It's my first day of preceptorship and I am SO excited. I didn't sleep well last night because I was thinking of today's events. I poured the last little bit of cereal into my bowl for breakfast and gathered my things along with a nutrition bar for a snack. I knew today was going to be a long day, 7am to 7pm. But, I didn't really realize how long. Have you ever thought about how much food you actually eat in a twelve hour period? Yeah, me neither.
So, I get to the hospital. By the way, I'm working on the postpartum unit. Nothing really interesting, just a safe place with not too many coodies for a pregger to catch. My precep let's me know that I will pretty much be following her around to learn the routine and observe the workings of the unit. That sounded pretty good to me! So we start our rounds to begin shift assessments of our patients. Room #1 not too bad, just a patient 26weeks term with abdominal problems. Then comes room #2, a post c-section patient.
The room is hot and the smell of flowers is so strong that I can hardly breathe. I am standing there while my precep chats it up with the patient. I have really low blood pressure when I am pregnant. So as I am standing there I'm changing positions and bending my legs to keep the blood flowing. This is not working to well because I am starting to feel dizzy. At this point I have to start squatting to try and get blood running back up to my brain. I know my precep was thinking "What in the world is this crazy student doing"? She begins to pull back the abdominal bandage covering the c-section incision and I start sweating at this point. I start telling myself, "What is wrong with you!! Get it together!! Do NOT pass out!! This is the postpartum unit for goodness sake." Ok, I had no choice but to look away. Now, if you know me, this is NOT like me. I am a blood and gore kind of gal. I want to be right in the middle of the excitement. This was a tiny little incision. What in the world is wrong with me??!! My precep then asks me to check the patient's lower extremities for pedal pulses and edema, so I pulled back the covers to do as she asked. No sooner than I touched her foot, my ears started ringing, my mouth started watering....yep you know where this is going. I walked out of the room without saying a word and found myself hunkered on the floor at the nurses station. My precep now had another patient to take care of....me. How embarrassing! She sat me next to a fan and fed me crackers and juice as I was apologizing profusely.
I regained my composure and off we went to finish our assessments. Rm# 3, a vag delivery. Not too bad, right? We have to assess everything and I'm good up until the point that the nurse goes to pull back her undies. Here we go again. I start sweating. I can feel the color leave my face and my tummy starts to rumble. Thankfully I kept it together until we left the room and then quickly stated that I need to run to the restroom and would be right back. I made it to the bathroom and leaned over the sink while splashing cold water on my face. "Now this is absolutely ridiculous Valerie. Pull it together and keep it together!! What is wrong with you!!?" I returned to the nurse's station and pulled out my ONE snack that I brought for the day and scarfed it down. Great, I had already downed my ONE snack and it was before nine o'clock in the morning. Well, at least this made me feel much better and seemed to fix the "problems" I was having. Eleven o'clock finally rolled around and I was thinking, "Yippee, lunch time". I asked my preceptor if she wanted me to take lunch while she was gone picking up lunch for herself and other faculty members. Her reply was "No. Just wait until after I get back and then you can go sometime after that". Are you kidding me? I barely had any breakfast, almost passed out twice, ate my ONE snack already, and your not going to let me go to lunch yet? You're probably thinking...."Ok Val, quit being so dramatic" but have you ever been pregnant before? Well let me explain. You find yourself starving, so you eat. The problem comes when you get three bites in your belly and all of a sudden your stuffed because the baby has your stomach squashed down to the size of a butter bean. Then thirty minutes to an hour later, your starving again. Of course I wasn't thinking about this this morning when I left the house with ONE snack to last me for 12 hours. I eventually did have a fabulous salad for lunch. It could have been so good because I was SO hungry.
Lunch however was around twelve and this left me with seven more hours to get through. Thankfully we got pretty busy and I didn't think about food until we got slow again around three. I made the statement, "I sure could eat some chocolate", to one of the nurses and she decided she was going to hook me up with some. One of Blinn's professors had brought three goody bags to the faculty on the floor earlier that morning. They were full of chocolate and candy and were put in the staff lounge. So we trotted down to the lounge as she was telling me about all the goodies in the bag. My mouth was watering at the thought of a little bitty snickers bar. We punched in the code and entered the room only to find the ENTIRE stash already eaten. Come on now!!! Can I catch a break!! Chocolate....Anyone....Please......I need a sugar rush. I think the nurse could see the disappointment in my eyes because she became more determined to get me some chocolate. She told me that one of the other nurses had a secret stash of candy. I thought to myself, "It must not be too secret if YOU know about it, but I'm up for checking it out". I know, you're thinking Val...where are your morals. Now look....I REALLY needed it more than her at this point...LOL Lord please forgive me :-) So we located the stash and I had a few moments of chocolate tasting bliss. Seven o'clock pm finally rolled around four hours later and I came home to the best diner ever made by my fantabulous hubbie.
The moral of the story is.....TWELVE hours is a LONG dang time for a pregnant lady to work without enough food. Needless to say, Thursday I will be toting and extra bag to work just for my food.
