The Waiting Room

It's been over 2 months since I've written anything. I was busy with finals, graduation, NCLEX, etc. about a month ago, but since then I've just been drifting... working as little as I can to get the bills paid, reading a lot of non-nursing related books; I read the Twilight series, and I have to say it's nowhere near as good as Harry Potter... still waiting (and waiting) for the fifth Song of Ice and Fire to come out though. But, anything to fill the space between all of those momentous occasions and actually starting my employment as an RN, which happens tomorrow.

To try and be honest about how I feel, without offending anyone (if that is possible in this day and age) I feel cheated. For the last two-and-a-half years I've been building up to this time, this moment when I have finished nursing school, I have my degree now! And then it happened and, well, to be honest I still wasn't a nurse. I still didn't introduce myself to people as a nurse. Because I hadn't passed my boards yet, and that's what makes you a nurse, right?

So I studied, took a review course, did some questions, did some more questions, and decided I was almost ready, so I signed up to take my boards. Then one Friday on a whim, I looked to see if there were any earlier dates available. They had that following Monday. I decided "You know what? I feel ready." So I called the lovely people at Pearsonvue and changed my date.

Then the anxiety set in... taking the boards two weeks earlier than I had planned what was I thinking!

But I went in on Monday with a good mindset, remembered to read each question and every answer carefully, and you know what? It was not that bad. I definitely had tests in nursing school that were harder than that. 75 questions. Done. Everything I learned in the last couple of years is, according to the NYS Board of Nursing is still in my brain, waiting to be recalled at a moment's notice. (By the way, a word of advice to anyone who hasn't taken their test yet: Don't pay Pearsonvue for the "early results". I did, because I didn't want to wait 2 weeks for my official results... well my license showed up in the mail two days later.)

But I still don't call myself a nurse. I passed my boards over a month ago... I am an RN. What am I waiting for? I don't think I'll feel like I can call myself a nurse until I've gotten out on the unit and started really feeling comfortable actually being one.

So, on to the feeling cheated part. I graduated at the top of my class. I was one of the first in my class with a job offer. I was, as far as I know, the first in my class to take and pass the boards. Why am I the last one to actually start working as an RN? Everyone else I know started a month or more ago. So I feel cheated, underwhelmed, and kind of indifferent at this point. Everything that I have worked so hard for, yearned for, waited for is at my fingertips, but I've lost my momentum. I think I left it in the waiting room.

Um... I don't know what an EKG is.

The good thing about writing about my beginnings in the nursing field more than 2 years after the fact is that I really can see how far I've come.  Case in point: when I started working in the hospital, my experiences in the medical field included several emergency room visits and one overnight stay as a kid, and sleeping in a chair at my grandmother's bedside the night before she died.  I guess my personality sold me to the nurse manager when she hired me on as a part time unit clerk, because it certainly wasn't my medical expertise!

So on my first day of "computer training" we were given a page of pretend doctor's orders to enter into the computerized ordering system for practice.  Now, on a side note, these were nothing like real doctor's orders.  They were neatly typed (not scrawled illegibly), they were distinctly sorted into lab tests, radiology, dietary, etc (not BMP, CBC am, CXR am, advance diet to full liquids, troponin q8h x3, CT of abdomen stat).  So, anyway, I'm pretty computer literate, so I'm doing okay, finding the tests in the computer, ordering them and checking them off.  It's pretty easy to figure out, X-rays come from radiology, blood tests from the lab, and food from dietary, so I'm doing okay.  Except for the EKG.  I have no idea what an EKG is, or where it should be ordered from.  But I'm sitting in a computer lab with about 15 people, and no one else is asking stupid questions like "What is an EKG again?"  So the instructor comes over to check on me:

Her:"Looking pretty good... Oh, look you missed the EKG!"

Me: "Right, okay..."

Her: "Let me see you put that one in!"

Me: "Right, so I would... Um... I don't know what an EKG is."

Her: (stares at me dumbfounded) "Cardiology services?"

Me: "Oh, right, yeah I knew that!"

Fast foreword 2 years.  I got the unit clerk thing figured out, and moved on to working as a patient care technician.  I'm doing EKG's now, drawing blood, suctioning, and lots more things that probably don't need mentioning if you want to keep your lunch down.  We received a patient from the cath lab, complaining of a headache.  The resident happened to be there, so the RN asks her for an order and heads into the room to check on her patient.  I'm sitting at the desk putting together the patient's chart while the resident thinks out loud to herself.

Her: "Well she's allergic to tylenol, says she takes excedrine at home, but I probably shouldn't give her that because of the caffeine..."

Me (muttering to myself): "Yeah, plus it has tylenol in it..."

Her: "Yeah.  Oh well, I guess I'll just order a whole lot of aspirin..."

Me (still not looking at the resident, because I don't want her to think I'm telling her what to do): "Really?  Aspirin?  When she's already got all that plavix onboard from pre-procedure, she's got integrelin hanging, and she just had a large hole cut in her femoral vein?  Aspirin?"

I don't know what she ordered, but it wasn't aspirin.  

The Notebook

It was a couple of days after christmas, 2006.  My husband Dan and I had successfully completed a move from Boston, to Upstate New York to start our "new life".  We had both been in food service, and needed a change.  Because it took us both a couple of months to find jobs once we moved, money was a little tight (still is, now that I think about it!) 

I had taken the first big step in my journey to nursing school.  Since I hadn't been overly science-oriented in high school, I had only taken what the state required, ie; only through sophomore biology.  Now that I was looking to apply to nursing school however, all schools seemed to want chemistry. I guess it makes sense, but to me at the time, it seemed like such a huge hurtle.  But I'd gone ahead and registered for a general chemistry class at one of the local community colleges for the spring semester.  

So here we were, no money, wandering around Cooperstown for a couple of hours with my sister.  We couldn't afford to buy anything, so looking in the shops seemed like a waste of time, but it was cold outside, so we ended up in a general store type establishment.  

I was really anxious about starting school again at 27.  Even though it was more than a month away I guess I kept talking about it.  Would I fit in?  Would I be able to do the course work?  That was a big worry for me right there.  One of the reasons that I hadn't continued taking science in high school was that I had this belief that I wasn't good at it, or smart enough for it.  Probably somewhat due to my mother's mantra that if it wasn't an A, it wasn't a good grade.  When I'd looked at my high school transcripts, I was surprised to see I'd never gotten below a B in any class.  For some reason, I'd thought I was "bad" at science.  

So, probably since I wouldn't shut up about it, my husband marched me over to the school supplies section of the store, and told me to pick out a notebook.  I did.  It was the type of thing that probably would have been $3 at the local Wal-Mart, but of course here it cost $8.  He bought it for me, handed it to me, and said "Here you go.  You're a student again.  And you're going to be great."  

I don't know why, but that made it real for me.  I was going to do this, and I was going to be successful.  He believed in me enough to spend money that we didn't really have to spend on an overpriced notebook.  It was just a notebook, but for me it was the first tangible evidence that I was, for better or for worse, a college student.

Looking back, how did I get here?

So, here I sit on a rainy afternoon in upstate New York... been thinking about doing a blog for nursing students for awhile, an "I did it, so can you" sort of inspirational/informational piece.  I have a couple of hours before heading off to work a 12- hour shift, so I thought, why not?  

I guess some background on me would be good.. I'm 29, dreading July when that will become 30.  I had a short, not so illustrious career in food service/catering, before coming to the realization one day that my work had no meaning.  I still remember the day vividly.  I was standing in the kitchen at my job, calling my husband to tell him I would be running a little late.  Why?  Because the dishwasher had done a shoddy job of mopping the floor, and I realized I was either going to have to ask him to do it again, or do it myself... and I thought "what does it matter if the floor looks like crap?"  Who, other than my bosses will even look at the floor?  And who are they?  If they really have nothing else going on in their lives to worry about other than the floor being mopped, why do I even care what they think?  

To be truthful, I had been thinking about doing something else for a long time before that, I had gotten my real estate license, but lacked the salesman type personality that was needed for a successful career there. (guess I got lucky with that one!)  

So, that's how my whole journey got started... it's been about 3 years since then, and I can't believe how much time flies.  It seems like yesterday when I was so nervous about taking my first science class, and here I am just about a month away from taking my final... but those are stories for another day.