refreshing.

today was very refreshing! a lot of my time is spent looking up disease processes, lab values, nutrition therapy guidelines, etc, basically because i don't know anything. not that im not intelligent, but we didn't learn that in school. the more and more this goes on, the more i realize how pretty useless school actually is. sure we learned a lot...but its all sugar-coated and not really practical to the real world. anyways, i saw one patient with pancreatitis this morning (inflammation of the pancreas, usually due to alcoholism). they aren't able to metabolize fats properly and eating anything usually is really painful. then i saw a sweet lady this afternoon with stage 5 chronic renal failure about to go on dialysis soon. she had a whole list of serious other problems too. when her doctors told her about her renal diet, they just told her to watch her sodium and potassium intake, nothing else!! they didn't give her the resources to do this or why she should. she also had to watch her protein, phosphorus and vitamin K intake, none of which she was educated about! she started crying when we were talking to her about how overwhelmed and scared she was. i brought back some materials for her and went over them and she was really thankful. i actually felt like i HELPED someone today and did my job. i LOVE the RD im with now, she knows everything and is GREAT with helping us learn.

i start in the ICU and do tube feedings on monday so im excited to start that. i am really interested in becoming a certified nutrition support specialist that specializes in tube and IV feedings. i think it would be really interesting. im babysitting for finn and ollie on saturday and am really excited for that!