Florence Nightingale Museum, Old Operating Theatre, Journal #4

Well there have been TONS of things going on the last few days, we went to the Florence Nightingale Museum and got to see a lot of artifacts and really cool things about Flo. We also got to Tour a NHS hospital which was a very intriguing experience to say the least. Things are different over here, they still have bays instead of just single rooms and nurses have on avg 7 patients as opposed to 4-5 eek!
Today we went to the old operating theatre which is part of the old St Thomas hospital and it was a teaching operating room it was really amazing and outside of it in an attic area they had set up a museum which had really interesting medical instruments and things which I also found very interesting though not everyone might. We then went on the King Cholera walk which was pretty much just a tour talking about how cholera was spread and about the really bad living quarters and things like waste water being put into the Thames back in the day which makes all of us nursing majors cringe at the thought. And after that we went to a noodle bar called waggamammas for noodles! It is kinda like a mix of pei wei and Indian food I would think because they had a lot of dishes that had curry in them. But it was very good.

Story of the day: So after years of anticipation for some, the time has come, one week and one day from TODAY Maggie and her flatmates will be seeing…. Wait for it…. WICKED!!!... granted we had to go all over town, wait in long lines and pay more than we wanted to for the tickets but we have waited long enough. I have wanted to see this show FOREVER and it is time. Our student ID’s got shot down because they did not have an expiration date on them, thanks TCU, there go the 25 lb tickets, they don’t sell any half price face value because they are in such high demand, thanks for being so popular wicked. BUT we did not pay 60lbs for our tickets so YAY US!! So I shall be posting next Wednesday night about the greatness that is wicked, and tonight we will all be listening to the sound track to celebrate getting 6 tickets together for a show while we were here…. YAY!


Below are some pictures and then my last journal for Diane and Susan before my midterm tomorrow. I will post the rest of the pictures on facebook.













Yesterday we went to the Florence Nightingale museum. I was very excited about the prospect of learning more about the origin of nursing and how it came about but I did not realize that in doing so I would in fact learn more about myself.
The day started as any other, far too early with loud people above us, loud cars outside and bright lights streaming in at what seems like 5am. Me and my flatmates hopped on the tube (which we have become quite familiar with by now) to St. Thomas’ hospital and then walked the rest of the way there. When we had all gathered in front of the museum we entered together and were given audio guides that were stethoscopes which you placed the diaphragm on the lighted places throughout the museum so that you could listen to pieces of history as you walked around reading and looking at artifacts.

The exhibit that stuck out most to me was the one that said “the call to nurse” I read the tablet that was next to the exhibit but the audio guide for it was out of order. There was a bench next to it and I sat down for a moment to let it all sink in. The exhibit said “Florence felt from a young age that God was ‘calling’ her. But she did not know for years what her vocation should be. Her Christian faith was the driving force throughout her life. She believed in helping others less fortunate than herself by understanding God’s laws and His will through statistics. Just before her 17th birthday, Florence felt she heard God’s ‘voice’ speaking to her. This happened soon after she had discovered a talent for nursing while caring for her family and their servants during a flu epidemic. She gradually felt that God was calling her to be a nurse- a shocking idea then. Nursing was not a job for an intelligent, good-looking young woman like Florence. Only working class women nursed for a living. Her parents were horrified and anxious.”

Out of all the things I had learned about “Flo” through nursing school, I guess this had just passed me by somehow and yesterday it just hit me in the chest. How many of us are becoming nurses because of the shortage? How many because it’s “the right thing to do”? How many because of the money, our parents? But even more interesting, how many of us truly feel called by God to be nurses? One question that has been asked of us by our instructors since we arrived is what brought us to TCU, what brought us to TCU’s nursing school? How many of us answered “God called me to be a nurse so here I am.”

In high school I worked as an Athletic Trainer for the Football team and I loved it, and I loved my A&P class , partly because I had a WONDERFUL teacher , who BTW was taught by a WONDERFUL teacher DR.B. Because of working in the healthcare field then, I knew that I in some way wanted to be in the field helping people whether it was PT , AT or nursing. I always joke that the reason I didn’t go to Arkansas and become a Physical Therapist was because of all of the chemistry I would have had to have taken but to be quite honest the more and more I think about it the more I truly believe that TCU is where I was always supposed to be. Yes it was closer to home, yes it was more expensive but in the end everything happens for a reason and if everything had not happened just exactly how it did I would not be where I am today.

I think that being able to look at it from a religious perspective, being a religious person has made it a much richer experience for me. It has changed my outlook on things in nursing because as Diane said today “as nurses we don’t want to see someone hurting.” The best way I can say that I related this whole experience to my practice is that my life is my practice, I AM my practice. If I was not who I am and I did not have the heart for my patients the way that I do I would make a crummy nurse, and no one wants a crummy nurse. I think that being able to finally see that nursing really is “ a God thing” for me, the way everything worked out, me coming to TCU, meeting the people I did and making the choices I did all stemmed from the fact that it was where God wanted me to be doing what God wanted me to do. He made it all possible and without Him it would not have happened.

With all the health problems that I have experienced throughout nursing school, with the deaths in the family, with the stress, the graduating early, EVERYTHING, I can promise you I never would have been able to do it alone. And I didn’t. I will never take credit for that because it was not me that was able to accomplish those things. It was me and God taking on these things together. One day at a time. Even though I tried to take too much on at once, I know I know.

British Museum, Natural History Museum , Journal #3

We are almost officially a week into our trip and not only have we learned a whole lot we have SEEN a ton. ( as I'm sure you can tell by my pictures on my facebook :) )
Things have been busy and crazy. Today we went to the British Museum and the Natural history museum and then platform 9 3/4 and the to shakespeares head again which was fun.

We got to see dinosaurs, mammals and my favorite part the human biology! it went through pretty much tracing a cell through the body and going though the development of live and things like that and talking about memory and logic and illusions and it was really awesome. I think they should just take all the nursing students though there because it gives you a pretty good basis of everything you need to know and of course they are pretty straight forward about most things hah

Story of the day:
Coming home on the tube melissa was very sleepy and was leaning toward me kinda taking a nap on the way back to the flat . i noticed that the chap next to her had something on bis arm that looked to me a lot like psoriasis . i made a few comments to jackie across the row, mouthing of course , I would never say something rude about someone that would be awful. On the way out of the tube station jackie asks me out loud what she thinks it was since the chap did not get off at out stop. I told her it looked like psoriasis.but that i did not know. melissa freaked out because apparently she did not notice the rash all over the guys arm next to her and was only leaning next to me because she was tired... now she is freaking out and thinks she is going to get psoriasis












Today we went to the British museum. As we toured around through the mummies of ancient Egypt and the pottery of Greece we stumbled upon a room that was large and contained not only statues but books behind glass throughout a long straight room. We walked through and glanced at the statues till we came upon a woman holding a box of items which you were allowed to touch. One of these items was the Hindu god Krishna. Melissa went to hold it and the woman began to tell us about the small bronze statue. While I was interested in the statue I had a very difficult time concentrating on it because of the fact that she had very crooked, almost rotten looking teeth. We politely listened, nodded and moved on and as soon as we were out of ear shot had a conversation about whether or not it was a regular thing here in London to have teeth like that.


Later we went to the Natural History Museum. While we were there we toured through the exhibit where they talked through the development of human cells and how humans were formed and how babies needed to be taken care of and so on and so forth. The exhibit also went on to talk about nerves and muscles and the joints in the body and how the body worked together to make everything work in unison. It discussed things from puberty to memory, homeostasis to fetal development. In the exhibit about memory there was a station you could play a game about how much you could remember when put under stress in a crime scene situation. In the end the chap with the knife has awful teeth some of which are missing, another sign that its more normal than not that people don’t have just the best teeth here in London


The entire exhibit was hands on and very interactive. There were levers to pull, buttons to push, and movies to watch to help you to learn about the human body. They taught you how it worked and how to take care of it. The explained how your memory worked and how it could be affected in times of stress. Every aspect of the body seemed to be covered except for teeth.


I was very interested when I realized the connection here. I had been so amazed by the amount of hands on experience at this museum and how wonderful it was at teaching these people about the cells and the nervous system and how their body worked and yet in the end it never discussed their teeth, oral hygiene, or really any hygiene for that matter. As a small group we discussed it later on and talked about how for a country that is so focused on fashion and how they look , you would think that they would be more concerned about their teeth and how straight they were and how taken care of they were but surprisingly enough they aren’t. I don’t know if it is because of a lack of information or a lack of motivation but there is some reason why Americans are so intent on having wonderful straight smiles and British people don’t care


As nurses we need to take into these considerations and learn how our patients are feeling and relate to them. We need to be there for our patients and care for them to the best of our abilities because that is what we are there for as nurses. I personally did not become a nurse to empty bedpans. I did it for the relationships that I plan on building with my patients. Without knowing the cultural differences and religious differences between our patients we will never be able to give our patients the best possible care, so with that said we as nurses need to look into the things that are affecting our patients and see what it is that we can do as their caregiver to help them in the way that is most beneficial to them.

Museum of London

Yesterday we went to the Museum of London and were able to walk through and see the evolution of London from the beginning!! It was really wonderful to see all of the artifacts and pieces of history from England. Afterward we went for High tea at the Georgian restaurant in Harrods. Which BTW dad is NOT like having tea at Macy's. Its like RCC. I have pictures!

Well sorry this one is short but I promise I will write again tomorrow!

Story of the day:

While we were heading home from high tea at Harrods, all dressed up in our heels and dresses Melissa managed to get the heel of her shoe stuck in a grate and pull it up out of the ground. Did I mention we were in rush hour at the tube station?!... she scratched her ankle with the side of the grate and we had to put it back in the ground because it left a big gaping hole and we were afraid someone would fall in. That would have been a mess.












Yesterday we went to the museum of London and got to see TONS of artifacts from the beginning of London up until present day London. Amongst all of the wonderful things that we saw we actually got to see some medical instruments dating back to the beginning of time. We saw things like tweezers and these contraptions that they used to scrape dirt off their skin, to bedpans and syringes. One of the things that stood out most to me was a surgeon’s kit that was fully equipped with scalpels and a saw. Above the kit was a plaque that said that in that time people preferred their surgeons to have blood on their aprons because that showed that they had more experience.

When I first read that I laughed but then I was appalled. For me it is hard to believe that we as humans ever chose people that cut into us by which one had the most blood on them. To be quite honest I would think I would not want a lot of blood because I would not want to lose a lot of blood, but then again it was a different time and maybe they had not yet understood that losing all of your blood meant losing your life also. When I think about all of the things that were done in the medieval times, medicinal-wise, it tends to make me cringe knowing what we know now about medicine. All of the things that could have gone wrong: the infections, the blood loss, and just in general the improper hygiene of it all.

For those of you that know me I tend to like hand sanitizer and things like that even though I’m not the cleanest person when it comes to my bedroom and things like that. When it comes to my patients and me in the hospital I am obsessive compulsive about things like washing my hands and using clean linens and instruments so I cannot even imagine living back before the knowledge of how to sterilize instruments or the knowledge of the need.

For me, having recently had to choose a surgeon for myself, I can say that I did a lot of research seeing who was best in the field that I needed, who had the best record in the area, the best hospitals and so on. I can also guarantee that when I met him for the first time he did not have any blood on him!! I think that throughout time our ideas about medicine have changed and we with them. We have learned about sterile technique and have learned how to keep people from getting infections as easily. We also have come leaps and bounds in the field of surgery. While we still use saws in some ways, now we have lasers and nano-technology that has enabled us to do things that we could have never thought we would be able to do back in medieval times. I have never been surprised by what we are able to with medicine not only in technique but in actual medication that we never would have thought we would have been able to do.

First 24 hours in London!!

I could do something like hour by hour but that would get boring for everyone pretty quick I think, so I'll just sum up :)

WE ARE HERE!!! SAFE!!!

We landed yesterday and were able to go get our tube passes, pick up some groceries and get settled in our flats in Bloomsbury , which is in London :) For dinner we decided to eat out at Shakespeares Head Pub. It was actually pretty good.

Today we got up and out around 9 and went to ride the tube around, we were able to master 2 different tube lines, walk around Piccadilly circus, Trafalgar square, the national gallery, and the Victoria and Albert museum. Along with other various shops and errands.

The story for today is the hunt for the fan.

Melissa and I were on the hunt for an oscillating fan for our flat. Not only did we have no idea where to look we just didn't know where we were going. We asked someone at a phone store we were at and they sent us to a nearby store, Argos. After trying to master how the store actually worked ( you had to look through a catalog, type in the number , see if it was in stock, write it down and buy it at the front desk) They had NO fans in stock at the store close to us so we had to get the address for the store in Kinsington, which was a ways away from our flat. So we had to plan how to take 3 different tube lines to get to the other store in a fancy part of town so we could buy our fan. The ride home with the fan, switching lines twice was also quite interesting but always an adventure.



Trafalager square



Argos store sign – our life saver




Me with the new part of Melissa and I’s family



Kensington where we got our fan, Peter.



A stop on the tube on the way to get the fan




Florence Nightingale- the reason I will have a good job when I graduate…



The red telephone booth, I had to



Our flat entrance



Katrina and I before dinner our first night!



The Pub we had dinner at our first night in town



This is for Dr.Weeks and Dr. Hawley, everyone else is more than welcome to read it but it might be less interesting to you 

Today we had the opportunity to get out and explore on our own. A group of us decided to go and explore the Victoria and Albert museum. After a while of map searching and riding the tube we were able to find the “subway” or underground road that lead us to many different museums, quite a few of which we would like to go back to this weekend . We spent a few hours in the museum but one of the first exhibits that we looked at was the Fashion exhibit. This exhibit traced fashion back from the 1700’s to the fashions’ of today. One of the things that stuck out most to me ironically was the corsets. I know it seems like a long shot but the first thing I said to the girls I was with when one of them said it would be cool if we still wore them was how bad they were for you, how they weakened your back muscles and abdominal muscles and squished your insides to the point that nothing was in the right place! Maybe that comes from having spent too much time studying nursing and reading books set in that era, probably a bad combination.
This experience at the museum made me think about how small things like corsets somewhere back in histories of countries like England for example can have such huge effects on things such as Life expectancy and Infant mortality. Things like these that somewhere down the road we as countries have changed; we have been able in change, to affect the lives of our citizens. This in and of itself is a historical development in the life of England. Whether the corsets were done away with because of fashion reasons or for health reasons, in the end it benefited the health of the women and the babies that they subsequently carried. I know at the time it was the most fashionable thing to do and truly you kind of had to wear them. But it seemed to me that someone could have stood up and said “ No this is terribly uncomfortable and I don’t want to wear it”, but then again women weren’t really that well respected were they.
It was very weird to me at first that my response to this fashion statement was one of concern for the women that had worn these garments. But in the end I know that I was really just acting with what I knew. My emotions were well in check and not uncalled for because for all we know corsets could have caused early deaths for many women back in the 1700’s. While this particular piece of information won’t really affect my practice as a nurse, the fact that women want to look like that again will. The desire to have the thin waist is one that most women have in common, though some will do more to get it. As a nurse we will all come in contact with women who struggle with their body types, some of whom will go to drastic measures to achieve what they desire. These actions are things that I will have to understand and realize that they are not just cries for help, that they are real conditions and that these people need real help and support.
As nurses I know that we tend to label people, “drug seekers”, “hypochondriacs”, and “attention seekers”, and I feel that we have gotten away from the deep caring that Florence Nightingale changed the profession with. We have begun to stray from the things that make us who we have been called to be as nurses. We are supposed to be caring people who want to do things for our patients and love on our patients and yet some nurses leave the room and immediately talk bad about them behind their backs. What kind of caring is that?

I guess the main thing that I brought out of the museum and the corset is that 1) fashion can physically hurt you, 2) our thoughts about fashion can make us hurt ourselves, and 3) something as small as truly caring for your patient can make all the difference in the world when it comes to your job as a nurse.

I started following this blog and they are doing a dress give away and some of their dresses are WONDERFUL. Go look at some of them. Its alot of fun :)

~Maggie

Engagement!

For those of you that have missed the massive flow of pictures and posts of things on Facebook I have exciting news! On June 5th Phillip purposed to me at Frog Fountain at TCU, don't worry I have pictures thanks to my wonderful MOH Abby Jae. Afterward Phil and I went to my parents house to tell the the good news and low and behold Phil had planned a surprise engagement party for us with my immediate family and a few close friends, it was so much fun. Dani made us an adorable cupcake tower cake and it was wonderful and we all just had a good time.

I have been so blessed and am so excited about all the things to come in the next few months and the next year. We have not yet set an official date for the wedding but we are thinking June 2011. I'm sure I will have more to say later, especially when I am in London :)

Starting again

So I started this blog 2 years ago and have since then deleted everything and started anew. Now that I'm in the calender year of graduation I decided it was time to keep some record of things and most importantly my London trip in July. There probably won't be many posts before London but this will be my main way to communicate when I do go to London, so look here for updates and pictures :)

Short summary, we are a month from being done with this semester of school and I cannot wait till I'm done. Adult two has been a good class but the other two classes that I am taking have been the bane of my existence. Phil and I have been together for a little over a year now and everything is going great. Health wise things have not been so great still trying to figure out whats going on and trying different medications and things till we get a balance of what works. I'm supposed to get a cervical epidural sometime in the next week or two and I'm also supposed to start working at TX Oncology this week. Also I now have a beautiful niece and nephew, Naomi Rose Keene, and Ryan Alexander Campbell, born on Feb 6th 2010... YAY for babies :) Lots of things going on..

Here are some pictures :)