No comprende

I just finished my sixth week, I am 1/3 of the way done with the semester and am learning a ton! This week I was really worried about communicating with my patient because she was a 94 years old woman who was blind in one eye, deaf in one ear and could barely hear out of her "good" ear AND she spoke Spanish. So I get there at 6:00 am and after making sure she hadn't gotten discharged yet, I was practicing my "Spanish phrases." Now I know I am really bad because my friend that I carpool with is from Peru and is fluent in Spanish and she laughed at me when I attempted to repeat phrases after her. I go into the room and did my best to communicate with her by yelling phrases into her "good ear." She would then ramble something off in Spanish that I did not understand. After about a minute of this, she shushed me and told me to "shut up!" I did and left the room to come back a while later to give her a blanket. Once I did this, we were best friends. I would be grouchy too if I were cold.

Through out the day, I learned to communicate through body language and we got along just fine. She had been in the hospital for three days and there was no record of her ever getting a bath and I am pretty sure that no one has helped her brush her teeth because some major build up came out of her mouth when she did. So I washed her hair and gave her a bed bath, during which she kept grabbing my arm and kissing it. She was so appreciative that I was getting her clean. Such a simple thing and she was in heaven!

I must say, this week was much better than the last. Last Friday I had had it! I hadn't gotten much sleep and to make matters worse, I didn't pass the Med. test that I was supposed to get a 90% on so I had to re-take it yesterday...and I passed with a 98%! But failing the first time amidst other things, pretty much set me off. I seriously considered dropping out. After thinking about it and praying I have decided that I need to just finish. As a result, I am feeling a little more comfortable this week and I have decided to do my best instead of trying to be perfect and get an "A," because when school is said and done no one is going to care what grade I got (I hope) they are only going to care about the quality of my work.