Head to Toe Check-offs

This morning I had to attend clinical class to do a head-to-toe check off (or cephalocaudal to be exact) which means head to tail. This means that I had to assess someone in my class...taking their vitals signs (temperature, respiration's, blood pressure, O2 stats, and pain scale). I am fine with most of these but hearing that first BP sound (the systolic sound) is VERY difficult for me. I did okay as the teacher had a double stethoscope that we were using so she could listen too. I was only a few points off of her assessment of it so she said it was ok. Then we had to look and the head face and see if we notice anything, listen to breath sounds, check capillary refill, check radial and pedal pulses (on hands and feet), listen and palpitate the stomach, ask about bowel/urinary troubles, test hands and feet strength...and a few more things. IT WAS SOO NERVE WRACKING!! I knew what to do but when you are in a stressful situation you stop breathing and then you don't think properly!! AGHH!! I know that we couldn't "fail" this but being the perfectionist that I am I wanted to be perfect which of course I wasn't! I am thankful that intro to nursing professors are so gracious and willing to hold our hands through all of this! We have only had this class 3 times and we just really learned this stuff last week! So to be tested on it this week...oy vey.

And then to top all of this off it was supposed to snow this afternoon but low and behold it started at 9 AM instead of 2 PM like the weather people said! I took quite some time getting home from school but I made it fine. There is a really steep hill in my apartment complex that I have to go up in order to get to my apt and as I was going up I noticed someone in an SUV struggling to get up the hill. I looked to see that the other direction wasn't being used and I moved over and cruised right up the hill. I thought about waving as I passed her but I thought it might be rude so I didn't...

Now...I am going to take a nap because I was up until almost midnight doing homework and practicing taking blood pressures on myself (pretty awesome huh that I could do it!) and I needed to get up at 5:45 to get ready for school. The one nice thing today was that it only took 15 minutes to get the 12 miles from my place to school. Most mornings if I leave after 7:15 it takes me at least 30 minutes to get there!

Okay I am really going to take a nap now!!!