The fish who keeps on swimming....

Wow!!! How fast does six months go by?!?! It just seems like yesterday that I was writing about my first day as a nurse, in the ER, and how excited/nervous/giddy I was. Now here I am, 5 shifts away from finishing  my internship. I have met and had the honor of working with some of the most amazing nurses!! I'm not saying this because I literally bleed Red (Utah girl reference) but the nurses who practice at University of Utah Hospital are of a different breed. I'm thinking it has something to do with the higher altitude we live at or maybe being a Westerner makes us tougher, more resilient, wicked smart and quite cute. I hope I never lose the feeling of pride that I have walking through those front doors and knowing that I am one of them.
One of the best aspects of this internship is that I had the opportunity to take care of some very interesting patients and see some of the most intense sights ever.  Let's see: skid marks on someone skull, amputated toe (from electrocution), scalp free flap, holding someone's (mechanical) heart in my hands, controlling someone's (mechanical) kidneys, a femoral artery pulsing inside the cavity of a disarticulated hip (a amputation is when they leave a piece of the bone, a disarticulation in when the take the whole thing out at the joint).
But the most precious thing that I have experienced from this internship is that sometimes the most amazing thing is the simplest: having a patient smile back at me, knowing that my hand holding theirs is keeping them safe, having a wife, husband, mother, father thank me for taking care of their loved one.
I'll know in about a week which amazing ICU I get to work in for the next two years. Stay tuned friends  :)