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  Hello friends! I AM SUPER SUPER SUPER SUPER BUSY!!!! AHHHHHH! I cannot wait til September is over! One of my classes ends and then clinicals begin! 
   In order to begin clinicals, we must "check out" of our September health assessment class (this is the reason I cannot wait til September is over....because then I have one class already out of the way!!! YAY! :).
   Let me see if I can paint you a picture of what I have to do to move on to clinicals....
   In our nursing lab at Georgetown, we have 4 rooms that are "mock office rooms."  They look identical to an exam room you have experienced in the past in any doctor's office.  There are 2 checkouts we have to do.  For the first, we have to complete a history on one of our classmates.  Our classmate will act as the patient and we enter one of the mock rooms as the midwife and we go through an entire history (which includes current demographic info, medical conditions, medications, family history, past medical history, surgical history, and a complete review of all their body systems) while our professor also sits in and makes sure we hit everything.  We have 30 minutes to do so and then once we leave the room, we have 15 minutes to write up the entire history as if we would in a chart.
  For the second checkout, Georgetown brings in actors/actresses that are known as "standardized patients."  We will enter the room, much like the history, except these aren't our classmates but real people that we've never met or seen before.  We have to act as if we had already done the history part of the appointment and we are moving on to the physical exam.  We have to do a COMPLETE head to toe exam on the patient.  And I capitalized complete because it is extremely extensive.  I won't go into detail but to sum it up slightly we have to check all cranial nerves, look in the ears/nose/eye/mouth, check all lymph nodes on the body, all pulses on the body, listen to the heart, listen to the lung, feel for the liver/kidney/spleen (although the spleen and left kidney shouldn't be palpable unless they are enlarged...betcha didn't know that),  listen to bowel sounds, check all your reflexes, check your hearing, check  the strength in your arms, legs, wrists, ankles, AND THE LIST GOES ON.  It's just alot alot alot of stuff!  It's nice to know how to assess all of this stuff even though most of it I may never have to do again in my time as a midwife.  I just hope I remember to do everything!  So anyways, we have 30 minutes to do that and then 15 minutes to write it up....just like the history. 
  I am completing the history portion of this next Monday the 27th and the physical portion on Friday the 1st so think about me/pray for me on those two dates!  Although I'm feeling confident that I will do fine :)
  I'm really excited for clinicals even though I do not know where I am going to be placed yet.  I'll have them either one or two days a week.  I'm looking forward to applying what I've learned and beginning to create and organize the way I plan on conducting my exams.  This semester we are in offices/clinics and next semester we will be in the hospital.  Things are going to be happening so quickly but I am excited :)
   (side note: Frank just farted in his sleep and it is absolutely disgusting :)  Speaking of the little guy, he has become quite the city dog! He enjoys walking/running around the city and I've been surprised but he has no interest in any dogs we come across.  He's kinda like 'yeah i'm cool, i'm tiny and i'm running in the city, and my mommy's cool, yeah yeah yeah".  Haha.  I kill myself.  Anyways, Mike and I took him to a dog park on Saturday.  There are a bunch of trails that lead into this HUGE clearing that is surrounded by woods.  Once you walk into this clearing, you definitely don't feel like you're in DC anymore (because of all the trees, etc).  So people come and just unhook their dogs off their leashes and let them run.  At first, Mike and I kept Frank on the leash but about ten dogs came running over to see who the "new guy" was and of course, as you can imagine, me with Frank on a leash......who doesn't like going too too far away from his mommy....who is about 3x smaller than any other dog.....on his leash...trying to play with the other dogs.....on his leash....   if you can't tell, "on his leash" were the key words....Needless to say, I quickly took him off the leash since I was all tangled up in it, Frank was all tangled up in it, ten dogs were tangled up in it, and not only because of the leash, but I was trying to dodge a gazillion dogs (aka. trying not to trip and fall on my face).  ANYWAYS, Frank LOVED it.  He was EXHAUSTED.  (and gross I might add....one of the dogs had a slobber problem and thought Frank resembled a lolly pop or something).  We had a great time.  We had brought a blanket, wine, and cheese for a little relaxing afternoon with Frank but it didn't take long before we knew that wasn't going to occur :)  It was a great afternoon with my boys :)
  I think that is all to report.  I'm enjoying everything I'm learning, I just have "work overload" everyday!  But I expected that and it keeps me busy :).
   Hope everyone is healthy and happy. Hope to see you soon :)