Wow, I can't believe it's October already. That means that Halloween is just around the corner, steadily followed by Thanksgiving (yay! my favorite holiday), Christmas, and New Years (double yay! England here I come!). This string of holidays and time always seems to fly by so fast - but then again so do all of the months actually.

At this point about a month and a half of my program has gone by and I am still blown away by the magnitude of what they're letting us do. It was my first real day with patients yesterday in the surgical unit and MY LORD did I get a good exposure to the type of people they take care of. The first room the nurse took me into held this woman with a raging infection that had pretty much destroyed the greater part of her right leg. So sad, yet cool, and of course disgusting at the same time.

I mean, I expected to walk in and right away take vital signs on people and perform bed baths and help with bedpans and whatnot, but going straight to taking out catheters and IVs just blows my mind. It's great and so exciting and overwhelming (in a good, take me out my comfort zone, way). It's also a great wake-up call that regardless of how pointless I think some of my classes are or how boring the patho reading is, I really must learn that shit beyond the test and be able to put it into practice. And I know I already knew that, but seeing what these nurses do on a daily basis and the information they have to recall is such a great reinforcement for me to actually get my ass in gear for a change.

...and on that note, I'm off to do get some stuff done before I head to work. Procrastination NO MORE!