I'm super excited. Its been exactly one year since I started trying to get into Nursing School. The day my lil baby girl was born, I was watching the nurses and docs do there thang, wondering; can I do that? Is it humanly possible for an ex-Marine to forget about being trained to kill and become skilled to heal? When I got home from the hospital, I went online and pulled up a list of everything and anything a person could do for a career and took a big marker and started marking off everything that I absolutely did not want to be. The list went on for miles it seemed, but once I had finished coloring up this list like a crazed pre-schooler, I was left with my options staring up at me. All "one" of them! "I wanted to be a nurse". I had been reminded of those days before the Marines when I was checking out medical and SAT preparation books from the library on a daily basis. I had forgotten about hitting up every hospital begging them to allow me to be with patients in some way, if even just to take out the trash or assist a CNA possibly. I had forgotten how I found a list of doctors numbers in one of the medical books and called them up to find out how exactly to become a medical professional like them someday. Having a baby, being really young and the 9/11 attack can really side track aspirations, but I had been reminded of all of it again when my beautiful angel baby was hours away from entering my life. I was asking questions and talking to all the neonatal nurses and completely ecstatic about the thought of taking care of human lives, especially little neo-soldiers as I like to call them.
I took a CNA course while I was waiting on nursing school to start just to make sure I had my heart in it and I was making the right decision. Let me tell you, you couldn't pull me off of those patients. I had to do things I never thought I would ever do, touch things I never thought I would touch, but it didn't matter. I was in love with it. The interaction between care taker and patient is an awesome one. I found myself "gelling" into their rooms over and over again, just so that I could be with them and be inspired by their raw unfiltered take on life. This experience solidified what I already knew to be true. I had made the right decision. Now I'm in nursing school and I'm looking at the long road ahead of me and sometimes beat myself up if I'm not constantly wanting to study every second of the day. Wondering well "if I don't want to study every second of the day, then I must not really want to be a nurse." I know this isn't the case. I actually love studying, and when it's about curing diseases, secrets of the human anatomy and saving lives I am triple excited.
I started this blog so that my fellow classmates would have somewhere to come and vent when they are feeling down or overloaded. If your days are running together and you never feel like you do anything but study and you wanna just have some place to come and release, please log on and "exhale". I think as aspiring nurses we have to be willing to confide in one another. We have to be willing to let go of competitive tendencies and remember in the end we are going to need each others help if we ever plan to get through this. We have to be a team, a unit.
I'm very interested in hearing what you all have to say and your ideas on studying practices. Should you always study or should you stop to smell the flowers or watch the world run in slow motion for a bit. Stop to pick up your baby and swing her around and just roll around on the floor like a child yourself. Should you breathe in the clean O2 of the day you are living and exhale the toxic CO2 made up of the possibility that the future might hold bad days or weeks or even months. Just being in the moment and present.
Just before this I read a lot of blog entries about Med School Students wanting to drop out because they had no life and all they did was study, study, study. I think that studying is absolutely necessary if you plan on making a difference and not being lost in the sauce when later you are handed a patient and told to fix him/her. Nursing School is hard, if it wasn't everyone would be a nurse or doctor. We are the few that have made it through, we are the few who will one day soon wear the prestigious RN badge upon our chests. We will not give up and we will take our heart,compassion and empathy exactly where it needs to be; to the sick and injured and disease stricken patients that inspired us to become nurses to begin with. We will do it for us and we will do it for them. I may only be a student at this point, but I know nursing is a wonderful career, because it allows you to take your meaningless worries and pointless groans about how bad your day is and have it humbled by the authentic ails of a truly injured or sick pt.
Let me know your thoughts. Feel free to write to your hearts content. As you can see, "I did"! XD
