what blog?

I have been such a blog slacker. It's not on purpose... it's just this thing called nursing school that has completely consumed my life. I absolutely love it though. This week was ROUGH, but ultimately it's the best decision I've ever made. I'm not a huge fan of the school work just because school has never came easy for me. However, I recently got a huge blessing of finally being diagnosed with A.D.D. It's a blessing because I finally was put on medicine, and my grades jumped from all C's to making A's and B's on all my tests. It's crazy that I struggled with it all this time, and I finally get to a place where my instructor sat me down and said you really need to be tested. She probably saved my nursing career.

So school is good. Clinical time is even better though. 3 weeks ago I would have told you there was no way I could give an old person a bath and change their diaper. That's just a lot of old person to look at. It doesn't bother me at all though. My first day of clinical time I helped change a colostomy bag... and I didn't puke. It's awesome to come home from a stressful, hard day and know that despite how your day felt... you made a difference in someone's life. I don't plan on spending my nursing career at a nursing home. However, it is crazy rewarding. People don't get the care they deserve at all. Just last week I got emotional during a total bed bath because my resident hurt so bad from not being turned like she should. She wasn't mad at me. She trusted me to care for her, but I can't watch her the other 5 days or the week I'm not at clinical.

I've been pretty good at staying positive. I know it's the only way I'm going to make it through this next year of school. This week though... hellish. It all started this past weekend when I got sick. It may be allergies. It may be a respiratory thing I picked up at the nursing home. Regardless... I felt lousy this week even AFTER a visit to the doctor. It didn't help that we have this horrible [but necessary] thing called Med Check-Offs that start Monday. This past week we've hard to look through a bunch of papers that include physician's orders, patient summaries, MAR's, and scheduled med reports. We have to find errors, and get clarification for them from the "doctor" [a.k.a. our instructor]. Tuesday she gave us a deadline for questions for Friday [yesterday], and about two seconds later when uncapping a syringe I stabbed myself with a 22 gauge, 1 /1/2" needle. In my thumb. I am the queen of freak accidents. It hurt. Not terribly bad. BUT it was the straw that broke the camel's back. About 2 minutes later the tears started. Luckily it was lunch time, but I dried it up pretty fast. So I thought. I came back in to study med check-off stuff during lunch. I proceeded to cry during the entire lunch break. My instructor wasn't much help with the ever encouraging words "quit crying Megan". I eventually calmed myself to make it through my afternoon class, but it wasn't a good day. I was ready to quit.

It wasn't bad again until yesterday. I had a "I'm a genius moment" Thursday afternoon thanks to said instructor. The same instructor proceeded to cause me to go into hysterical sobbing Friday for about 3 hours. Here's the thing... call me crazy, but I need encouragement. I'm good at patient care. I'm social. I try to help everyone, and keep all my classmates upbeat. All my other classmates talk about how they always think they've done horrible during a skill, and than one of the instructors will give them a hug and/or say they did a good job. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I get zero encouragement at school. None. I've literally said I feel stupid [not even fishing for a compliment. Legit how I feel sometimes.] and the instructor[s] say nothing. Yesterday was my breaking point. I went into complete hysterics after school. I would be fine, and then I'd start crying. This continued for 3 hours. I figured out why it gets to me... cause it's mainly just this ONE instructor. She's my favorite instructor. PLUS she's a freaking licensed minister! And Women's Minister at her church. Yet she does this to me. I don't even think she realizes she does it, and I'm not even the only one she does it to.

Needless to say it was a rough week... particularly yesterday. I don't even think it would have been so bad if I'd not been sick all week, but still. Rough. I seriously thought I'd lost my mind. There have been theories from others that the instructors may not encourage me because they think I don't need it because I'm always smiling and encouraging others. Secretly I'm dying though. I'm riding the line of wanting to talk to the instructor, but at the same time I don't want to be "that person". I'm just struggling with the validity of my frustrations. Maybe I'm absolutely ridiculous for needing encouragement from my instructors.

Oh well... this week CLEARLY wasn't a week for me to start blogging about nursing school. I'm not too bad though... one bad week and I've been there since January. That's not a bad quota. This week is bound to be better. I'm not going to let them break me. Pray for me people. It's going to be a crazy ride.