, she was sent to the ICU. They called in an infectious disease Doctor who came in and within 10 minutes diagnosed her with Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS). They sent out some lab work that will take about a week to come back and that will help them know exactly how she got TSS. They were pumping her full of fluids because she was so dehydrated and giving her so many antibiotics that she began to swell and fluid was going into her lungs. So she has gotten no sleep in 3 days now and is pretty miserable. All of her veins are collapsing so they are going to put a picc line in tomorrow (they don't do them on weekends). She has been in ICU since Friday night and she is just now sitting up and having somewhat of an appetite. They think she will be in ICU again tonight and hopefully get in a room on the floor tomorrow. So hopefully in a few days she'll be well enough to come home. They have limited her visitors mostly because she doesn't feel like company and just has so much going on right now, she just wants to see family. So we are all tired and praying for her to feel better soon. I hate leaving her by herself in ICU but she needed some rest so we came home for a few hours. I'll post another update later.

Wedding stuff!!

My Mom and I took a road trip today out to Raeford, I'm still not exactly sure where we were, haha. But anyways, we met with the lady who is going to make our cake. I went in knowing exactly what I wanted, expecting her to have to adjust some things but she could totally do everything I asked for and was really super nice and I think she is going to do a great job. I've seen and tasted her work before and it was awesome so I'm pretty excited. The cake is a little bigger than I initially wanted just because I'm a plain Jane who doesn't like big-extravagant-draw attention to myself stuff. But I have way too big of a family so we have to invite almost 300 hundred people, and I seriously hope only like 200 come but it's all good. The cake is going to be B-E-A-U-TIFUL!! And her price is less than half of what I was quoted at several places in Raleigh. YAY! Plus we looked at some decorations for the church and I pretty much picked out what I wanted and it's not going to cost nearly as much as we anticipated which is great. We are going with more candles and less flowers since flowers are pretty much a rip-off. We also found some cool centerpieces (only like $7 a piece) for our reception tables so we are so excited and got tons of stress off our shoulders today. I hope everyone else is having a great week. I have just a few more days until school starts back so I'm enjoying those days and relaxing!!

Me...

I'm a... student
Someday, I want... to take a cross country road trip
There are... many things I've screwed up in life
I can't stand... apathy
I wish... I could speak Spanish fluently
I don't know... why my Grandma got cancer
I want... to live a long life
When I see... hurting people I am sad
I need... to slow down and enjoy life
I love... Kyle
I hate... when I'm wrong
Why can't... there be immediate justice
I wonder... how people live without the hope I have found
I'm sad... when I think about leaving my family
I'm happy... when I think about marrying Kyle
I don't need... lots of money
I can't... do calculus
I believe... I will be walking streets of gold one day
If I could, I would... have taken a nap today

CT/MRI

This week has been very busy so far. I've been working full-time hours this week so I've had very little time to do anything important. But I had my CT/MRI orientation today. I really like the teachers and there are two people in the program who I was in x-ray school with so that's cool. It's going to be very hard and very stressful because we only have 20 weeks to learn everything for CT and 20 weeks for MRI. It doesn't sound that hard to most of you I'm sure but you don't just push a button, you have to know EVERYTHING! The different machines, how they work, how they affect the body, the different contrast agents, how they affect the body, how to position the patients, how much radiation to use, how to read the images, and so on. Anyways, it's quite stressful to learn all of that in 20 weeks when I had 2 years to learn x-ray. But my clinicals site is in Dunn at Betsy Johnson Regional Hospital. I don't have a lot of good things to say about that hospital, but the radiology department is stellar. I had x-ray clinicals there my first year and they have an excellent department manager and I already know the CT and MRI techs who will be training me so I'm very excited. I've been away from the whole ER scene for a while now so I'm going to have to get used to the bleeding, broken patients on backboards again. So that should be fun. I just want to get through CT so I can move onto MRI, which is the area I hope to work in. Well that's all for now, have a great weekend!

Update

I'm pretty much enjoying my last summer break ever! I've stayed pretty busy though with work and wedding planning. I'm still working part time but have a couple 40-hour weeks coming up. I did get a raise at work though, my supervisor called me Saturday while I was at the office and she said the doctor agreed to the raise which goes into effect immediately!! I was so excited, I actually get a little bit of respect now from everybody since I'm officially Registered. They even got me a new name tag that says Lindsey Simmons RT (R). You guys have no idea how special that makes me feel, haha. Plus when the PA's ask me if I see anything on an x-ray, I feel pretty important then when I can point things out to them. I love my job, it's tons of fun. Except when you have to x-ray a kid like I did last night who was screaming in my face and ear, kicking and was just quite uncooperative, (and it's 20 minutes after closing time) then you just want to quit. :)

In other news, Kyle and I went by and looked at our new apartment today. The one Kyle had reserved didn't work out because the lady decided she wanted to stay. So we actually got a bigger apartment for the same price, yay! It's not huge but it's very close to my parents, church and work so it works out great! We're both excited about that, we can start moving Kyle's stuff in on July 28th.

Wedding plans are going well too. My Mom contacted a lady who will probably be doing the cake for us. She did two of my cousins' cakes and they were delicious. She was going to charge us like a third of what the Raleigh folks were charging so I'm very excited about that. We have a limo reserved, I'm looking into dj's and decorations and things like that now too. Kyle and I have been reading some very good books that are supposed to help you prepare for marriage. I have to say they have all been wonderful so far and I think we have both learned a LOT!! I'm sure that you can never fully prepare for such a life-changing event but we are doing our best with lots of advice and counsel from others. We're not done yet but here's a list we have started:

"For Women Only" - Shaunti Feldhahn
"For Men Only" - Jeff and Shaunti Feldhahn
"Love Life for Every Married Couple" - Ed Wheat, M.D.
"Preparing for Marriage" - Dennis Rainey
"Discovering God's Way of Handling Money" - Crown Financial Ministries
"The Complete Financial Guide for Young Couples" - Larry Burkett
"Intended for Pleasure" - Ed and Gaye Wheat

I know there are tons more out there, so if you have any suggestions for other books we should read, let us know!! I would strongly suggest any of the above books to married and single people, they are great!

I hope everyone is having a great week!! I'm so excited for Brian and Kristen, tomorrow is the BIG day!! :) I can't wait to see pictures!