M*A*S*H* Relay

It's 9:30pm and I am completely exhausted...like wiped out. Why? I have absolutely no idea. I did NOTHING today at work. I had two patients, one of which I saw for a span of 5min before she was discharged to go home. Right now, I'm mainly shadowing since I really don't know what the heck I'm doing. I spent about an hour watching my preceptor trying to help a woman breastfeed. Wtf? I'm supposed to be helping women breastfeed? How the hell am I gonna do that? I've never had kids and this is NOT my specialty area.... oh boy. I'm a med-surg nurse, not a post partum labor & delivery nurse! Before I got here, I was really hoping they would put me in med-surg... that's what I know. But I guess being the baby Ensign and being a FEMALE, they stuck me with the moms and babies. Amy! I need your help! Being on this unit is soooo different from what I'm used to. Aside from the patient population, just one small example... I used to spend about 15min in the supply room looking for the right kind of fluids for my patient because there would be about 20 different kinds to choose from. Normal Saline, D5 and 1/2, Lactated Ringers, .45 NS, on and on. Well, now I only have 2 to choose from and most patients aren't even hooked to an IV. This is going to be one (hopefully just one before I can switch) boring year. Believe it or not, we're one of the busier units in the hospitals because when Marines aren't busy breaking bones and making orthopedic injuries, they are making babies... haha go figure.

Anywho when it was about 10:45, I got changed into my PT gear and went down to the field. For the last day of nurses' week (yay my very first nurses week!!), there was a MASH relay race. I volunteered to do the race with my unit. There's a picture of the race but I can only access it from work so I'll have to save it and post it later. The first station was a "grenade toss" aka throwing a grenade waterballoon and having a team member catch a whole one in a bucket. I got to catch the grenade (and got my shoe soaked) and then I had to do the next station which was a low crawl. Then the next person had to do an "ammo" carry, which was only 2 gallons heavy. Then we had to answer 5 trivia questions and if we got it wrong we had to do 10 push-ups or jumping jacks. When the team answered all 5 questions (or got to 50 pushups lol) the next person had to do a wheelchair race to the next station. After that, the team had to do a litter carry, which is carrying a heavy ass mannequin on a stretcher and running on the track to the next person where we had to splint a person's leg using a board and toilet paper. The last part after that was picking the stretcher back up and running to the finish line. That darn thing was heavier and harder than I anticipated. I felt sooo out of shape. Well, my teammates were hoping to just finish the race but out of 9 teams, we got 3rd place!!!! Woo hooo.



^ litter carry. Lucky we didn't have to wear full gear like that. We got to wear shorts and a T shirt. hehe.

Of course, 1st place was won by the "B52" team which were corpsman from area 52 clinic who did it in their t-shirt with camis, boots and all. They were mocho big bulky guys. They finished in 3min something seconds. I wish I had pictures but hopefully they will post the professional pictures and I can get them then.

Anywho, after that was a BBQ where we got to have burgers and hotdogs. I had both. Real healthy! Then we had to go back to work.... I did absolutely nothing the rest of the day except walk around looking for something to keep myself occupied and watch episodes of 16 and pregnant on MTV. LOL. What a day and yet I'm still exhausted as hell. Tomorrow, I'm bringing a book and PT clothes to exercise. I hope we aren't swamped tomorrow.


*EDIT*

The litter carry picture is cut off but I'm too noob to figure out how to fix it so just click on it to see the full pic. If you are nerdy... I mean expert and cool enough to know how to fix it, please enlighten this "stupid Ensign" =P

Course Layout: