Last week was the start of in-person kindergarten for Little Miss Minion and the start of my second semester of nursing school.
Little Miss Minion loves being in-person. I walk her to school, since we aren’t too far away. My classes are still virtual, so I put my earbuds in and listen to lecture while I walk. We drove her on the first day, since it was pouring rain. Then it snowed the next day. All the snow is gone now, but its been raining for two days, so she’s gotten a lot of use from the rainboots I bought her in preparation for walking. She gets to bring her backpack and her water bottle, and she is very excited about her cubby and her table spot. She has brought her lunch a couple times and “bought” her lunch (lunch is free through the end of this year for our district) a couple times. About half the kids from her virtual class switched over to in-person, so she isn’t starting totally from scratch in terms of knowing people. And one of the girls from her Girl Scouts is in her class too, so that helps.
My school stuff is starting slow, but my schedule is PACKED for the rest of the semester. I have way more clinical hours now, we are participating in a mass vaccination clinic, and I have a heavier academic load of lecture as well. We *could* be taking care of Covid patients during the medsurg part of clinical, so I got fitted for my N95 masks the other day. I also got my second dose of the Covid vaccine on Friday. More details in a minute. It looks like we do 12 days of medsurg clinicals, 4 days (12 hour shifts) of pediatric clinicals, and 4 days of mental health clinicals. There is more paperwork to be done for these clinicals as well, so I anticipate I’ll be doing that for most of the weekends. Due to Covid, there are no spinoffs, so I won’t get to see the PICU or NICU.
Vaccine details: The hospital system that I volunteer with includes their volunteers as “patient facing” personnel, so I was able to get the vaccine through them. I suspected that we would either be working with Covid patients during clinical or the odds of caring for someone who was positive would be way up this semester, so I signed up. I got the Pfizer vaccine. The first dose resulted in a sore injection site, very similar to the flu shot. My upper arm was sore for maybe 4-6 hours and I had no other side effects. My second shot was Friday. I had no real injection site soreness at all, and woke up yesterday feeling a little off. I had a slight headache (but I was already getting one prior to the shot-I get migraines, so this is not really notable), and my back hurt a little. I took some ibuprofen and felt much better. Today, I am totally back to normal except for what I assume are swollen lymph nodes in my left armpit (I got the injection in my left arm). Definitely was not expecting that one! It doesn’t really hurt unless I slide my arm back and forth, but it sure looks and feels interesting. Today, I learned that lymph nodes are not actually IN your armpit, they are slightly higher and toward the center of your body. I signed up for the CDC side effect tracking program, so I report all my side effects/how I’m feeling every day for a week following the shot and then once a week after that. I am excited to see the data on this after its released.
My school is doing a vaccine clinic every week for the next couple of weeks and my first turn is this week. I’m officially a vaccinator! They assigned us positions so some of us will be vaccinators, some will be doing intake paperwork and assessments, some will be walking the clients to the vaccinator stations, some will be monitoring the waiting area for any possible reactions. We get lunch provided (always a good sign), and it sounded like the group that went last week had a great time. I’m so excited to be able to actually help administer these vaccines and help stop the spread. Bonus: I’m going to get really good at giving intramuscular deltoid injections. We have practiced in the lab, but I have only given one shot to a real person so far, and it was subQ (subcutaneous).
Busy, busy, busy…as always.