First Hospital Clinical

Today I had my first ever hospital clinical. The past 3 weeks we have spent a few hours at a nursing home working on our therapeutic communication skills. So basically, we sat with a particular resident for about 9 hours and just listened to them talk about their life. It was quite interesting. Now...we've moved on to the hospital. My clinicals are at St. Mary's Hospital (part of the Mayo Health System). The unit that my clinical group is working on focuses on nephrology (kidney stuff). We were there for 5 hours today, and I didn't want to leave. The nurses were awesome and so helpful. I had so much fun and I wasn't doing anything. I did do a few sets of vitals and changed a couple beds, but no "real" nursing stuff. If I had that much fun doing just about nothing, I can't imagine how much fun I'm going to have when I'm allowed to change IV's and all that fun stuff. I guess it's probably a good thing that I'm enjoying myself since this is pretty much what I will be doing for the rest of my working career. After tonight, I definately know that I'm headed on the right track for what I want to be doing. That is a very comforting though after going through 2+ years of college and thousands of dollars.

When it rains, it pours

It's been a rainy day here in the Twin Cities. I think that will qualify for my understatement of the day today. I had to work early this morning, so I left the house at 5:20. It wasn't raining, but it started about 10 minutes into my drive. And it's been raining, or drizzling, or at the very least misty, since. The 10:00 news said that we had 3.25" of rain today. And 2" of that came down between 8:00 and 10:00 this evening.

There's been all kinds of great footage of flooded roadways.
494 was flooded near Portland Ave.

I-94 was flooded and closed near downtown Minneapolis.

35W was also closed for flooding.
Here's a picture near downtown from this evening:

And the firefighters were even called out to rescue folks.
Many more pictures available at the KSTP website.

According to channel4000.com 78 counties in Minnesota and Wisconsin are under severe weather advisories right now. The main 'CCO website has a great video clip of a guy on his mountain bike riding past a stalled car. The water is literally inches away from his handlebars!

And the great thing about living in Minnesota? Yesterday we recorded the highest overnight low for any date in the month of October at 72. By Friday we may have a hard freeze here in the metro. For those of you up north, there's talk of snow. Billings and Missoula Montana both got about 6 inches of the white stuff this afternoon, and that storm is headed into North Dakota.

But really, it's better than a Hurricane.