Thankful Thursday | four years

You know, I was thinking about how it’s been over four years since we started doing Thankful Thursdays! We began this practice in the summer of 2020 because heaven knows we all needed to hunt for good things in that first year of the pandemic.

While I did manage to find things to appreciate at that time, my current self often thinks how grateful I am that it is not 2020 anymore. For many, many reasons. 🙂

My 2020 self didn’t know that things would be so much better by 2024!

 

This week, I am thankful:

that I saw lots of sunrises this week

Since the time change doesn’t happen until this weekend (!), sunrises are pretty easy to catch right now.

And I did that Monday-Wednesday this week.

that I have time this weekend to study for my first pediatrics exam

My exam is bright and early Monday morning, and I have quite a bit of empty space this weekend to study for it.

I purposely scheduled my two current pay period shifts for next Friday and Saturday so that they wouldn’t immediately precede an exam!

As I’ve mentioned before, I always feel a little iffy before the first exam in any class; you never know how a group of professors will test until the first one is done.

that I know some of this peds material

I was doing the infectious diseases topic and when the lice slides came up, I was like OHHHH I already know all about this. Because once upon a time, allllll of my (homeschooled) kids got lice simultaneously.

(Here’s how I finally figured out how to handle lice without insecticides, by the way. Save it in case you get a lice infestation!)

Something in peds that I did not know: giving aspirin to a child who has had a viral illness can cause a rare but very serious complication called Reye’s Syndrome (you can read about it here at the Mayo Clinic’s site.)

that I can easily take out my piercing for clinical

On clinical days, we students are not supposed to have any ear piercings except for a single stud in each ear.

So, that means I gotta do something with my cartilage hoop.

The first semester of clinicals, I put in a very uncomfortable clear spacer, and the spacer kept falling out anyway.

At some point between then and now, I realized I can just take the hoop out for the 8 hours of clinical and then put it back in at the end of the day. I’ve had that piercing for so long, it’s fine without a spacer during the day. Yay!

And once I am an actual nurse, it’ll be fine to keep it in. I wear it for my tech job all the time, and the nurses on my floor have plenty of extra ear piercings.

The rules for student nurses are just more strict than for nurses.

for access to fresh produce

I came across this Mental Floss article highlighting a recent rise in cases of scurvy, and it reminded me how grateful I am to be able to have plenty of fresh produce in my life.

The scurvy cases are largely due to socioeconomic factors and it reminded me of the challenge it is to eat a healthy diet when you don’t have enough money or even a home with a kitchen and refrigerator.

And that made me think about how I appreciate the various ways Hungry Harvest works to make a dent in this problem by providing low cost or free produce to people in need (they actually have a program at my college that offers this!)

for the ghost earrings Zoe let me borrow for my pediatrics clinical day

Kids love novelty items, and these met the “studs-only” requirement. At clinical a little preschooler with a feeding-pump backpack appreciated my ghost earrings after I appreciated her cat ear headband. 🙂

If I ever land in the world of pediatrics, I will most assuredly accumulate a whole collection of novelty stud earrings.

Although, I don’t know…I have a lot of elderly patients on my regular unit, and I will say that the women in that age range also really love stuff like this. So maybe I should just start a collection anyway. 😉

I do have to work on Thanksgiving day this year, so maybe some pumpkins would be a good start.

What are you thankful for this week?