day one for real.

today was my first real clinical day at the karmanos institute for cancer and it was of course, overwhelming. no other words really to describe it. my preceptor has been an oncology RD for 35 years which is a little intimidating, but she was great and very patient with me today. i was almost in tears this afternoon because i felt really stupid and that like i knew nothing of what i needed to know. im suuuuper scared to talk to patients too. these floors are definatley have a different air to them. these patients are super super sick and bascially need to be pumped full of whatever food they can tolerate. a lot of the patients we saw today had very advanced cancer or stem cell transplants. i didn't talk to any patients today, but i did write a progress note for a very sick patient with advanced cancer. my preceptor, Ladonna, taught me how to enter them into the EMR and how to put in diet orders and all that. super confusing, but im learning a lot.

weird fact of the day that i learned...there are 2 types of stem cell transplants, one where your original stem cells are frozen and given back to a patient after high doses of chemo (autologous), and one where a patient recieves stem cells from another individual (allogenic). well, if you have an allogenic transplant, you have TWO types of DNA in your body! your own in your blood, and the donor's DNA in your bone marrow!! weird huh?

so anyways, thats what i did today. nothing too exciting, just a lot of information being shoved into my brain. day two update tomorrow...say a prayer for me!!