Hello.
Shiny new website. How fun!
I'm not particularly active these days, my life has kinda moved on from high school education. But I did used to really like keeping a bit of a journal on here, it's nice to read back on and see how much things have changed.
I had a uni (and a seperate high school) journal on the old AN - link here if you're interested or just want to see some slightly awkward videos of teenage me.
For everyone that's new (read: hasn't been on AN for several years) and doesn't know me, Hi!
My name's Morgan and my pronouns are they/them. I'm currently 21 (but not for too much longer).
I went to high school in Victoria and graduated in 2018. I moved up to Canberra at the start of 2019 to start a whole new life at uni. I was a very eager 18 year old, full of optimism going into my first year of uni. I was studying a double degree in Science/Environmental Studies at ANU. It went great! ...For about a month.
Turns out I kinda hate learning just theory. It's a bit dry. My mental health issues caught up with me around the same time and I ended up dropping out of the degree in May of 2020 after a psych hospitalisation.
2020 was a pretty awful year for me - it was a pretty awful year for lots of people, but my biggest issue wasn't the pandemic.
In September of 2020, I had the random thought one day (probably as I was being taken to hospital via ambulance) that paramedics have a pretty cool job! Later that week I applied to study paramedicine/nursing at ACU and got an acceptance email a few weeks later. I've been studying that since the start of 2021 and absolutely love it!
After a year of pandemic-related delays, I got to do my first ever placement - nursing aged care - in June. It sucked. I expected it to suck but I volunteered (I know, silly me) for the secure dementia unit on the first day. I talked my way out of that on the second day and got put into the general section which was in some ways less confronting, but being me I ended up quite involved trying to help a resident with suicidal depression which I found very difficult. WIth young people there's hope of a better future after the pain, but what do you say to someone whose only future is being in an unpleasant environment with very little independence whilst her health deteriorates until she dies?
I tried to do the best I could to make her feel a little better. I asked her at one point what she'd like the staff to do differently and she told me that all she wanted was for them to say goodmorning to her, she felt ignored because the staff were busy taking care of the higher dependency residents. I made sure to say good morning to her every day after that and popped in to chat to her when I had nothing else to do. She was very apreciative which was nice. It's not enough, but at least I could give her some company.
I had a week off after that (haha just kidding it was exam week. What are uni holidays?) and then went into my first paramedicine placement!!!
I'm not exaggerating when I say it was the funnest thing I've ever done.
I was very anxious, and I made a heap of mistakes and asked so many silly questions, but that's why we have placement. I learnt more from those 2 weeks than I have in the last 2 years at uni. So much happened so quickly.
The second job that I went to on the first day of placement was to a 3 year old fitting. So I got to go P1 (lights and sirens) right at the start of placement. Really set the expectation quite high haha. We took the kid P1 to hospital, and I did a second P1 to hospital on the second day of placement. The grad paramedic I was working with - who'd been a full time paramedic for 18 months - told me that was the first time she'd gone P1 to hospital. And it was my second time in two days. I felt quite special. Other dramatic jobs were a lady who was very sick with a pulmonary embolism (blood clot in the lungs), a man who was GSC 4 on arrival (very unconscious), a child who hit his head and whose heart rate was 70 (we do CPR on kids with heart rates below 60), and a man with chest pain who got admitted into ICU.
The cases that are more on the emergency side of things are fun, I enjoy the adrenaline rush, but its the quiet moments in between where you can really stop and talk to someone and make a difference in their day. The primary care jobs were also nice because there wasn't so much of a rush which meant I got to lead them, ask the questions, decide on treatment and a plan, and do handover. The emergency jobs were very interesting but I was more of a spectator, the primary care jobs are where the learning happened.
Of course, there were some hard bits too. On the first day one of the paramedics got a needlestick injury so there was a lot of conflict between a couple of the paramedics over that. Some of the jobs were hard too, everyone expected me to find that fitting child job hard but I was okay with that one, it was the suicide death we went to that I still think about.
We're about halfway into second semester at the moment, it's a very short semester. I'm doing 3 units at the moment - para mental health, nursing medical, and nursing practical. I'm loving the medical nursing class, it's all pathophysiology of diseases and action of drugs that treat it and that's always been my favourite part of biology (and biology is my favourite subject!)
I've got placements coming up in October and November - both nursing placements which I'll hopefully enjoy more than the aged care placement but will probably enjoy less than the para placement. I've also got another 4 weeks of placement for my unit this semester which I haven't been assigned yet - hopefully they'll tell me soon because I can't make any plans for the summer holidays until I know and I'd like to be able to go visit my brother in Melbourne for a bit whilst my mum is away.
