…but my 2nd year nursing student mentor is. And my massage therapist in training that worked out that weird knot in my shoulder today is too.

and guess what? they both want to go to medical school!

what is it with 18 year olds helping along the “mature” thirty-something through school?

i know, i know. it doesn’t really say anything about me but wow is it ever awkward?! and humbling. i was always the big shot around campus, you know. maybe one day i will be again.

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First day of lab and we survived the bed bath! Our teacher was a great lady, making us all comfortable, drawing the quiet ones out to participate, making donning PPE a race and getting everyone to laugh.

Between that and postponing homework for a night of Glee and committing to some kind of exercise daily, I feel so much better. And I’ve realized why this is such a challenge for me — my anxiety. I take medicine that I wanted to get off but a great counselor advised me to try school with the help first. That’s what professionals are for. But even with that help – or crutch as it sometimes feels like – I’ve felt on the edge of breaking. Too much input and not near enough time to process. Hence I heard that same voice in my ear with the other half of the best way to manage anxiety disorder – exercise.

I must exercise. If you have diagnosed anxiety like I do, you need to exercise too.

Yesterday it was throwing ball in the park with my guy. Today I went for a walk and ended up in front of school to meet the kids at the exact right time.

I know I won’t always remember or be disciplined enough to get off my tush, but the hour not spent studying to physically move is so worth it. My mind is clear, I feel ready to tackle hours of reading, essay writing and skill videos. And most of all the stress is way WAY lower. Time to get to it!

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I never thought this day would come. I always wanted to be so terribly careful about I said. I wanted to have a message. Be a leader. Be someone, something, anything. But I have a family, a job, I’m in NURSING school and I’d like to write about it all on my blog. So the day has come.

This blog is officially a “whatever I feel like it today” blog.

Today there was panic and loneliness, feeling weird, forced extrovertedness, success, laughes and kale chips! Wanna hear about it?

Going back to school is a dream come true. As school drew nearer over the summer, my long awaited excitement slowly became a dawning anxiety and nameless general fear.

The first days were a blur, keeping my head above water, orientating myself to college as a mature student, to a system of education in a different country, to a university nursing program instead of the diploma one, to new people, to buses that don’t go the direction I think they will, to where to park and how to find food.

The second week was one long sugar craving. Seriously.

The third turned serious. Two quizzes and a first assignment due changed everything, and I went even more overboard than needed, totally killed a quiz my eleven year old daughter could have passed and am rethinking everything.

Hence, I’m blogging.

But today, wow, what a rollercoaster.

It occurred to me that we have our first skills lab on Monday – we get to bathe each other! – and that I’d better ask around to the few people I feel comfortable with to find a partner. My efforts gave me the impression that everyone else seemed to have paired up already and that I was a really late bloomer and would probably have a total stranger giving me a bed bath! This did not help that general nervousness and overwhelmedness.

I took my sad sorry self to the library to watch the skills video in preparation and found that my cat had eaten through my headphone wires. Strike two for the day. I kicked myself out of my hidey hole however and went over to the “caf” which in Canadian college speak means the cafeteria. And yes, it has it’s very own… you guessed it… Tim Hortons. When I saw some girls in my classes, I literally forcefully willed that I must ask them to sit and chat over lunch together. Natural for me would have been to sulk.

Miraculously it worked. We ate, we “studied” in the library, I found someone available to partner with before our next class, our teacher had us play a nursing board game for two hours which was JUST the break that everyone needed, we laughed and I came home to make mini crustless quiches and kale chips for supper. My ten year old son is eating the leftover kale by the handful as I type. I kid you not! Try them, you’ll love them. Just take it from me… don’t overdo the salt!

G’night, back to student mode.

p.s. and anyhow i really need somewhere to break grammatical rules and not captitalize personal pronouns just so i can pretend i’m heckling professors and their personal pet peeves. not to mention, i NEED somewhere to write creatively because they are making me be straightforward and concise and direct and… worst of all, without metaphor! /swoon

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Night after night I help people. Reposition change feed. It’s my job and there’s hardly need for thanks.

But when gratitude comes my way, it is nice. Mostly because they are served with a smile. Lately, too, with a “Thank you very much.”

Yes, that exact phrase.

My patients have been saying thank you just like the King of Rock-N-Roll.

Have you ever seen this almost surreal photo of Richard Nixon shaking hands with Elvis Presley on a visit to the White House? I much rather his earlier look and wish he’d never gotten rid of this particular hat, but that’s beside the point.

I blinked, was confused and finally came round to the fact, yes, Nixon and Elvis could have conceivably stood in the same room together. The story of how they got there is fascinating, amusing and colorful. Don’t miss it. I’m happy to have read it. It spices “Thank you very much” at 4 am up with a bit of history.

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At the beginning of October, it was my one year anniversary working night shift.

In the land of long-term care, nights are the most unique shift of all three. Where days are the rising and afternoons are for being tucked back in, the first question I get from new people on nights is “So what do you guys do all night?” You’re about to find out, darling.

People don’t really sleep all night. We have nomads and behaviours, nighthawks looking for coffee and chocolate milk and then early risers who need more of the same. Assisting with suppositories and enemas – fun! – is how we end our day, and there is the universally hated task of wheelchair cleaning if you’re bored till then.

I’ve learned to be a bit of a psych nurse, more bodyguard than I ever wanted to be and how very many ways there are to get meds into someone.

Mostly our task is to keep them clean and dry from incontinence, but after that, the sky’s the limit. Anyone who works nights develops the really handy and extremely necessary superpower of knowing when someone is comfortable in bed. Because the better they sleep, the better everyone sleeps – well, except you.

On nights you learn how to make occupied beds faster than you ever thought possible, you are always under-appreciated, always younger than your patients and you get to experience life as a vampire only with none of the brooding men for tag along. No Spike, no Angel. Darn it!

We, night staffers, stick together. Like glue. With so few of us against so many, we have our assignments but help anywhere help is needed. In fact, we run. One minute, the dark halls are cavernous spaces with no sign of life. The next minute half the hallway is teeming with activity that you didn’t know was brewing under the surface a few seconds ago. You need about five more pair of hands, but all you usually get is one, so we run about doing our version of triage, keeping everyone safe until you can convince dementia-stricken minds that it really is 3am and not 7 or see what else may be the matter.

Relationships with our residents are different at night. The ones that waken you get to know extremely well. You turn into one of their favorites and don’t understand how everyone else has a hard time with them. It’s true that there are some I never see, but from the ones I do, I get way more high fives, hugs thumbs-up and giggles than ever before. Just fine with me. The man that begged me not to leave his room last week had tears of loneliness in his eyes to break any heart. And I had the time to sit and the time to wipe them away. Better that real time. That’s nursing.

It’s certainly been a clinical smörgåsbord of a year.

and what’s it done to me?

All of the elements above have made me much more confident in my own skills – to respond to an emergency, to prioritize tasks and get them done efficiently, to make judgement calls, to flex growing biceps of experience and ever-expanding quads of an adult consciousness. Because sometimes rules really are meant to be broken. Can you believe that I’m growing into a rebel? Me either.

My creativity comes alive at night in ways I hadn’t experienced before. There are nights when I impatiently wait through checks and rounds and dishes and call bells for break, that moment when I can furiously type in the half dozen blog posts that have suddenly sprung to mind all at once. I sit at the desk, I ignore everyone else, I type into my ipod.

Other nights, we talk and have coffee on break. Somehow it’s always talk about food and our sleep or the lack thereof. A warning however: they will wake-ring-fall-cry-yell-beg-bleed exactly in the middle of break. Don’t get too comfy with that cup of coffee.

Night shift really works for me. Just me just my residents just my delicious break time.

It’s flip-flopped home life a little. Breakfast might be breakfast or it might be supper and our coffee pot at home is exercised twice day.

I like that I’ve found my groove. I like that I have a voice. And it’s heard and respected. Very lucky am I, to have a nurse that listens, respects and doesn’t think my IQ is in the gutter.

Change your vantage point, change yourself. I’m so glad that I shifted. One more year to go. Because I’ve already applied to enter a BScN program next fall!

ps. There’s a new book out called The Night Shift.

It’s by Canadian Dr. Brian Goldman and he talks all about his experiences as an ER doc working, you bet, the night shift. I can’t wait to pick this one up!

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