Transition, transition…. transition.

{The title of this blog post is being sung in my head to the song “Tradition” from fiddler on the roof. Try it, it might make you smile.}

I am a few months into being on the floor full time and it has not always been a smooth transition. Not only am I feeling overwhelmed with all of the information I need to learn (that I didn’t learn in nursing school, but that is another post for another day), but my family is also adjusting to a new schedule where I am gone 14-15 hours a day. It is definitely getting better and we are all getting used to the new normal, but it is a choice we all have to make every day to try and accept how things are for the foreseeable future.

I know that this blog was started to document my progress through nursing school, but I’m finding that the transition to practice is far more challenging than nursing school ever was. The bonus is that now I get paid and we all have health insurance. That being said, I’m going to try and outline some of the issues we have faced and what we are doing or plan to do to address them. I’m not saying that this is how it will be for all nurses starting out in their career, but I hope that perhaps it could help at least one person.

Opposite, crazy full schedules.
– My husband is working his same schedule which is your traditional Monday to Friday, 7am to 3pm {ish}. He also trains which means he is out of the house from 6:30pm – 10pm several nights a week. On the other hand, I am working a rotating schedule that includes every other weekend {the time we normally spend together} which means that during the week when I am at work, he doesn’t get to train or we end up with a crazy child handoff process that usually means either I don’t get to bed on time or my kid doesn’t. Sleep deprivation does not go over well for anyone in this house, so this is pretty troublesome. So what are we doing about it? We are trying very hard to be intentional with the time we have together and we are both making sacrifices along the way. There are nights where I stay up a little later so we can talk face to face for more than 5 minutes and he skips some nights of training so we can be together. It makes for some long days, but work is far more tolerable when we are on the same page. Don’t get me wrong, there are weeks where life doesn’t go according to plan and we go days without a meaningful conversation outside of disaster management. We don’t always get it right, but we are trying.

Changing roles.
– Before I started nursing school I worked from my home office. That meant I had a lot of freedom to do laundry, start dinner, and other things that are easy to do when you have a quick 10 minute break. My husband has always been good at helping around the house, but for the most part, I did the majority of those things while he was at work. {It was my choice. Not a mandate.} Not only is that impossible now, but I have limited time {and energy} when I do get to be at home. That means accomplishing these small, but necessary things might as well be climbing Mt. Everest. Even my off days have presented a bit of an issue. All I want to do is sleep until I’m done sleeping and do as little as possible. I know this isn’t feasible as an adult with responsibilities and family, well maybe not every day, but I’m finding on top of the physical exhaustion I get caregiver burnout and even though I want to do everything I used to do, it isn’t possible. {Yet another post for another day.} So what are we doing about it? Well, it comes down to communication and managing our expectations of each other. Yes there is that barrier of not really seeing each other in person for more than 5-10 minutes every day, but texting, phone calls, and using our time together to readjust and recalibrate expectations {mostly of ourselves} seems to help. We have always said, as long as we both don’t have an awful day at the same time, we are good to go. Unfortunately, it happens… And then we apologize later.

Communication
– I kind of touched on it, but communication has been interesting, especially about changing work schedules, appointments, and now with our latest life decisions, scheduling contractors. {Did I fail to mention homeschooling? Because there’s that as well.} If we didn’t have a Google calendar that we can both see, I don’t think we would be able to make it. I am also trying to convince him to put the Walmart grocery app on his phone so he can add groceries and get notifications about pick ups. That being said, I get why he doesn’t want one more app. I often get overwhelmed by the number of apps that I use daily and long for the days of paper calendars {even though I still have two… one in the kitchen and one in my purse}, apps that allow us to communicate even if not directly has helped a ton. I’m sure there are more wonderful apps out there that people use to organize their lives, but I’m too tired to find them. Any suggestions are always welcome!

Date Night
– I feel like this one is kind of a joke at this point. It is so important for couples to spend time together {with AND without their children}. However, right now our dates include yelling over chain saws and trips to the hardware store. It’s silly, but with all that is going on right now, there really isn’t much to do on a date night. We aren’t partiers and the thought of putting my fingers inside a bowling ball makes me want to cut my fingers off with a spoon. I can get as rough and tumble as the next tomboy, but every now and then a girl just wants to put on a little extra makeup, a cute outfit, and have her husband ooh and aah over her effort. To be honest, that sounds great in theory, but it also sounds like a whole lot of work and effort that I just don’t have the energy for. So for now, our dates look a lot like a DIY network show and you know what? I’m 100% okay with that. We are an awesome team and doing projects together makes my heart happy. Some day soon we will get all dressed up and hit the town, but I am content for now with old baseball caps, work gloves, and sweat.

Mom Guilt
– If you know, then you know. You are tired. You are exhausted. You have been on your feet for 12+ hours and all you want to do is sit and not talk to anyone for 5 minutes, but you can’t because it is bedtime and you know they miss you and you do miss them, however you are so tired the thought of dodging the lego bombs on the floor to get to your kids bed it just too much and you really could just sit there and cry until tomorrow. Just me? But seriously, I feel awful when I get home because I am just so spent emotionally and physically that there really isn’t much left for my son. We have a routine where he gets a kiss with our bodies as far apart as possible when I walk in the door before I start the long process of decontamination. A little kiss buys me some time so I can shower and wash off the covid and frustration. Thankfully, his bedtime is shortly after I get home {before actually, but we have wiggle room now that he doesn’t have to report to a school building by a certain time. Homeschool perk numero uno.} Like a true mother, every time I think I would rather cut off my tired and aching feet than walk the 10 feet to his bedroom to tuck him in, I feel awful and I do my best to chastise myself for not embracing the beauty of my kid wanting to be tucked in. I swear, I should have been Catholic. I’m really good at feeling guilty. So what do I do to fix it? I suck it up and dodge the legos and tuck him in and then collapse into my bed for a short night of sleep before I get up and do it all again the next day. That and when I have a day off, I do try and spend as much time with him as possible filling up his adorable little quality time love tank. To be honest, I don’t really have a good solution for this one. I think that is the plight of every mom everywhere regardless of her chosen profession.

There you have it. I’m sure there are more things that I’m not thinking of right now, but since I hav been working on this post for over 3 weeks, I’m just going to call it good and publish it. Not that people are beating down my door for more content, but at least then you know that I am still alive.

Freezer Food Fun

As it turns out, small children sometimes leave freezer doors open overnight in a climate where garages reach temperatures well over 120 degrees.  This temperature is not conducive to keeping frozen foods frozen.  Before my preceptorship was scheduled to start {and also before it was cancelled}, I spent two days prepping dinners for the boys to pop into the crock pot or oven.  The freezer was beautifully full of both homemade meals and some fun stuff that is convenient, but nothing I can eat {stupid gluten}.  It was a glorious feeling until the morning we woke up to go to school/work and stepped into a puddle of melted goo on the garage floor.  Nothing in the freezer was salvageable.  No prepared meals, no packaged stuff, and none of the meat {I think that might have hurt the most}.  We did okay restocking the store-bought stuff, but I just didn’t have it in me to start all over with the meal prepping.  And if I’m being completely honest, the crock pot meals weren’t really all that great to begin with.  There’s just something about food sitting in a crock pot all day that makes it taste like every other meal regardless of what it is.  Unless you are making soup or stew that is designed to simmer all day to get all the flavors together, it isn’t the best.

Flash forward to 12 hour shifts with a 2+ hour commute time {there and back combined, I’m not that crazy}.  By the time I get home at night, I do not have the energy to make and eat food and I can’t go around eating a gluten free pizza every night I work.  I mean I could, but I don’t really want to.  So I did some research, bought some groceries, and spent an entire day shopping, prepping, and freezing enough meals to once again have a freezer full of goodness.  Let me tell you, it is glorious.  Absolutely wonderful.

I love my husband.  He is amazing and can fix just about anything around the house or in the garage, but his culinary expertise ends somewhere around macaroni and cheese.  When my dinner after my first 12 hour shift consisted of cookies, chips, and queso dip and a giant stomach ache for the rest of the night, he put his foot down.  He {we} decided that wasn’t good for me, especially since it is shocking how many calories I burn at work.  It also makes me feel so much better {an a lot less guilty} knowing that my boys are eating good food while I’m at work and it sure has been wonderful coming home to dinner I can eat.

I say all of that to tell you, whether you are a nursing student, a brand new nurse, or an old curmudgeon that’s been at this for an eternity, you might want to consider some freezer meals.  So far I have made:

• Zucchini lasagna
• Chicken, broccoli, rice, and cheese casserole
• Shepherd’s pie
• Chicken pot pie
  (a regular size pie and little self-serve pies for the nights the boys eat glutenized dinner)
• Meatloaf
• Enchiladas

Unfortunately, I forgot to leave instructions on the dinners so my husband ended up baking some of them at 350 for hours.  We are still in the trial and error phase with these, so I think some may have to be defrosted a bit before baking so that it doesn’t take until I get home {many hours after our “normal” dinner time} for dinner to be ready.

Once we try them out and get the reheating down right, I might even take the time to write up the recipes and directions.  There are no guarantees that this will happen any time soon, but you never know!

Do you have a favorite go-to meal you like to freeze and reheat for those nights you don’t feel like cooking?  I would love to get a few more ideas.

That’s nothing to sneeze at.

Let me set the scene…

It is winter break.  The boy was celebrated, the house was cleaned, the dog sitter (and then backup dog sitter) were scheduled, the car was packed, and we were all headed to bed early to accommodate the 3:00am departure.  We were dreaming of a little time away and we were more than ready to celebrate Christmas with our family.  Much like a delightful dream {literally and figuratively}, we got a rude awakening around 10:30pm to the tune of insane and ferocious barking.  Our smaller dog was losing her ever-loving-mind and attempting to get through the windows to get whatever was outside.  It turns out, it was merely our new neighbors moving things into their house, at 10:30pm, in suits.  Thankfully, it wasn’t anything important, especially considering the uptick in break-ins and car thefts in our area.  I went in to check on the boy and my mom-thermometer hands detected a very bad, no good, horrible situation which was then confirmed by a real thermometer.  104.6.  Say it with me now…. NOOOOOOOOOO!

We stripped the boy down to his skivvies, gave him cool washcloths and started the Tylenol and Motrin rotation {and all the cartoons}.  His temp came down nicely and by 3:30am, we had him tucked into bed between us.  Deep down, I knew that we were not going to travel for Christmas, but I was secretly hopeful that this was a total fluke and we could get on the road the next day.  Boy was I wrong.  Two visits to the walk-in clinic later, one for the boy and one for the husband, they were both diagnosed with the flu and a double-whammy of flu plus a sinus infection for my husband.  To say they were miserable was an understatement.  I will say, I got a lot of practice of keeping track of two different dosing schedules and balancing the care of two very sad, very sick “patients”.

We dutifully quarantined ourselves with the exception of me running for grocery pickup.  For nine days we stayed inside our house.  Around day five, there was a glimmer of hope that the fevers were gone, but they came back with a vengeance so we started the quarantine clock over again.  This might just be the second worst Christmas of my life.  {The never-to-be-topped “winner” of that title is right after my son was born.  That’s another story for another day.}

As it turns out, it was miserable and wonderful all at the same time.  We were all forced to slow down and take it easy.  There were many naps, all the snuggles, and lots of tv time.  It was a stark contrast to our usual winter breaks which include a mad dash north, a cram-packed schedule, and then a very long, very rough drive back south.  I was devastated at the time, but it turns out it was just what we needed.  A “real” Christmas at home, even if it was fever-filled.

 

I can see the light.

Folks, it is here.  It’s real.  The end of this program is within my reach.  I have turned in all of the paperwork I know to turn in, I have completed all of my case studies, and now I just need to study for my final HESI.  I’m very concerned about having to take it via ProctorU since my experience last time was insanely frustrating.  However, I just keep reminding myself that this is a means to an end and I can’t let the frustration and aggrivation take away from the fact that I am there.  The finish line is right there.  Barring any horrible, very bad, unfortunate events, I will be graduated and eligible for the NCLEX in about two weeks.  It is crazy to think about when this all started I was scared and nervous and really off-my-rocker excited.  It was an uphill climb from that point on, but looking back, I know it was all worth it.

Now I look forward to starting my career, whatever that looks like.  I just need the, “we changed our minds and we don’t want to hire you” dreams to stop.

In the meantime, I’ll  be at home, teaching second grade, studying for my exam, and reading up on critical care while I bleach everything.

Do you hear that?

…

 

That is the sound of the collective sigh of relief from pretty much everyone in my cohort, but no one as loud as me, I believe.  I have to say, I am enjoying the down time very much.  I’m finding ways to refill my heart and soul which is basically baking and crafts.  The number of cookies that are in my house is absolutely insane and I have already given away dozens.  Fear not, I will also be sharing with my family when we head home for Christmas.  The Christmas crafts are bringing me great joy and much to my husband’s dismay, I keep finding reasons to buy more presents.  What can I say?  I love giving people gifts that make them smile even if receiving gifts makes me feel super awkward.

I know the last couple of posts were a bit… dramatic, maybe.  Worry not.  I’ve got my people and they are on my corner and they are amazing.  There is still some underlying “stuff” that is simmering under the surface, but it isn’t anything that can be resolved any time soon and must just be survived.

I am anxious and excited to hear where I will be posted for my preceptorship.  I’m sure that won’t be announced until days before I go to the hospital, but wherever I end up I am determined to learn as much as humanly possible.

So there it is, folks.  Winter break is doing good things for me.  I’m getting my optimism back and the anxiety is a a minimum.  Life is good.  In fact, it has always been good.

Let me explain…

Yeah right.  Like I could sum up anything.

I know I have not been all rainbows, puppies, and sunshine as of late {in the off chance I actually post something}, but I’m not gonna lie, life has been hard.  The end of the semester couldn’t come soon enough, but the good news is it looks like all the hard work has paid off.  I am a few exams away from several weeks of freedom and let me tell you, I really, really need it.

December has been a tough month since oh round about 10 years ago when I lost my maternal grandma.  Fast forward a year, and it was the first December without my other grandma, whose birthday is on Christmas Eve no less.  She is a big part in why I am in nursing school, blazing the trail many, many decades ago {with seven children and a farm to run}.  Then my last grandparent died days before Christmas a few years later and we had a trifecta of suck.  This year we get to add in one more December funeral and yet another December birthday to celebrate without the one to be celebrated.  

I love Christmas, like LOVE Christmas, but it gets more and more difficult to get in the spirit with each passing year.  At Christmas, we get to see the best in people as they go out of their way to be kind to one another. The songs {Little Drummer Boy is one of my favorites – Jars of Clay or Pentatonix to be exact.}, buying gifts for people, spending time with family, baking cookies, and best of all, celebrating my little miracle boy’s birthday.  {How on God’s green Earth is he already turning 8 this year?!}  Now, if you throw in some fresh snow, a full moon, and big flakes falling from the sky, I might just pee my pants in happiness.  Seriously, this makes me so happy, I can’t even put it into words.  Walking at night in a snowfall is something that can’t be described, only experienced.  The crisp scent in the air, the sound of boots crunching in snow against the silence of the darkness, a moon shining down and making the snow sparkle, a special hand to hold, and a sense of calm and peace that I have never experienced anywhere else.  I suppose some people get this same feeling from the mountains, or the beach, but for me, nothing can top a nighttime walk in fresh snow.

Here I am, barely able to hold back tears at any given moment.  I’m not sure what specific emotion I’m feeling but I can tell you this, it has been one hell of a year and I’m not just talking about nursing school.  Come to think of it, I’m not sure that my husband and I have ever had a “down” year where life was still and boring and contained not a single tragedy.  This year though, this one has been the hardest years of our lives. I can’t recap it all, but death and mourning seem to have been the reigning theme.

I’m not saying all of this to get pity or other such nonsense, if you know me at all, you know that isn’t even in my DNA.  I guess it is more to try and sort it all out for myself because let’s be honest, I’m a hot mess.  I’m emotionally unstable and I’m pretty sure one more thing will send me to my knees.  Everything is just… wrong this year.

I’m forcing myself through the motions and doing all the things that bring me even a moment of joy, including baking a freaking cheesecake for a friend the night before our exit exam.  Even if I don’t get to the ecstatic, Buddy the Elf level of excitement, I’ll be happy to make it through with my heart still intact.

 

Hello Darkness my old friend

Anxiety… an exploration through gifs.

Happy finals week, everyone.

 

 

What is below the basement?

People talk about hitting rock bottom, but what do you call it when you get lower than that?  {Don’t worry, I’m healthy, my family is health with the exception of the copious amounts of snot coming out of my child’s nose.}  I started this semester behind emotionally and mentally.  I just wasn’t ready for another semester after the brutal demands of the summer.  We are now a few weeks in and I still don’t feel like I’ve even hit baseline in the emotional stability department.

If I were to outline all of the things that have happened in and to my family since I started this program, you would offer to sign me up for wine of the month club.  It has been relentless and exhausting dealing with one situation after the next.  Adding this to the high demands of nursing school, maintaining a healthy relationship with my husband, raising my youngest to be a good man, and supporting my oldest as he finds his way in the world as a man, seems absolutely insurmountable.  The best way I can think to describe it is:

After all, it is scientific.  Our bodies can compensate for injury for so long before it gives up.  {Nursing 101. You’re welcome.}  Not only are our adrenals getting maxed out {to the point where no amount of magnesium lotion will help}, but our bodies and minds just get tired of fighting.

To help myself out and give my brain a break, I have made time for myself one night a week to get out of the house and be around people who love me and support me {and attempt to choke me or break my arms}.  I have lost the 10 pounds I gained over the summer by changing my eating habits and ensuring I’m getting in some sort of exercise at least a few times a week.  I get sleep.  Not always all that well, but I am in bed for at least 6-7 hours a night.  {Yes, I know it should be more, but we are here discussing nursing school so let’s be real with the expectations.} I have even adjusted the expectations I place on myself and I am accepting the fact that I may just barely scrape by this semester.  All in all, I’m doing all the things I can to take care of myself without taking time from some other piece of the to-do list pie chart.

I’m not trying to throw myself a pity part {although that does happen from time to time}, but more to tell others out there that it is possible to get through this, even when it feels like there is another tragedy hiding around every corner just waiting to suck the life out of you.  This is hard.  Much harder than I ever thought nursing school could ever be, but it will be so worth it.  To know that you made it through your entire program without going to prison for shanking someone for cutting in front of you in the coffee line will be your reward.  Well, that and a nursing license.

I say all of this to tell you, you can do it.  You will do it.  Keep putting one foot in front of the other and take everything one day at a time.  It feels like an eternity, but the end of the program will come and you will march your happy butt up in your sparkling white scrubs and get that pin attached to your chest with pride… even if it kills you.  {Just kidding.  There is no time for dying in nursing school.  That’s an unexcused absence.}

This is your permission to have a meltdown.  This is your permission to have yourself an epic pity party.  This is your permission to cry just because you are exhausted.  What you don’t have permission to do is give up.

Hear me when I say:

You {we} absolutely can do this.  

And you {we} will.

Just don't give up.

 

The Nursing Student Phenomenon

When I started my first semester of nursing school, I was excited, anxious, and to be honest, well rested.  I looked forward to school each day an I was ready to do whatever I needed to to move on to the next step {even if that meant “learning” how to make a bed for 8 hours}.  I enjoyed my drive to school {which was kind of a novelty considering I hadn’t driven to work in 9 years} and I was generally unfazed by the tasks I had to do.  Now that isn’t to say that there weren’t moments of sheer and utter panic or crying jags from being completely overwhelmed, but by and large, I handled it like a champ.  I was optimistic about moving on to the second semester.  Let me tell you, that lasted about 7 seconds.

When summer semester hit, I knew it was going to be challenging.  What I didn’t realize, was just how hard it would be.  I have said it a million times {just maybe not on here} that nursing school is challenging, but not in the way that most would suspect.  I might be an outlier on the spectrum because I have a background in healthcare and I am a grown woman with responsibilities that are daily, mandatory and definitely do not fall under needing opening a book to read a chapter.  Learning the medical stuff, it is challenging, but not all that hard, even with a condensed semester.  Do you know what was the part that almost ruined me?  The stress of trying to manage my home and still find time to study.  My husband is hands down, the best man on this planet and really took on a lot of the things around the house that I neglected for the sake of studying.  It didn’t help that a lot of tough situations happened to fall during this timeframe and my husband and I took turns losing our ever-loving minds.  {We have always maintained that as long as both of us don’t have a meltdown at the same time, we are good to go.  Heaven help us when that day comes.}  It was hard.  It strained our marriage. {By no means am I saying there was ever any doubt we would make it through.  We have an impressive track record of unbelievable situations that we have blazed through together, so let me assure you, nursing school will not be our undoing.}  Our youngest felt the tension.  I felt like the sitter was raising my child.  I missed my family.  I missed my friends.  It was HARD.

My break between semesters was the most refreshing and needed break I think I have ever taken in my entire life.  I can’t tell you that by the end I wasn’t ready to have a schedule back and get the show on the road as far as school goes, but I did my best to enjoy the down time.  Heck, I even made a giant dinner for my circle of trust as a thank you for still being my friend after I was almost completely incommunicado for the better part of 4 months.  {Apparently, they want me to say thank you and apologize with food more often.  I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them pick a fight just so I make them make up food.  Just kidding… sort of.}

Before I knew it, I was eyeball deep in paperwork, drug cards, and case studies.  Let me tell you, this semester has just started and I already have the end-of-the-semester exhaustion going on.  I am borderline apathetic and I have uttered the words “they won’t kick me out for that” more times than I can count.  We are only two weeks in, people, and I am already fried.  I am forgetting the most basic tasks and finding objects in places they don’t belong.  {Highlighters do not need to be refrigerated.  You’re welcome.}  I honestly have no idea how to get motivated other than to just take it a day at a time and pray constantly that I don’t pull a Brittney or run away to an island somewhere and sell macramé to survive.

I’m not sure if this is “normal” or not.  Judging by the reactions and faces of my fellow students, I’m not the only one in this predicament.  This makes me think that this is just normal and it too shall pass.  Hopefully.

We gotta keep ’em separated.

I am finding it very difficult to keep the school stress and the home stress from combining together to make some horrible, volatile substance that is bound to explode my your face and make a giant mess and yet another thing to take care of and clean up.

I have made my lists of things I need to do in the near future {I love lists.  I make lists of the lists I want to make.  It’s a sickness.}  This list includes finishing most of the odds and ends/busy kind of work that includes drug cards, printing out power points, and knocking out a handful of care maps.  With the holiday coming up, I have an extra day to attack the current work load so I’m trying my best to be optimistic.  However, my powers of personal persuasion are quickly diminishing as the home life stuff starts piling up.  Granted, it is nothing I can actually do to correct or alleviate (sickness, worry, what-if’s, and self doubt), so I’m kind of up a creek on that front.

I spent a good portion of last Saturday deep cleaning most of my house.  {Let’s face it, doing fun stuff with my people is way more enticing than cleaning.}  With that said, I should be pretty good to go for at least the summer as far as big cleaning jobs go.  {Don’t judge me.  My house isn’t disgusting or anything.  I just don’t dust every inch of my home every day, or even every week.  And I have two dogs.  And a kid.  And a husband.  And well, I live in a giant sandbox.}  It’s just that it seems that when it rains, it pours, and lately my family has been reaching down deep to muster the emotional fortitude to face one crappy situation after the next.  It just sucks and while I can rationalize my way out of the weight of the worry and concern most of the time, there are days where it just sits too heavy to shake.

I say all of that to say, that there are good days, and there are bad days.  {And there are even more of the in-between thanks to my amazing support system, led by my by husband, whom makes all of this possible… in more ways than one.}

I know this is a means to an end.
{Seeing my childhood dreams come to fruition.)
I know that there is an end-point.
{With small milestones to keep up the faith.}
I know that it will all be worth it.
{Doing what I was created to do will be worth all of it.}

I know all of this, but I think the part that people {well meaning, supportive, loving people} forget about is the middle part.  The hard part.  {The part that is currently the driving force behind the chips and licorice I am currently consuming.}

I know I will make it through this, even if it means I get a dreaded B.  Hopefully I can also pick up some better coping mechanisms along the way.