I have had many new experiences since moving to the Bay Area and starting school again. Some of them have been fun like going to baseball games at Giants' stadium and ice skating at the Yerba Buena Center. Some have been challenging like driving the carpool from SF to San Rafael and learning to get up and leave my apartment well before dawn on clinical days.
And some have been.... unexpected.
Like shopping around town for what I had to eventually describe as "cute, orthopaedic shoes." I am not yet used to standing up for hours and hours and hours on clinical days. And the days are only going to get longer. So come Friday night, my feetsies are pretty disgusted with me and ready to have a bath and put themselves up for awhile. But I would really, really like to continue to have some semblance of a social life. And I really, really don't want to continue to go out on Friday or Saturday nights looking adorable from the ankles up but with sneakers on because I just can't bear to shove my poor aching feet in anything else. I dug out the Dansko's that a friend had originally bought for herself and gave to me and I think they may just work. They're cute... ish. But I'm still on the lookout for more pretty, orthopaedic shoes.
Another unexpected occurrence has been clinical lab days. I mean, I knew that we would be practicing skills and assessments on each other. Listening to heart sounds, feeling up each others' ribcages, asking about bowel movements-- I was sort of prepared for all of this. But then yesterday I found myself lying back on an examination table (fully clothed) holding a prosthetic vagina to my area so that my classmate could insert a foley catheter into it. You know-- so it would feel more like a "real" situation and he could remember where the drapes and sterile field were supposed to go and such.
As my clinical instructor reminded my classmate to be sure and lube the tip generously, I thought to myself "This is why I'm going to nursing school."
