The past week was hard. I entered into it surprisingly calm, but by the end I found myself thinking issues that are deeper and more serious than the ones that normally enter my mind. Tuesday started off surprisingly well. My first patient was being discharged by the time I made it up to the floor, so I was reassigned and met a nice woman who was brought in for a gallbladder removal. After an exciting but fast paced Tuesday evening, I went home tired but satisfied with my day.
Wednesday’s clinical was a complete one-eighty from Tuesday's, and I left with a lot more on my mind than just our upcoming test or what to make for dinner. With my patient being discharged around 5:30, it left me with time to see other patients. Visiting with others, I felt for the first time that I was really dealing with sick people. So many patients, my first patient included,appear to be in such good health and good spirits that you almost forget that they are sick. On patient inparticular struck a cord with me. At the age of 40 this patient was diagnosed with Stage IV liver cancer. As I talked with a fellow classmate, we both agreed that we could not imagine life being cut short like that. We also discussed how a situation like that could happen. How can you go one day from being perfectly healthy to being diagnosed with a, many times, fatal prognosis? We kept asking questions and wondering why the doctors didn’t catch it earlier, or why the patient did have more symptoms that could have alerted medical staff to the right conclusion faster? I understand that they are all questions that do not have answers, yet I still found myself pondering them.
As of right now the only answer I have been able to come up with is that the bottom line is life is short. You go through it assuming that you will have decades to accomplish everything you have planned. No one ever assumes that they will be the person to drop dead of a heart attack at the age of 60 or be diagnosed with Stage IV liver cancer at the age of 40 or be the 20 year old who was hit by a bus while crossing at a busy intersection. It makes you realize that you should take the extra minutes in the morning to cuddle with the guy or girl you love. Or go out of your way to make sure you see your family and friends as often as possible. Or stop putting off those silly items on your bucket list and just do them already. Weeks and events like this past one really makes a person want to listen to that old, silly cliché and live today like it was their last.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
The Beginning...
There is something to be said for writing things down. The human brain is such a vast and wonderful thing, remembering so much and recalling incredible detail, however it is practically impossible to remember every detail about every day of your life. Enter: journal writing.
I began keeping a journal/diary/keepsake book when I was younger. It first started with having to write in a journal at school and writing boring, dull and uninteresting entries about various reading assignments or better yet, open ended questions like "If you could be an animal, what animal would you be and why?" I think my mother still has all of those marble notebooks saved in a box in our basement somewhere. Liking the idea of keeping track of my life, but not liking the required writing assignements the teacher doled out, I began writing in my own journal at home at nights before I went to bed. I would try and try again to stay consistant about it, but somehow after several weeks or months I would end up letting that journal succumb to the back of my closet, only to be brought out when my parents requested my room to be cleaned. At these times, I would reread entries and remember things I had hardly thought twice about, but seemed so importatnt on that very day. Usually then I would begin another journal that I would keep up with for several weeks before forgetting about it again.
Once I started high school I was less concerned with writing about myself, which is unfortunant, because now that I am long out of high school, I wish I could recall more of the mundane details about those days. Some of my favorite nights now that I am older are those spent reminising with my high school friends about the days when everything seemed so important, but was so simple. I got back into journal writing in my senior year, not by myself, but by the help of a friend. Janelle and I were in math class together senior year, and would always get into trouble for talking during class, so we devised a plan to write everything down in this composition book and pass back and forth. Even if we were seated on opposite sides of the room, we would find ways to pass this notebook back and forth, so we kept a running conversation going at all times.
At least once a year Janelle and I make time to look back at the notebook and laugh at ourselves for the crazy things we wrote about. From boys, to high school drama, to the seating arrangements we made for the cars to prom, that notebook reminds us about the highlights of our high school career. It is that book that made me blog through my first year of college on a site like this, and although I stopped for several years as I became consumed with college life and the first few years of school, I have decided that it was time to begin again.
Nursing school is a new chapter in my life. It is something that I hope will become not only a job but a career. The purpose of this blog is to keep track of the small stuff. How I was feeling on my first days at clinical, how I did on the first exam and how I felt when I knew that I was on my way. Will it be a complete success with entries written every day or an utter failure with this being the only entry? Only time will tell, but it will be nice to be able to look back at this in a couple of years, and see how I have grown.
I began keeping a journal/diary/keepsake book when I was younger. It first started with having to write in a journal at school and writing boring, dull and uninteresting entries about various reading assignments or better yet, open ended questions like "If you could be an animal, what animal would you be and why?" I think my mother still has all of those marble notebooks saved in a box in our basement somewhere. Liking the idea of keeping track of my life, but not liking the required writing assignements the teacher doled out, I began writing in my own journal at home at nights before I went to bed. I would try and try again to stay consistant about it, but somehow after several weeks or months I would end up letting that journal succumb to the back of my closet, only to be brought out when my parents requested my room to be cleaned. At these times, I would reread entries and remember things I had hardly thought twice about, but seemed so importatnt on that very day. Usually then I would begin another journal that I would keep up with for several weeks before forgetting about it again.
Once I started high school I was less concerned with writing about myself, which is unfortunant, because now that I am long out of high school, I wish I could recall more of the mundane details about those days. Some of my favorite nights now that I am older are those spent reminising with my high school friends about the days when everything seemed so important, but was so simple. I got back into journal writing in my senior year, not by myself, but by the help of a friend. Janelle and I were in math class together senior year, and would always get into trouble for talking during class, so we devised a plan to write everything down in this composition book and pass back and forth. Even if we were seated on opposite sides of the room, we would find ways to pass this notebook back and forth, so we kept a running conversation going at all times.
At least once a year Janelle and I make time to look back at the notebook and laugh at ourselves for the crazy things we wrote about. From boys, to high school drama, to the seating arrangements we made for the cars to prom, that notebook reminds us about the highlights of our high school career. It is that book that made me blog through my first year of college on a site like this, and although I stopped for several years as I became consumed with college life and the first few years of school, I have decided that it was time to begin again.
Nursing school is a new chapter in my life. It is something that I hope will become not only a job but a career. The purpose of this blog is to keep track of the small stuff. How I was feeling on my first days at clinical, how I did on the first exam and how I felt when I knew that I was on my way. Will it be a complete success with entries written every day or an utter failure with this being the only entry? Only time will tell, but it will be nice to be able to look back at this in a couple of years, and see how I have grown.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)