Semester Three, Week Eleven

Oh, that rumor mill.

So, remember when I inadvertently walked in on my instructors "discussing" (to put it politely) my class last week? Well. I made the error of telling two (2) people.

When I walked into my classroom Monday morning, people were talking about the event as if they had actually been there. Also, the story had been changed that our instructors hate our class and say we're stupid.

This exploded into threats of talking to the dean, people actually going to the assistant program director, demands for action via facebook, and a general poor attitude. The instructors are acting differently around me. At least, I perceive that as such.

My stupid mouth...

I thought my vision was slowly fading recently. Being concerned, I scheduled an appointment with an eye doctor. He told me my eyes are overly strained from all the dang studying I've been doing, and need "computer" glasses. (Whatever those are.)

My cardiac exam on Monday went exceedingly well; with extra credit, I received a 92%. Thank you, God.

I had a patient ask me if I was married. I replied "No" but that I pray for a spouse. She told me to pray to the Virgin Mary, and I wanted to cry, not because of any affiliation with the Catholic belief system, but because I have prayed, so much and so often for a spouse, and it yields no returns.

Visited the cath lab on Friday; it was really neat, even if I had no idea what I was looking at most of the time. I saw a stent placed, and watched as the right coronary artery went from being 95% occluded to wide open, thanks to a well-placed stent. Cardiologists and interventionalists are amazing. They make this process of stent placing look so easy, when most assuredly, it is not.

Now back in the day, when I was a newbie to medicine, I participated in a voluntary internship to gain some medical experience. I recalled visiting a cath lab all those years ago, and thankfully, I blogged about it. Re-visiting who I was once is pretty comical. Take a peek here.

I was naive in the ways of the world, and I sometimes wonder if I'll look back on this blog and chuckle at my naive self, again. Perspective.

I feel, sometimes, like the more I know, the less I understand. I also feel that nursing school is the best of times and worst of times. It's complex, really. One minute, I'm flying, the next I'm doubting my self-abilities. But I'm working my butt off for this. It's rewarding, challenging, joyful, and stressful. And it's worth it.

Five more weeks. Four, if you exclude the Thanksgiving break. I hope, I pray I complete this semester successfully. It most certainly is the most difficult of them all, to date. So much busy-work on any given week, that you can't really catch up. I wrote a three page paper on nothing. It was defining PICOT. Any paper that requires one to define an acronym is just about pointless. But I digress.

Five (four) more weeks.