Hellooo *echoechoecho*

Remember me? I don't post around here much anymore. I would make excuses that I haven't had much interesting or exciting news to report, but as evidenced by past blog posts, I seem to have been quite capable of posting about completely irrelevant or boring topics in the past.

Maybe I'm a little burned out on writing about nursing topics, or about my patients. There's something so private and intimate about the situations that I'm sharing with my patients, they're experiencing such painful, terrifying, or life-altering experiences, that it often feels like a betrayal or even just a belittling act to write about them in my blog. They own their illnesses and their experiences, its not really mine to share with anyone. And of course we are all intimately familiar with HIPAA...I would always change any revealing details of my patients and most of the time anyone I write about is a composite of several patients. But it is often those small, identifying details about someone or their story that makes the story special, or interesting, and to change those details simply for the point of sharing the story takes something away from it. Of course I realize nursey blogging can also be about the nursing experience, and being a nurse, rather than the patients' stories, but it is also pretty hard to separate the two...one experience is defined by the other's, and vice versa.

So...on to the nursing content...I'm taking a CCRN study course this spring so I can take the exam in early summer. I'm not terribly excited about the study course except that I get paid for some of the hours and it is essentially the external motivation that I need to make myself study to take the exam.

Tonight I'm off work but I'm playing nurse to a sick little dachshund...she seems to be suffering from some kind of GI upset...frequent bouts of emesis and liquid stool through the day today. In laymans' terms, I'm discovering puddles of poo and puke in various corners of my home, and now both the kitchen and the bathroom rugs are in the laundry. But our favorite Auntie to the doggies delivered us some dinner, so I wouldn't have to leave the sick puppy alone, and I cooked up some extra bland chicken and rice dinner for her. She seems to be tolerating the dinner so far...and sleeping comfortably on the couch.