Life According To Lydia: Life Lately

I didn't do a lot of posting in the past week because I've been a little under the weather. I wound up having a 'lovely' sinus infection that led to laryngitis, a double ear infection, a shot in my hip, and a very intrusive (but thankfully negative) strep test at the doctors office). Since I didn't feel like leaving my bed much last week, let alone blogging, I thought I would update my followers a little today on what's been going on.

Last week was my "vacation" from school. It was my break for a few days between RT 201 and RT 301. I DEFINITELY needed a break after that hussy of a horrid teacher I had for my 201 class! You better believe that I wrote one hell of a review about her too! (I looked foward to writing that review the entire semester I had to suffer through her class!) Unfortunately though, I spent my entire vacation sick, so that doesn't really count as a break in my book! As of tonight though, I am finally feeling a little bit better. I am also getting my voice back as well and coughing much less so that's also a great thing! (For a few days there I ranged from having no voice, to sounding like an 80yr old man)

Last Friday I finally was able to go in to the cardiologist for my Coronary CTA test for my heart. The whole thing was a royal nightmare because my heartrate would NOT cooperate whatsoever. What should have been a 30 minute test took over 4 hours! The nurse stuck me 4 times in an attempt to land an IV stick (my veins roll). I am still bruised all over my arms and look like an IV drug user at the moment.;) In addition to the heart medicine I normally take, they also gave me 2 really strong pills to lower my heartrate.What can I say, heart is stubborn and wouldn't budge! They wound up giving me a total of 9 IV/med flushes (yes, 9) in an attempt to get it to slow down that way. (The maximum dose the average person gets via IV for that is 3 IV flushes...my heart is anything but normal apparently- 9IV flushes later it STILL wouldn't slow down enough!) For reference, I have some pretty significant heart issues, which is why the test was soo important in determining if they need to do surgery soon or if it can wait. My heart rate needed to be 62 beats per minute or lower for an accurate test so that the pictures would show any kind of blood clot/etc in my heart. If your heartrate is faster than that, the machine can miss some problems. To make a long story short, after 4 hours - I knew my sweet nurse's entire life story (she monitored me the entire time), and they still were unable to get my heartrate below the 80's range (after TONS of meds) so they get my doctors approval and went ahead with the test anways. I am still waiting for the results. Hopefully I will know soon if I need surgery or not, and hopefully they were still able to get what they needed out of that test. Please pray for good news! I definitely do NOT want to deal with an open heart surgery right now (that's a possibility). Anways, enough of the rough stuff,...onto the good news:

This week I started my RT301 program on Monday. The teacher for this course is awesome so far thankfully! I'm thinking it will be a much better semester than the last one was! On Tuesday (yesterday) I started my first ICU clinical rotation (I did my floor rotation at the hospital during RT 201). I love the ICU so far! It's an entierly different atmosphere and you get to see and learn soo many new things! I love working with the patients and trying to help them. I got to extubate my first patient, learn more about the ventilators, do closed suctioning & treatments, and help with the art. lines, etc all on my first day in the ICU. We definitely stay busy down there! It was soo much fun, and it was great because I was already familiar with the hopsital and a lot of the staff. I definitely love it there and can not wait to graduate and get lisenced soon!

Here are a few amusing pictures from the past week:

Me & Kojak! He's the coolest little guy ever!

I spent all day Friday hooked up to this monitor. My uncooperative heartrate never would drop below the 80's for that test! Ugg! Not only am I stubborn, so is my heart apparently...

I love my sweet boyfriend. :) Jack and I tried to get a cute picture of us with Ranger last night...our attempts were fuitle seeing that Ranger is now a crazy 14 week old Aussie puppy haha!