it all comes down to this

i'm starting my senior practicum on tuesday. crazy. it's hard to describe - these last 4 years have flown by, yet it feels like i've been in school forever. and i can't believe that i've made it to my final, senior practicum. i'm excited. i'm scared. i'm ready to do this. sometimes i feel like i don't know anything, sometimes i feel like i've learned so much my head is really going to explode. over these last few weeks i've been reviewing my notes and practicing in the skills lab to refresh my mind about anatomy and illnesses and medications and skills that i haven't done in months, even years. i only gave one IV medication during my whole 4th year, so when i went to practice reconstituting meds (adding a fluid to a powdered med, so it can go in an IV) in the lab, i thought i had forgotten everything. but it all came back to me so quickly, because i had done this everyday when i was at the children's hospital in 3rd year (it also helped that i ended up overdosing Jake, the dummy, with antibiotics. i learned from my mistake - i won't do that in practice).

yesterday was dedicated to reviewing different types of drugs that are commonly used on my wards. i was supposed to review "antihypertensives". okay, that's a huge class of drugs for lowering blood pressure - there's beta-blockers and ACE inhibitors and calcium channel blockers and other types that you probably don't really care about either. this was stuff we learned in geriatrics - 2 years ago. and slowly, it all came back to me.

so, i'm not really too worried about tuesday. i'll find out what i don't know, but should have reviewed, and then i'll go home and review it.

due to the confidential nature of my career, i'm not going to have a lot of stories to share with you about my practicum. but i'll try to keep you posted on how i'm surviving...