have you read Longfellow’s poem about Florence Nightingale? the romantic side of me is swooning now that I have. see Longfellow is famous in my part of the world for another “little” poem named Evangeline. therefore he is forever enshrined in my heart for knowing, caring and immortalizing two very important parts of my life: my French heritage and my adoration of nursing and Florence particularly.

Santa Filomena

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Whene’er a noble deed is wrought,
Whene’er is spoken a noble thought,
Our hearts, in glad surprise,
To higher levels rise.

The tidal wave of deeper souls
Into our inmost being rolls,
And lifts us unawares
Out of all meaner cares.

Honour to those whose words or deeds
Thus help us in our daily needs,
And by their overflow
Raise us from what is low!

Thus thought I, as by night I read
Of the great army of the dead,
The trenches cold and damp,
The starved and frozen camp, -

The wounded from the battle-plain,
In dreary hospitals of pain,
The cheerless corridors,
The cold and stony floors.

Lo! in that house of misery
A lady with a lamp I see
Pass through the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room.

And slow, as in a dream of bliss,
The speechless sufferer turns to kiss
Her shadow, as it falls
Upon the darkening walls.

As if a door in heaven should be
Opened and then closed suddenly,
The vision came and went,
The light shone and was spent.

On England’s annals, through the long
Hereafter of her speech and song,
That light its rays shall cast
From portals of the past.

A Lady with a Lamp shall stand
In the great history of the land,
A noble type of good,
Heroic womanhood.

Nor even shall be wanting here
The palm, the lily, and the spear,
The symbols that of yore
Saint Filomena bore.

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…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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It seems so easy. You just stop going. Sunday comes around, and you will yourself not to care. Later as you get accustomed to lingering over coffee and longer than normal web-surfing sessions, all the guilt is gone and you savour the morning. Eventually, the fact that any given day of the week is actually Sunday may totally escape your notice. That’s where I am. I have no need for church.

Except when something doesn’t go my way, when unsure, when something big is coming up.  And it’s not really church that I need, but that’s when I feel the loss of my faith because… because well, the habit of prayer has been especially annoying. It has indeed become a habit over the years. If I’m feeling down, unconsciously it pours forth… Our Father… Hail Mary… Please help, please hear, be with… me…

I call out inside to that being or person or creator that I once thought was there, I catch myself in the lie… or in the uncertainity — at best.

Do agnostists pray? Do atheists? And if not, what is there to do with those feelings of need and loneliness? Can the logic of my argument for there not being a higher power comfort in the dark of the night?

I don’t know.

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