Starting Nursing School

 Hello! It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything. I actually forgot about blogger altogether until earlier this week. I was in Las Vegas with my friend, Trena, for one last Hoo-rah before nursing school and we were watching the Food Network. Rhea Drummond was on and we were recalling many years ago when she was merely a blogger. It occurred to me then that this might be a good way for me to record my experience in nursing school. Not necessarily for anyone to read or get anything out of, but just for my own records. Maybe one of my kids will read it one day. I’m not likely to hand write in a journal, so I thought maybe weekly submissions here would be good. Here is a picture of me from two months ago. Posting here so I can compare before school and after as I’m sure school will give me gray hair and wrinkles. 

I am not going to lie: I’m pretty nervous going into the semester. I was accepted into the Chandler Gilbert Community College concurrent enrollment program with Grand Canyon University. I will be getting my Associates Degree in Nursing through CGCC and my Masters Degree in Nursing through Grand Canyon University. I started one of my masters classes on Monday of this week. It is only 5 weeks long, but it is dense. Then I will add my first block of core classes to that next week. Yikes! 

I wouldn’t be able to do this without the support of my family. My kids are very busy with their own lives. Miriam is in synchronized swimming and taking piano lessons. She won her school spelling bee a few months ago and will competing in the school district spelling bee on Thursday next week. Joshua is almost 16 and will be driving soon. He is very busy with school work as he goes to Basis Mesa. And then there is Garren who just became a partner at his law firm. 

This was the day Garren was announced partner at his firm. It was his firm’s Christmas party. Dec 15th, 2022. 

One reason I’m nervous is because of the roll a mom plays in the family. I think we don’t talk about this very much in our society, but we really should. Everything seems to come back to mom. Mom takes and picks up kids from school, mom makes dinner, mom takes kids to appointments, mom takes kids to activities, mom feeds the dog. . .  Don’t get me wrong: Garren is very much an active part in all of these things. He takes the kids to school when I need to work. He sets up early morning dental appointments so he can take the kids before he has to go to work, he will make dinner when he gets home. . .  But let’s face it: If it weren’t for mom the kids wouldn’t be able to do after school activities, they’d eat at bedtime every night because that’s what time Garren comes home, if someone forgot to feed the dog and I wasn’t here to pick up the chore the dog just wouldn’t eat. . .If one of the kids doesn’t have time to get their chores done because they’re consumed by homework, mom does the chores! In our society this is acceptable for some reason. It’s like, if mom wants to go to school and work, okay that’s fine as long as that doesn’t interfere with everything else getting done that needs to. (Again, don’t get me wrong: this is not the attitude in our household, it’s just kind of the way things land sometimes). Because this is acceptable in our society I don’t think mom’s get the credit they deserve. Completing school or working is an achievement in its own, but being able to also balance a home and family life is a whole other thing entirely. I think in our society right now that is sort of expected instead of seen as individual feats. I hope that changes one day. 

The reason I am thinking about this right now is because I was trying to get some ideas from people I work with about study time and work time, etc. I asked some nurses how much time I should spend studying and if I could also handle working at the same time. I asked about 5 female nurses and 4 male nurses. All the male nurses said I could handle a full time job and full time school, no problem! And that that is what they did during school. All the females said part time or no work during school because it’s too much when you add life into the mix. I don’t think it’s that the female nurses couldn’t keep up with school and work and the males could. I think it’s that the females also had to add driving kids around, feeding the pets, appointments for kids, etc. I asked one of the male nurses about that and he said his wife did all that so he didn’t have to worry about that during school. I have a feeling the other guys would have told me something similar (if they were old enough to have families). Anyway, I hope this changes one day! 

During school I will be working in the monitor room of the ICU at Mountain Vista Medical Center. I have been there for over a year and a half now working as a CNA. I recently switched over to Monitor Tech in December. It can get a little boring at times, but I do believe getting these rhythms down will help me in school. I have been doing it a few months now, but I still feel like there is so much to learn about the heart and heart rhythms. I spend at least 30 minutes of each shift I work reading from an EKG text book so I can learn as much as I can. I bought my own copy of the text book and am now reading it for the third time. There’s so much to learn!

Covid is getting better in some ways and worse in others. We still get covid patients in our ICU. The current variant is really messing with people’s heart rhythms. I have to label everyone’s heart rhythms during the shift and when I get to a covid patient sometimes I just have to put “Covid” instead of “Sinus Rhythm” or one of the other rhythms because it doesn’t resemble anything I am familiar with (or anything google is familiar with ;)). 

Earlier this week I went to Las Vegas with my friend Trena.

Trena and I became friends in Roanoke, VA when we were in the same ward at church. I think we probably bonded over a mutual appreciation for swear words, or something like that. . .  We stayed at Balley’s hotel which has just been rebranded the Horseshoe. I think they forgot to take down this sign ;)

I enjoy traveling with Trena because she and I have similar “traveling style.” We don’t really need all the bells and whistles. For us, it’s about the interruption to our every day lives, the sort of reset button to the everyday things that can wear us down. We also both enjoy shopping! I think this was our third time doing this trip. This time we splurged a bit and went to a show and Gordon Ramsay’s Pub and Grill in Caesar’s Palace. We saw paranormal mind reading. That man is so good looking. And I had a short rib grilled cheese—a Gordon Ramsay Signature—at the pub and grill. 

It rained a bit while we were there, which turns my hair into glue since I mostly style with hair spray. So don’t mind my crazy hair pictures. We learned that the mirage will be demolished this year and replaced with a Hard Rock (not sure about that choice. Didn’t even know Hard Rock was still a thing people had any interest in. But no one asked me. . . ). So went and did all the Mirage things. 

I have the whole volcano video, but apparently I’m not smarter than blogger and can’t figure out how to upload it. So I’ll work on that. 

For New Year’s we went to the cabin. It snowed many many inches, feet, I believe. I’m not sure if our dog, Sugar, has ever seen snow before. She’s from Texas. She had a blast in it! And Joshua drove half way there! It was his first time driving on the freeway. 

Garren’s mom died on December 2nd. We gathered in Washington as a family for her funeral. It was nice to be with family. It snowed there too. Very cold. It was so fun for Garren and I to go through her things and find old pictures of her because she looks exactly like Miriam!! We couldn’t believe it! Each picture we found. . .  we couldn’t believe the resemblance. Garren is. . .  Well, handling this in his own way. . .  I told him he needs to realize that other people around him around grieving too and while he doesn’t want support from anyone else me and his children might like support from him. So he’s coming around on that, I think. I about came unglued on Sunday during sacrament meeting when they sang O My Father, as I played that on the piano at her funeral. I cried so hard. :( And Garren is the executor on her estate which has also come with its own challenges. Maybe one day far far in the future after processing some . . .  feelings. . .  I’ll be able to write about that experience. 

ANNND I met my new niece, Sophie and made Miriam a Christmas dress. OOOOH if I could find a way to make clothing all day and still have health insurance. . . .

ANNND I picked out my new wedding ring. I haven’t had one since I had kids as mine don’t fit anymore and can’t be resized. But, after 18 years of marriage, I thought it was about time I had one. So I picked it out and hopefully we’ll be able to o buy it soon. It is blue sapphire with white and chocolate diamonds. They aren’t mining chocolate diamonds anymore because there just aren’t anymore to mine! So I wanted to get a piece with chocolate diamonds in it.

Anyway, that’s us up ‘til now. From now on it will probably be posts about me crying a lot and everyone around me crying a lot. . .  But I know it will be worth it in the end. I am passionate about healthcare and I know this is the right path for me. I hope to eventually get my NP. I did buy MCAT study books and thought I would do that. But my future with my health is so uncertain that I couldn’t stomach the idea of paying that much for school and putting that much amount of time into it if I end up losing my mobility because of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. 

So, here we go. On to nursing school. Future self, you have come a long way. Remember where this all began. In college I volunteered at a nursing home and enjoyed it very much. I did that the whole time I was in college. Once or twice a week. I had always wanted to do it again, but I just couldn’t fit it in when I had kids. When covid hit and I heard the nursing homes were struggling the most, my heart ached for them. I was selling doors for First Impression Iron Works at the time after selling my ten year old custom window treatments business (Window Treatments by Melissa—which is still going strong today)! I decided on day in May to go to a nursing home and see how I could help. I had a job interview for a “TNA” (Temporary Nurse Assistant). I remember saying, “I don’t know anything, but I have two hands and a brain: I can learn things and I’m willing to work.” They hired me on the spot and I put in my notice with First Impressions. Around the third week of May I started at Montecito Post Acute and Rehab facility. There were plenty of bumps in the road. They gave me an 8 hour crash coarse in Nurse Assisting, but of course there’s only so much you can learn in that time. I was supposed to work under the supervision of a nurse or other CNA, but because of Covid, we just didn’t have the staff. I was often turned loose on my own without supervision. We just didn’t have the numbers. I remember learning quickly how to use the vitals machine and taking every patient’s vitals and recording them. I entered them all into the patient’s charts, not knowing the parameters for each vital. At one point in the night a nurse jumped up from her seat where she was charting and ran down the hallway. She returned and angrily asked me, “Why didn’t you tell me this patient’s O2 was at 72%?!” I said, “What does 72% mean???” I really had no clue. And the same thing happened with a blood pressure. I just didn’t know. And no one was around to teach me. This was what it was like working in Covid. Maybe someday I’ll be able to write more about that too. But not today. 

Future self, you’ve come a long way and learned a lot through trial and error. Well, baptism by fire, really. You made mistakes and learned from them. More will be made and more things will be learned. Just remember what you tell people you are training when you have new CNAs: It’s okay not to know everything right now. You’ll learn something new every day to add to what you know now. 

Here we go! Good luck, Me! We can do this!