We got our graduation photos done today. Cap, gown, Honor Society tassel and sash, and honor's cords.
I look fugly in the cap. LOL My hair is too wild and curly and it looked like a puff ball coming out both sides. I won't be purchasing any extras, I know that much! I need to wear the cap back further for graduation ~ I'm not going to look like that for the ceremony, nuh uh! LOL
It was very cool though ~ realizing how CLOSE I am to the end of this journey. I just can't believe it. Things are a whirlwind right now! I think we all have senioritis...
Nursing diagnosis: give-a-crap deficit R/T senioritis AEB excitability, the giggles, and general apathy
Not to leave out the other boys, of course... Jaret is his usual easy-going self. This kid is just so easy. He listens, he follows house rules (98% of the time LOL), he shares, he doesn't start fights w/ his brothers. He's just a good kid. He goes to bed when he's tired, he gets up early on his own and gets ready for school. I'd have had 8 kids if I could've had 8 this easy! He just had his last basketball game yesterday. He's in 4th grade and this was the first year he's ever played. Last week he made 4 baskets! I was so happy for him :-D. Yesterday he made the last basket of the game with 3 seconds left - yay! He says he wants to play next year so that's good!
Ethan took the year off of basketball, but I hope he decides to play next year. He did go to a baseball clinic the past 2 Sundays with Brendan, however. I went to pick them up today and got to watch him pitch a few - I was surprised to see him throwing strikes right down the middle! His form isn't all that pretty, but he got the job done, LOL. The varsity and JV team puts on the clinic along w/ the coaches, and this big tall high schooler was catching his pitches and he'd say things like "wow, you're bringin' the heat!" LOL Ethan thought that was just so cool.
Now it's on to soccer ~ this is definitely the most busy time of year for us. Practices all week, then once the season begins it's games 3-4 nights a week and every Saturday. Trying to get to 3 different fields all over town at the same time has proven to be difficult. And now this year, while I'm trying to get myself through my final rotation of nursing school: CARDIAC... I'm not sure how we'll do it. Which brings me to why my life is about to spiral into insanity:
My final quarter of nursing school is only 8 weeks of classes instead of the usual 12. Cardiac is the dreaded, most difficult rotation, and no one wants to take it last because of the short quarter. But since Lee Ann drew a shitty lottery number, I gave up my good spot to join her in hell. LOL In fall quarter, we lost 7 or 8 students. This quarter I've heard that about 17 people are failing right now, with only one day of class left, the final exam. It's THAT hard. Good students are failing out, too, not just students who struggle normally. Along with cardiac, I'll be taking a class called Nursing Trends and Transitions - a mandatory class for all outgoing senior nursing students to prepare us for the "real world of nursing". Lots and lots of projects and presentations and homework. On top of cardiac. Which has lots of homework and obviously a ton of studying. Which means clinicals all day Monday and Tuesday, and class Weds, Thursday and Friday. I know myself, and I will most likely lose my mind at some point in the next 2 months. It's going to be too much on top of everything else.
That doesn't even take into account the fact that we're all also trying to find jobs, prepare for NCLEX, the exit HESI exam, graduation, and preceptorship. Oh and take care of our families, too... if we haven't lost them all by that point. My homelife is always hectic this time of year due to soccer. I'll be surprised if I have any friends left when I graduate as it is.
So, I may post some for the next week - I'll be on spring break beginning after my final exam on Wednesday for a week - but beginning March 30th you all may not hear from me again until sometime in June. LOL
Please pray that I make it through to the other side of this... it is not going to be easy. But if I do, that means only 88 days until I graduate!!!
I know it's been a long time since I've blogged. But my life has been going on overdrive for the past month or two, and it's about to kick into even higher gear soon.
Where to begin?
Let's see... my 12 yr old has passed me up in height. He was slowly getting close to my height (I'm only 5'1", but still)... then last week we measured ourselves again and he's taller than me now. And his feet are way longer than mine now, too. He thinks it's great. LOL And he's getting ready to go to junior high. I can't believe it. We got letters about what classes he needs to take and choosing his electives, etc. There's a parent/student meeting w/ the jr high counselors & principal on April 16th to answer all of our questions and make final class choices. I swear it was just a year ago I was bringing home this gorgeous blonde-haired baby boy from the hospital... and now he's getting ready for junior high?
And more news on the 12 yr old: many of you know he's allergic to chicken (all poultry, to be exact). We discovered this around age 3. We have epi-pens for him because he is anaphylactic. Yes, I realize this is a very rare allergy. His allergist who has been practicing for nearly 40 years said he's only ever seen 2 cases. He put it this way: Of all people who have a food allergy, chicken accounts for about .02% of THOSE allergies. That's pretty rare. We asked way back then if he could ever outgrow the allergy and the answer was "maybe, maybe not, no one knows". But it didn't look good, because the older he got, the worse his reactions became. But every September we see his allergist for a check-up. When he was 10, his allergist said he'd like to re-test him around age 13 to see if there was a change in reaction since some kids grow out of allergies at puberty. He tested him that year to get a baseline on where he was at that time. Huge reaction, things didn't look very hopeful. This past September when Brendan was 11 and nearing 12, he asked the doc to test him again. (sidenote: the kid is DYING to eat chicken, it drives him nuts to smell and see it everywhere and not be able to have any) Doc says sure, let's see how it looks. So he does the test, and the reaction is still there, but amazingly small! Like, WAY smaller than it's ever been. The doc was shocked because we really never expected it to change. So he says that if Brendan wants, he can come to his office and bring some chicken and try it in a secure environment if he didn't want to try it at home ~ but the point being that he thought he might be able to tolerate it now. There is no danger on it rebounding or anything - getting worse again - I asked.
That was last September. Brendan has never been brave enough to try. He's scared to death of not being able to breathe again ~ he remembers all too well how scary that was. (ME TOO!) So, I've left it up to him, and we figured he'd be re-tested this coming September and try it then if things still look good.
Then today. I had chicken for dinner for myself (the boys had burgers). Brendan decided out of the blue that he'd try it. Just a TEENY piece, and only with a huge bottle of Benedryl in my hand with the lid off, and his epi-pen on the table. LOL But first he just let me dab some gravy on his tongue. MMMMM, he said it tasted SO good. He wanted the chicken. It took him 3 minutes, but he finally popped the morsel into his mouth and we both held our breath.... waiting for the telltale signs he always had before the anaphylaxis: itching tongue, itching scalp, swelling lips, face breaking out... but ~ nothing. Not even one tingle. Could it be a fluke?? NOTHING? I fully expected a small bit of itching since he was still showing a reaction on the skin test. We waited a full five minutes. Nothing. Then he wanted to try more. He eventually, over about 25 minutes, ate several bites of chicken, with gravy. He was drooling over how good it tasted. LOL Not a single bit of reaction. We're both amazed and he is one happy kid!!
And I'm a happy mom ~ I can start making chicken for dinners again!!
But no fish ~ we found out that now he is dangerously allergic to fish - not shellfish, though. Just fish. We tested him at the same time as the chicken re-test because the last few times he's had fish he's had the same symptoms, like the itching tongue, scalp, lips, etc. And it got worse each time. The reaction was about 3x the size of the other skin test (for chicken). The doc said he is the weirdest patient he's ever had. LOL He basically traded his poultry allergy for a fish allergy! Weirdo!
OK I have a million things to blog about, so I'll break them up and finish in a separate blog... more to come soon!
Ok, now that I got that outburst out of the way...
What a week! Began with a full day at the campus on Monday... we were there from 7:45am until 4pm doing group presentations. The day was entirely TOO long and we were all falling asleep by 2pm.
Tuesday was spent with two other students at the local County Home (well, it USED to be the county home, now it's called something else, but I'll leave that out). My instructions were to find at least 6 residents to sit and talk with about their life: their past, their future, their illness, what they felt about everything, etc. Talk about interesting! Most of the conversations were really interesting... many of them sad. Now I need to write a paper about all of the conversations and residents. Gotta get on that.
Wednesday was 3 hrs of lecture. I finally figured out what's so excruciating about this quarter. It's because from day one of the nursing program, we had mega info crammed down our throats FAST, and were expected to learn every bit of it in record time. Things were thrown at us from every angle, every day, in huge quantities, and you either learned to adapt or you sunk. Now, in psych, it's as if everything didn't just slow down, but it's almost like going in reverse direction or something. We could learn about CHF, diabetes and kidney disease inside and out in 3 hours, but now we're spending 3 hours talking about nothing. It's total slow motion, and it's painful. We all just want to jab hot pokers into our eyes and end the suffering. Our lecture room gets emptier every week. If it weren't for the occasional pop quiz that you get 100 pts just for showing up for, I'd skip too.
We had test review for Exam #2 that day, too. I got a 92% on that one, so I'm happy.
Thursday, 2.5 more hours of pain, I mean lecture. Then we went to a center that works with mentally ill clients, etc, and were supposed to take a tour, etc. That didn't pan out, so we ended up sitting in on a CE lecture by a local psychiatrist. It was dry and boring and we learned nothing new at all. But the lunch was catered by this place, and was delicious, so I wasn't complaining. LOL Have to write a paper on that, too. Gotta get on that.
Thursday afternoon, Ethan had a dr appt. He was diagnosed with acid reflux which is exacerbated by stress, so he's been really having trouble. He's on Zantac BID for 2 weeks and we'll see how he's doing after that. I'm having lots of guilt over the fact that my 9 year old is suffering the physical effects of stress. Lots of changes coming in this household.
Basketball practice for 3 hours that night. Fast food for dinner once again. But what are ya gonna do, ya know? 116 more days.
That night I was on the phone with a friend until 3 am. Yes, that says THREE AM. Aghhh! I knew I'd regret that one, and I did. I got the boys off to school Friday morning, came home, and did n.o.t.h.i.n.g. all day.
Saturday was so hectic I won't even begin to list everything I did in a short amount of time. But in the midst of it all, each of the boys got to spend time with their friends and that was great for all of them. Brendan played another fantastic game of basketball ~ he's the team's leading scorer and I'm simply amazed at his skill level. Parents, coaches, refs, etc keep coming up to me and telling me how talented he is; they all wonder if he's trying out for the jr high team next year, etc. His coach (a college player a few yrs ago) says he's a natural and loves coaching him. When I watch him play, I find it hard to believe he's just a 6th grader - and what makes him a better player and his team so great are that his teammates are also good and they play so well together! Four of them go to school together and they really know how to read each other. His coach commended him in front of parents after the game on what an unselfish player he is, how he gives everyone a chance at the ball all of the time, how he will give up a for-sure shot just to dish it off to others so they can score. His goal every game is to get a certain kid on the team to score - the kid who has never made a basket, he's the "different" kid - shy, quiet, awkward, nice, not athletic, you know the one. Brendan has been determined that Virgil IS going to score, and he keeps passing him the ball. Up until now, Virgil passes it right back, LOL, he's having none of that! Well, Saturday, Brendan kept giving it to him... finally he passed it over and yelled 'SHOOT IT NOW!' and Virgil looked up and wasn't being covered... he hesitated... he looked around as if to say "hey guys! someone come take this thing!"... but they all ran. Virgil looked at the basket and realized he had no other option... and he took the shot from the right outside. SWOOSH!!! It was beautiful!!! The whole team jumped on him, and the crowd all cheered and we stood up to yell for him. That kid didn't stop smiling for the rest of the game. They ended up winning something like 40-14. I am just LOVING this whole group of boys. Oh, and Brendan had two 3-pointers also. :)
That night Brendan and 3 other friends spent the night at one's house and went to the high school JV and varsity games. Jaret went to a birthday party with 3 boys and they went here to go tubing at night under the lights. They all did a big sleepover, too, and had a great time.
So, that left Ethan and me alone together on Valentine's night. We did a 'mommy and me' evening. We went for fried rice at the local Chinese place and split it. Then we went to a pet store and played with the cats up for adoption for a while. We both almost were in tears, wanting to take them all home. Someday, babe, someday. 116 days.
Then we went to the dollar theater and saw Bolt. What a great movie! I'm really over the kid animated stuff after 12 years of it, not to mention having gone through many years of it with Brittany before that. So I went in expecting to sleep through it. LOL Surprisingly, it was really good, and Ethan and I laughed and laughed ~ what a nice time we had! It would've been great in 3D. I think I might buy it for the boys on DVD.
He crashed as soon as we got home, and I had another late night phone call with my BFF. :)
Today I picked up the older boys and came home and we all started cleaning. Brendan crashed out on the couch and he's still asleep there! Luckily they don't have school tomorrow.
I sat down to eat lunch and take a computer break. I better get back to it. There's a mountain of laundry calling to me...
I saw this on a few other blogs and thought it was definitely worth re-posting!
Anyone who's been through nursing school will completely understand...
Student Nurse's Prayer
Lord, I know we go through this every day but please give me the knowledge as to why I actually wanted to go to nursing school.
Lord, give me the strength to make it through those boring three hour lectures without falling asleep.
Lord, please give me the patience to make it through twelve hour clinicals with instructors that can't just give you the right answer and on the same note, give the nurses the ability to remember what it was like to be a student and give us just a little more respect.
Lord, give me the endurance to read all the assigned readings and be able to remember it when I am taking a test with four right answers.
Lord, give my family and friends the ability to realize I really am on the edge of insanity. Finally...
Lord, give me the vision to see that one day I will be a real nurse and I will never have to wear this ugly uniform again.
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