Back to School

Classes started two weeks ago and a part of me just died inside at the realization that it has only been two weeks. Seriously, I could have sworn it had been at least three. Things are going well so far, I'm only in 8 credit hours, so it's totally manageable, considering in undergrad I took 15-18 every semester. Here's some bulleted updates of the past two weeks (OK seriously, it's killing me every time I write that).

~Creepy neighbor asked my landlord if I died and if she could come into my apartment and check on me. You see, I went home for the month of August to work since I didn't have school. Apparently my absence "worried" him and he wanted reassurance that there wasn't a corpse in the apartment above his. My landlady knew I was home, so she told him to let her know if it started to smell haha. Then he said to her, "Maybe she has a boyfriend and has just been with him a lot." God bless that woman for telling him that was indeed the case.

~Speaking of the creep, I caught him staring in my windows the other day. I hate artificial light, so I try to have my blinds wide open as much as possible. The other day I had my front blinds and windows all the way open and he was just out in the front lawn staring up into my windows. As soon as he realized I noticed, he hopped on his bike and rode off. I'm weird, so I appreciate people's differences, but this man is on a totally different playing field.

~I started clinical last Tuesday and am on a Neuro unit, but it also gets some overflow from Med/Surg. Of course, the unit would be on a floor that connects to the Children's hospital's wing of NICU and peds, so, naturally, I wanted to high tail it over there, but c'est la vie. My clinical site is an hour away... I have to be there at 6:30am... do you know what time that means I get up?! An ungodly hour, that's what time. Out of bed by 4:45 am, to be exact. I was terrified about oversleeping, so of course I woke up every 45 minutes the night before and never got out of the stage of sleep where you are dreaming, but still hear all the noises around you. The first day I was so nervous that, during computer training, it took every fiber of my being not to pass out or lose my breakfast. By time we got on the floor at 10, I realized how ridiculous I was being. I saw three patients, one had Parkinson's, with a history of seizures, and had fallen. Another was a very elderly woman who was sharp as a tack and hilarious. She was in for cardiac arrhythmia, so I'm not sure why she was on the neuro floor, but she cracked me up. The other patient was a 2o-something male who survived a single car crash but suffered a good amount of head trauma.

We were only on the floor for an hour, just enough so we could get oriented and practice our communication skills. It was nice to talk to the patients and their families because that's really my cup of tea, as I love getting to know people and hear their stories. I have a feeling that will be the majority of this clinical experience because there is very little we are capable of doing. I have several different skills I can do, and of course vital signs, but I can't do a physical assessment yet, and I can't administer medication, so I think these next 5 weeks will really just be about getting comfortable walking into patient rooms and learning how to communicate with them.

I joked that I'd consider my clinical day a success so long as no one cried and no one died. Fortunately, it was a success, and I even made a patient (who I thought was sound asleep) laugh. Hopefully today is a little more active and interactive.

~I really, really love nursing school. I truly do. I hope student's in other nursing programs enjoy it as much as I do. And I am so thrilled that I have the reassurance that this is my calling that I so desperately hoped to get upon starting school. I'm also relieved that school has (so far, knock on wood) been a lot less hectic and overwhelming than I had anticipated. Yea, it's work, but I'm not wanting to put my head in the oven at the end of the day, and I still get at least 7 hours of sleep a night, so, God-willing, this trend continues for another 10 months.

To all my friends who have recently started school, I hope your journey is going as well as mine is! Just take it one day at a time and you'll be fine. Thousands of people have done this before us and we can do it, too.

Hugs to all of you. Unless you are still having warm weather. In which case, I envy you.