The weather for day three here in New Orleans was dark,
gloomy, and constantly raining. It was raining so much that the locals postponed a local parade they were going to have for the beginning of Mardi Gras season...lame! It was great day to be inside touring museums
but it made traveling to and from locations harder than I wanted it to be. We
started the day touring the Cabildo building filled with plenty of history of
the city of New Orleans. I usually did not like history in high school but I
enjoyed learning about the different battles and stories about New Orleans.
When I was in high school, my history teacher loved to teach by putting on
different historical movies about wars, battle and slave trade. However I could
not really tell you anything that happened during those time periods of movies
because my instructor practically encouraged us to fall asleep during this time
because he himself was typically sleeping as well. That being said, I have not
always been so excited about history, but being in this city has sparked an
interest within me about learning history. When we transitioned to the pharmacy
tour, I was beyond interested about all the materials within the museum. I
probably read every single piece of laminated paper with information on it in
the entire building and would go back tomorrow and do it all over again.
Medicine is a topic that has always been interesting to me; when I was little I
was convinced that cough syrup and ibuprofen were made of magic. When I sit
here and think about, that is still kind of true. I just took Pathopharmacology
this past semester and learned about how the drug mechanisms work within the
body and I still think that there is a magic component within the medications
that someone is not telling us about. Reading about the methods that they used
associated with childbirth made me so thankful that I have a nice gynecologist
with good health care and insurance! Not to mention this museum was great form
of birth control! If I knew that certain tools were going to be used on me
during child delivery, I would never have one as long as I lived. I would
rather have ten cats then be subject to those types of tools and pain. As I was
looking around (I was struggling to see because it was so poorly lit in there)
at the different materials I was trying to imagine what it would be like to be
treated with those different methods. First of all, I can NOT imagine using a
lead syringe that does not even have a needle. All I can picture in my head are
images of people slicing their arms open and forcing the syringe into the
incision, forcing it to become bigger and losing large amounts of blood. And
then they would inject materials that they knew darn well were more harmful
than helpful, and they did it anyway! The pain and suffering people back then
must have gone through trying to heal themselves probably was worse than the
actual illness they were suffering from.
Today during the pharmacy tour, the city of New Orleans
spoke loud enough for me to develop a need appreciation of modern technology
and medicine. It made me realize that most of the time I act like such a
spoiled baby when it comes to illness. Back in the day, the people living in
the city of New Orleans did not even have access to clean water…gross. They
could not even keep their bodies well hydrated to fight off infection and other
regulations of body systems. When they did seek treatment for their illness,
they were taking medications that we mixed together with materials that were
not clean, cross contaminated, and did not always have clear side effects or
allergy awareness. But the one thing that I just cannot get over is the
bloodletting. I understand the concept behind this with wanting the illness to
escape the body but come on people, that is just madness. If someone is to
voluntarily cut him or herself in our society today, they are label with a
mental disorder of some kind, but back then it was encouraged as treatment
options! Moral of this story is that today I realized that I am just a
twenty-two year old baby. We are so fortunate to have all the access we could
ever want or need to medications and treatment for our illness (not to mention
the fact that we’re all nursing students so we should know more than the
average bear). I need to realize that when I am suffering from a cold, I do not
have anything to really worry or complain about. I have been battling a head
cold since December 27th 2016. I have a runny nose, constantly
coughing and sneezing, headaches on top of headaches, and fevers that break
throughout the day causing me to sweat like a pig and repulse everyone around
me (especially Jessica who is sharing a bed with me). I can hear my pulse in my
ears, have not been able to smell since New Year’s Eve, but thankfully my sense
of taste has not been altered! I am being brave because we are here having fun,
but if we were back home I literally would milk this to the point where I would
ask my roommate to do everything for me while I would lay in bed all day.
Today’s tour helped me to realize that medicine has not always been as
glamorous and helpful as it is today and I had not really thought about that
before. I love being able to walk down to the corner of happy and healthy (Walgreens)
and purchase basically anything I need to make myself feel better and cure
whatever annoying illness I am suffering from at the time. I was really proud
to be a nursing student today and have so much modern day information about
medicine while adding more past medical history into my repertoire. Maybe next
time I am working with a patient who is complaining about how they do not like their
medication methods, I can just tell them about the old, dull, lead-based
needles that they used to use back in the old day. Hopefully they would think
it was funny and not report me to their regular nurse.
No comments:
Post a Comment