I attended nursing school before the days of PDAs, smartphones, and time saving apps. In my daily work at the bedside, I found myself constantly looking up certain reference materials. I began copying tid bits of information that I found in nursing journals, textbooks, and internet searches and began posted them onto pages in my pocket sized Day Planner.  I saved pearls of information such as drug calculations, rhythm strip information, anatomy landmarks, physical assessment tests and so forth.  I then added a zippered …

As a nursing student I came face to face with the realities of life and death and suffering early on. The events of that week are forever etched in my mind. It was my second clinical rotation and I was in Med-Surg where I was assigned to a middle aged black woman. She was a round woman with wandering eyes and a kind heart. She gladly accepted this student as her personal care giver for the week. Her diagnosis was Myasthenia gravis.

Myasthenia gravis is a neuromuscular disease which is characterized …