Moving Forward

For the past 8 years I have been telling people, "I'm going to be a nurse!". And every year I spent on my schools waiting list family, friends, strangers would ask me, aren't you a nurse yet? No.... still working on that one. Well the day is almost here! I am all done with my classes, done with lectures, done with tests! It feels amazing, especially since I maintained a 4.0 GPA for all my nursing curriculum. There was a time in my life when A's felt unatainable.

The only thing I have left to is my preceptorship. 120 hours in a Level 1 trauma center. I have so many feelings about that... mostly terror. I've been reading the website icufaqs.com which is well worth a read for nursing students, even though the format is so strange (downloaded word docs) and it is certainly outdated. I've also been watching lots of procedure videos: foley catheters here I come!

My last week of psych was a great one. We had two new patients on the floor, one bipolar 1 having a manic episode, the other major depression with psychotic features. Our bipolar friend spent his days singing michel jackson and whitney houston and the star spangled banner (and nailing every.single.note.) and our depressive friend spent his time sitting in the corner not talking to anyone until we befriended him. Then we spent the whole two days playing cards, sharing stories, and he even taught us a great card trick. It was hard to leave, not only these two but all of the other patients too. There are no activities for them to do on the unit, except for 1 hr of OT every day. It felt good to have our company appreciated, and to know that we could help someones day drag on a little less by providing diversion. Psych nurses we did not become, but it did feel like we made at least a small difference.