It's the final countdown...

   The end of another semester is near. This semester has gone by extremely fast, thank goodness. We have finally started to learn about anesthesia and the things related to anesthesia, so these are exciting times. We are in the middle of learning the check-off of our anesthesia machine at the moment. We also presented posters at the scholarship symposium for school. We did a poster comparing the speed of intubation between fiberoptic and GlideScopes. The articles we reviewed said that the GlideScope was the fastest way to intubate a difficult patient....just in case you wanted to know! We are getting ready to take our final in 2 weeks, then the dreaded summer semester comes! This is supposed to be the hardest semester of school, so yeeeeehaw! After the summer we will start our clinical rotations and then it gets real. So I'm going to try to enjoy the next several weeks as much as possible because free time will be limited in my future. So, everyone enjoy your time!

                                                       The group at the symposium

                                                             The machine check-off

Runnin' on the struggle bus!

  This weekend myself and 3 other friends from the class ran a half-marathon in the Music City Marathon in Nashville. The run was for a really good cause, it was to help St. Jude. If you ever get a chance to help the children of St. Jude you should! St. Jude does such a wonderful job with research in the fields of pediatric cancer.  They have the best success rates in the country! St. Jude is in Memphis and hopefully we will get to do a rotation through there and get to help these brave kids!

  Now back to the race. Whew, I am glad that it is over! In case you didn't know, a half-marathon is 13.1 miles. 13.1 very hilly, curvy, and long miles! The scenery was beautiful as we ran through downtown Nashville and were able to listen to bands the whole race. There were a lot of people lined along the course cheering as you ran by as well. Over 24,000 people finished the race. It was such a good weekend spent with friends and family. I am very glad that I did this race and hopefully can do it again next year!

The group!

I've got no explanation

The Batman Building!

I'm pretty sure I'm half dead here

He has risen, He is coming!

As we celebrate the Easter holiday and the rest of the world goes to church for the only time this year, we need to stop and think about what we are doing. Why does everyone go to church on Easter Sunday but not the rest of the year, save Christmas? We need to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus every Sunday, not just once a year. Jesus died for our sins and his blood washed our sins away. We can be saved and go to heaven because of the sacrifice that Jesus has made for us. What do we need to do? We need to first hear the word of God (John 6:45,  Rom. 10:17, Rev. 1:3), we also must believe what we hear (Heb. 11:6, Mark 16:16, Jn 5:24, Jn 6:29, Jn 8:24), we must then repent of our sins (2 Cor. 7:10, Luke 15:7, Acts 2:38, Acts 3:19), we must then confess that Jesus is the son of God (Matt. 10:32-33, Rom. 10:9-10), we must be baptized for the remission of our sins (Mark 16:16, Acts 2:38, 1 Peter 3:21-22), and finally, we must be faithful until death (Rev. 2:10, Matt. 10:22, Matt. 24:13) Please consider all of these things and read your Bible for yourself. Have a great weekend and Happy Easter!!

 My family and I went to the Opryland Hotel in Nashville for Easter. We attended a convention called Lads to Leaders. This convention helps build strong christian children by helping them learn to lead songs, give speeches, etc.. It was a lot of fun. My daughter led the song Jesus loves the little children for the ladies. Here is a picture of us after morning worship service with around 8,000 fellow christians.

                                   No, we are not going to the Kentucky Derby...I promise!

Spring Break!!!

One of the best parts of going to school is getting to enjoy the breaks!! That's my opinion anyway. I seem to forget about what it was like to not have to do an assignment or study for a test EVERY SINGLE DAY. So when the break go here I tried to enjoy it as much as I could. My wife is a teacher in Alabama and their spring break was a week before mine....of course it was. So they came up and spent time with me in Jackson. The last weekend of their break, the first weekend of mine, we went to the zoo with some friends. A good time was had by all. It's easy to get caught up in the hustle of CRNA school and forget to spend time with family and friends. We need to all slow down and enjoy the time we have with our loved ones....end of rant.

A tongue Gene Simmons would be jealous of!

Not even sure what's going on here...sorry, Ethan.

The Seed

This is a forum about technology and how it applies to nursing. I am learning about how to make surveys and the such in my class. I have created a survey that is used from something we are doing at church. The school I attend is open about biblical studies so I have posted a survey called "The Seed." This is just something we are trying out that will help start discussions with people so we can try and help them get to Heaven. That is my goal for me, my family, and all of you as well! So if you want, I will place a hyperlink that will take you to this survey. Take it if you would like. Thank you!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1qkcAxe9b1c48GpNqCDD9LqDBFPg3TMz6hRVwDzOtRHc/viewform

Bipolar weather

   As you've probably read lately, we've had some crazy weather. We had 3 "snow days" at the college and it drove me crazy! I say "snow days" because it was more ice than snow. Either way, we had 3 days off of school. This will make life more difficult down the road I can imagine. We will have to still go over the information that we missed on the days we can find. I did use this time to do a lot in my technology class, NUR715. I worked on my eportfolio which is kind of like an electronic resume of sorts. They are an interesting way to form a resume. We did ours off of the website carbonmade.com. With our ever increasing technology, this makes distributing a resume a lot easier. I will have a long time, 2.5 years to be exact, before I have to worry about a resume but it's a good head start. It is amazing the different technology we are using now. I started nursing in 2005 and we have improved our technology so much. As future CRNA's we will need to be as up to date with this technology as possible. I'm really not sure yet about the technology that will be used as a CRNA because I haven't even started my clinical rotations yet but I'm sure it will be really useful.

   By the way if you are wondering what the temperature is today, it is 68 degrees. Less than a week ago there was ice and snow on the ground and now I'm wearing shorts. My daughter and I even went for a hike yesterday. You've got to love the weather in the south! Here's a sample of what it looked like:

Whirlwind life!

This last week has been the craziest week so far for me in school. Everyone always tells you that you will have no time for anything while in school. I finally believe them! During this last week I had a birthday, my wife's birthday and my daughter had one. My daughter had a spend the night birthday party(that was fun!), and a daddy daughter dance the next day. While all this was going on we had 3 tests as well as a couple quizzes thrown in for good measure. I learned how to study while in a house with screaming girls and still manage to do well on my tests. This program feels like it's beating you down physically, but I can definitely tell I am learning a lot!

                           Some of the girls from the party (I honestly don't know where the others are)

                                            And here's one from the Daddy/Daughter dance

Stress Relief

    Going through this crazy, stressful program you need something to kind of take the load off. The people I worked with who were CRNA's recommended that I exercise to take some of the stress out of the program. I ran before school so I thought this would be a good outlet for me. I definitely would recommend finding an outlet for your stress relief! Even if physical fitness isn't an outlet for you, we definitely need something for our mental well-being.

     So, a couple of my classmates and I are going to run a half-marathon in April. We will be participating in the Music City Marathon in Nashville, Tennessee. The profits go to St. Jude, so it is for a good cause. It's also a good way for us to get out there and enjoy the outdoors. So we have been training for it and this is how I have felt lately with all of the bad weather:

Technology!

     Since this is supposed to be a blog about technology I thought I would share something that I found last semester. It's an app that is called flashcardlet. It will sync to all of your apple devices so you can study anywhere you go. This is what the app looks like:

   You just create flashcards from whatever class you're in. The cards have a front and a back. All you have to do is tap the card and it flips over and reveals the answer. Example:

This is really handy if you are on the go very often. You can study if you are in a waiting room or anywhere for that matter. One of the best parts of this app is that you can share cards that you make with your classmates. All they need to do is have the app. It is a very efficient way to study. It really helps when you have friends that can come up with better questions than you!

Second Semester Fun!!

    It's the second semester of nurse anesthesia school, and never thought I would be here in a million years. If you are reading this, you more than likely know what a CRNA is. Just in case you don't, I'll tell you the short version. It's someone who has an advanced nursing degree that puts people to sleep for surgery and other procedures. Sounds simple, right? You are wrong, my friend!

    I'm creating this blog for a class called Technological Transformations. In this class, we are going to be focusing on the correlation of technology and nursing. I definitely think this class will help in my practice, when or if ;), I become a CRNA. We are going to design e-portfolios as well as many other things that will help us become more advanced in our future career. So hang in there with me and we will get through this!

   In case you want to know a little about me, I'll tell you. My name is Josh. I have a wife, Tiffany and a 5 year old, soon to be 6 year old daughter, named Lizzie. I am from a small town in Michigan but moved down south to go to school and escape the cold (and a snow storm is supposed to hit here tomorrow…perfect!). I met my wife at Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson, Tennessee. I then moved to Alabama and went to nursing school.  I took the long way through nursing. I was an LPN, then ADN RN. I got my BSN from Jacksonville State University. I have 7 years total of nursing experience. While my grades weren't stellar, I didn't let that stop me from pursuing my dream. I firmly believe anything is possible if you are willing to work hard and have patience. 

My Family 

            The Queen Bee and myself

                       The Princess