Tales of a Nursing Student

“Above all, do not attempt to use science (I mean, the real sciences) as a defense against Christianity. They will positively encourage him to think about realities he can’t touch and see. There have been sad cases among the modern physicists. If he must dabble in science, keep him on economics and sociology; don’t let him get away from that invaluable “real life”. But the best of all is to let him read no science but to give him a grand general idea that he knows it all and that everything he happens to have picked up in casual talk and reading is “the result of modern investigation.” Do remember you are there to fuddle him. From the way some of you young fiends talk, anyone would suppose it was out job to teach!

Your affectionate uncle

Screwtape.”

… with my very favorite professor, Professor David Parrish.

This is him in Turkey with my sister’s now dejected Edward Bear (I love you too, Edward!)

Yesterday before class started, Professor Parrish came up to me:

“Have you decided if you can take Medieval Art History next semester”
“Well, Professor Parrish, I haven’t quite decided yet. But I do want to.”

“We are saving you a spot in it.”

And then my heart melted.

What followed in class was probably one of the funniest telling of the story of Jonah.

“What you see here is Christ in the center medallion, represented as the Good Shepherd. In the lunettes, the semicircles on the edges, is the story of Jonah.

Now, you all know the story of Jonah? He was on a mission for God, but got kidnapped by pirates! They took him away from where he was heading. Far from his home, a storm arose and threatened the ships. So the pirates threw Jonah overboard and he was swallowed by a great whale (here represented as a sea monster.) After three days, representing the time that Christ was dead before his resurrection, Jonah was thrown onto land by the whale. The next panel shows him reclining under an arbor.”

This telling of the story of Jonah missed the mark on so many points, but I didn’t quite have the heart to tell him.

In other news, I’m about to throw my sociology and psychology books out the window. But I can’t. Because I have both those exams on Monday.

But you will never catch me willingly studying either of these topics further than this semester. If I have to, I’ll probably go kicking and screaming.

This week in my Pathophysiology course we have been taking a good, hard look at the endocrine system. The main manifestation of endocrine problems today in our culture is diabetes.

It is responsible for about 5470 deaths every week, 1610 amputations a week, many cases of blindness, and multiple kidney failures. And there are over 28,000 new cases diagnoses every week…

So it’s a huge problem with some of the simplest preventions: keeping weight off and exercising so your muscles are taking up sugar and using it right away.

I watched “Supersize Me” last weekend (one of the most disgusting documentaries I think I’ve ever seen) and one of the facts listed in it was that children who are diagnosed with diabetes (type II) before the age of 15 shave 17-27 years off of their life automatically. Considering that the average age of Americans is about 73, this brings the life expectancy of kids who get diabetes before 15 down to the mid 50s. Ouch!

Recently I have been hearing the refrain repeated “we don’t provide health care, we provide sick care.” This is largely true. Nursing school is all about teaching us how to treat those who are sick and dying and are in need of medical interventions. But what about all those preventable diseases that are eating up tax dollars, toes, and people’s lives? They are preventable, but many people either don’t know that or don’t care, which is incredibly sad. But education apparently isn’t the key to this problem, as one of my other nursing professors pointed out (herself being an example of her point.) So if education isn’t enough, what do we do to stop preventable diseases?