Fun and Follies

You may have noticed that I've been a little quiet lately.

Expect that to continue for the next 8 or 9 weeks. School has started for real and holy crap am I busy.

This week we had 2 exams, 3 papers (in APA format, cited and referenced as necessary) and 2 online quizzes. Plus 2 days working in the hospital. Next week I think I only have one paper due (maybe 2), but I have at least 3 exams and possibly an online quiz or two as well. They're doing their best to pack two years of school into 39 weeks.

This morning was a tough one. I got up at 4:45, got my stuff together and got to the hospital at about 6:20. That's when I noticed that I didn't have my hospital ID badge. Nor did I have a lock for my locker. Then I looked in my bag and realized that I didn't have the paper that was due today.

Luckily the girls from my class had all seen the paper and told the instructor that I wasn't just looking for extra time, so I'm OK there.

Later, we got our assignments for the day and I was sent to cover one patient. She's ill, but she didn't need a lot of help from me. She can feed herself and move OK and whatnot. And since I'm not allowed to pass medications yet, I had some extra time.

Out in the hall one of my classmates was headed for one of the rooms she was covering because the call light was on and needed to be turned off. She didn't know how to do it and I went in to look too. On the wall was a button that read CANCEL.

What do you think was below that one?

Yep.

A big red one that said CODE.

Can you guess which one I pushed?

Yep. That's right.

What happened next, you ask? I'll tell you.

Alarms started going off. People started coming from everywhere. I think there were people in the hallway from other hospitals in the next county. The PA lit up, "Code blue, 11 east.... Code blue 11 east". Peoples pagers started going off. Every person in that hospital heard it and I think anyone in scrubs was headed in that direction. Honestly, if I had been in an all boys middle school screaming "Horny naked supermodels here!" over and over I would not have gotten half as many people moving as I did just then.

I'm frantically pushing the CANCEL button and wishing that the PA would just shut up. The girl in my class was out in the hall telling people it was a false alarm.

Finally the sirens stopped and the PA announced the code was canceled. I was there in the room, starting to drip with flow sweat, wishing I could melt into the floor and giving serious thought to locking myself in the patients bathroom.

After it was all over the people were really very kind about the whole thing, but it was very embarrassing.

So that's the story of my THIRD DAY of clinicals. My third freaking day.

Crap.

Tomorrow I think I'll pull the fire alarm just to sort of round the whole thing out.

Ever had an embarassing moment at work or school? Please share it and help me ease the shame.