I Want It All, And I Want It NOW!
Thought you all would like to see a photo of our waiting room!
Half of them have vomiting and diarrhea; the other half have bronchitis.
That is what is “going around” these parts.
I’d room most of them, but our beds are all full of old folks, who all seem to go septic at 2300 each night, right about the time the night shift does their first set of rounds at the nursing homes. At 2230, they are totally normal, but by 2300 they have developed a fever and have urine so purulent you can stand a fork in it.
I love my job.
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Attention, attention: Change of Shift is here next week, get those submission in to moi! Use the contact button above or use Blog Carnival. That is all!
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When I started back for my BSN, my goal was to take my time and enjoy the process.
Right.
Like that is even remotely my personality. I want to take as many classes as I can so I can, well, get an MSN or a PhD. I love school. But at this slooooow, rate of five classes a year it is going to take me four more semesters to finish the damn thing.
I want my degree now! So I’m working my butt off to earn the tuition to go full time next semester (four classes - twelve units), and saving up all my vacation and education leave to take (almost) the entire semester off of work.
I am enjoying the process, but sometimes I have to remind myself to keep my eye on the prize. Spending a week immersed in Margaret Newman’s Health as Expanding Consciousness theory has made me glassy eyed and wondering if I should just spend the rest of my days crocheting doilies and baby blankets for the grandkids I don’t have yet.
I have however, figured out the difference between medicine and nursing and one day, when my brain is clear, I will post on the topic.
In the meantime, I thought I would tell the story of what working as an emergency department nurse and trying to go to school at the age of 50 is really like, in pictorial form.
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This is me.
Yes, for the purpose of this illustration I am an egg.
If you are having trouble with the analogy, just imagine it in a Brady Quinn Cleveland Brown’s jersey and a really cool nurse’s cap. I’m already egg-shaped so that should help.
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But I have over extended myself and there is a disturbance in the Force. I am losing my mind, and my equilibrium.
My co-workers were the first to notice.
One is crying for me.
One is ticked off that they are now short an egg.
The doctor on the left is using the opportunity to teach the PA about “Humpty Dumpty” syndrome.
The other egg can’t stand the sight of trauma and the one in the back is thinking, “I always knew she would crack, eventually.”
Please notice that no one is doing CPR.
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So…I pull myself together, keep working and studying, shoving my face full of comfort food until this is how I end up.
The fire of ambition has put me straight into the frying pan and this is the result.
I’m flat, fried, and covered in cookie crumbs. Yes, cookie crumbs. Remember the rock-and-roll cookie bouquet I wanted for Valentine’s day but said my husband was too cheap to buy? Well, he bought it for me. It was gone before the cookies had a chance to cool.
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Now, I don’t want to end up a fried old hag in a Brady Quinn jersey, getting yolk all over my cap! Something had to give.
So…I took a breath, set a more realistic time-table for completing my bachelor’s degree, stopped picking up insane hours at work and hopefully, I will soon feel like this egg, beautiful, restful and glamourous.
Unfortunately, I am still the shape of an egg.
But…I’m still going to school full time in the fall and taking most of the semester off. I mean, I’ve already done all the work to earn the money, so it shouldn’t be that hard if I’m not working.
Right?
