It's Trichy

Oooooh girrrrrl. I've been working on my FNP clinical rotation this semester at a women's jail and peeped some trichamoniasis through my trusty microscope this week...  you gotta know sh&%# is ROUGH when you got these guys swimmin' around up in your lady parts...

Trich, as it's so fondly referred to, is a sexually transmitted infection that if left untreated can lead to such terrible conditions as Pelvic Inflammatory Disease. It can also increase your chances of acquiring HIV!!! Sheesh.
... And so meanwhile... we sit around gazing lovingly into our iPhones/pads/pods and post pictures of our manicures to Instagram... Hi people! There's a whole other world out there we might want to think about, so put down the phonepadpod. It's a crazy orange jumpsuit world where tons of really really young girls languish in jail with STI's and a lifetime of other disadvantages. In this world about 80-90% of the inhabitants are black. A lot of the time it feels like these ladies never had anyone give a crap about what was going on with them until they walked into the clinic and had someone tell them they were important and that they didn't have to stuff drugs up their vaginas just because some dude told them to.

Where'd you get those...?

There are some nurses on my floor that wear some seriously booty marking tight scrub pants.

Call me old fashioned but it seems a little weird and inappropriate. Not to mention that there is the potential you'll be kneeling into some shit, piss, vomit, blood, or worse in those sexy numbers... Patients probably like 'em though.

Sex Ed, B.O. and Nutrition

Today I got to teach three different groups of 12-year-old girls about germs and hygiene after my classmates filled them in a little bit about the birds and bees and how to eat right. It was pretty fun until we got to the third group which was slightly on the loud and rowdy side.

These kids would NOT be quiet during our presentation and I pretty much had to yell. I don't know why but the teacher did not do anything to quiet them down. During my classmate's Sex Ed talk with that group we heard all kinds of interesting unsolicited comments... "My friend popped her cherry because she ran into a pole with her legs spread apart!" That's a hard one to come up with a response to. And there were some other, scarier comments that came out of no where like, "This girl I know told me her uncle raped her." Equally difficult to respond to when one is not prepared (their teacher had nothing to say either). Meanwhile, our male classmates were off in another classroom teaching Sex Ed to the 12-year-old boys and got the question, "Does it feel good to get raped?" from a member of their audience.
The school nurse told us there were 40 mental health arrests at that school last year (that's when an ambulance pulls up and takes you to the psych ward of a hospital against your will). One kid broke a paramedic's nose after punching him in the face.
At lunch time I sat down with some second graders to get a break from the older kids and a little girl immediately asked me what my favorite color was and informed me that her favorite animal was a white unicorn. I wanted to tell her, "PLEASE, don't every grow up!" (or if you do, please grow up to be the next Supreme Court Justice and not someone who has been so screwed over by adults that you want to kill yourself and/or other people).

On that happy note: 58 days till graduation!