Beware! The Flesh-Eating Zombies Are Coming To Get You

I was up entirely too early for a Sunday morning, but I had to come relieve Mom from her graveyard shift at Mimi's, where we're all taking turns sitting with her while she continues to recovery; hopefully, the company keeps her spirits higher than if she were here all alone. I really feel as if she can spend the coming days in the week alone. Even though she's using a walker, she really doesn't seem to need it, only utilizing it because she's been told that she has to do so.

I spent most of the first hour that I was here reviewing Blackboard for everything that I have to do in the coming week: there's the sociology paper on the history of pornography and an analysis of the arguments that repeated exposure leads to desensitized empathy towards sex and possible intimate partner violence in relationships. It's due a week from Tuesday, and I feel that it's actually coming along very well. I also have the bonus assignment to compile the information related to attending the Sigma Theta Tau meeting last week to submit to Dr. Shelton for a few additional percentage points, the paper that I have to write on my definition of nursing (more to be revealed on this soon), a paper on the family dynamics of addiction a.k.a. "The Lost Child and the Chief Enabler: Addiction as a Family Disease," and a paper for my Technical Composition class, which I'm pretty sure I'll be writing on health promotion in nursing students. Because there are so many preventative and promotional applications that I'm attempting to make in my life: quit smoking, eat breakfast, floss, 30 minutes of exercise every day, etc., I'm doing some research to substantiate the benefits of doing so.

The idea goes along with my belief that no one is going to pay any attention to a nurse whose patient-collaborative treatment plan cites a long list of lifestyle alterations that an individual should make when the nurse is clearly well within the BMI chart's rating of "overweight" or "obese," smoking a pack or more a day, and not incorporating the American Heart Association's suggested guidelines for proper nutritional options. Furthermore, after Friday's Pathophysiology lecture on Pulmonary Disorders and the actual physiological changes that come along with daily tobacco use, I don't want to be a statistic. I've tried to quit one hundred times in the past, but now is the time to really do what I can to make it work. There has been some talk amongst my fellow SNA-ers that we also consider options for a yearlong health promotion as our umbrella community service activity and perform basic alterations in our own lives to map out as inspiration for anyone looking to us as role models. All of this, of course, goes along with my slowly developing (likely ever-evolving) definition of nursing, further inspiration for my research.

Do one in five relationships really begin online these days? Match.com seems to think that's the case. At least, their commercials suggest that much. I don't know if that's really true, but if it is, then maybe it's a statistic I wouldn't necessarily mind adding onto. More on this later as well.

It doesn't really look like Halloween outside. There are no kids in costumes running all over way too early. I hear no haunted music echoing from the interiors of any spot around here. Well, it is not yet eleven in the morning, so maybe there's much more to come later today. We'll see.

Being Right Isn't Always A Good Thing

Why do celebrity deaths always happen in threes? I don't know that one could actually consider the idea a rule or a theory or a low, but it's one of those things that you just notice. Ask anyone in the medical field, someone working in a hospital or in a facility for long-term care, and you're likely to discover that this isn't something that just plagues the famous, it's something that happens. I'd have to say that it has something to do with the karmic rules of the universe: the rule of threes. Three horsemen. Three magi. The holy trinity. Full moon insanity: three days going in and three days coming out. What you put out there comes back to you times three. A single incident could just be its single self, but when there's a second, you can bet there will be a third. Funny how things work out in life whether you've planned and anticipated for them or not.

There are one hundred thousand million other things that I should be doing. I even posted my Facebook status today as a demand for a twenty-fifth hour. I have an article to analyze and submit tomorrow morning, more than fifty Power Point slides that I still need to review for an exam on Friday, a letter to revise and email, an article to work on for a national publication, and a brochure that needs to be ready in two days, but I can't quite seem to get it the way I want it. I'm usually so much more focused than I have been for the past several days, but I've just been so easily distracted, unable to fully concentrate on all this stuff that I'm usually adept at pouring my brain into and exerting the best parts of my higher leveled thinking.

Maybe the distraction has something to do with my grandmother. She was rushed to the Emergency Room two days ago and I've been slowly digesting the details of her condition piece by piece, as it's all been issued from her doctors and her nurses. It's such a coincidence that all the symptoms I am learning of are those which I'm currently covering in Pathophysiology. With words like effusion and ascites and fluid and atelectasis, the nursing student brain went into overdrive, and I immediately start thinking about left-sided heart failure and what it means and how it relates to her prognosis. When Mom asked what I thought, I did my best to explain cardiopulmonary function and what it could potentially be in Mimi's case. What's funny is that, most of the time, I really love being right. I argue, fight, research, investigate, find the proof I need to prove my point or win the debate. I was right this time, but this isn't one of those cases where being right really fits or feels good. It's a Pyrrhic victory at best. No, it's a Pyrrhic victory at worst.

Maybe I'll feel more inspiration later. We'll see.

Ketchup

No inspiration tonight, but I really wanted to post something.

A day with news. Bad news.

From sun up to sun down.

Bad news.

More later.

New Opportunities

Exhausted, but I persevere. There simply aren't enough hours in a day. Twenty-four is just not adequate for everything involved in the myriad tasks of life. Reading. Re-copying notes. Running for offices. Regular lectures. Rigorous work schedules. Really needing sleep. No rest. Blah. Double, double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble. This is the house that Miles built.

Maybe tomorrow I'll write something that's cohesive and makes a little more sense than just randomly etching out words on the screen. Maybe. I just know that I needed to post something, to get something typed out on the blog so that I could get away from the pathophysiology of hematological disorders for a few. According to the recorder, I've got another 48 minutes to retain from this particular folder, and then another folder that I've yet to even open.

My back hurts. Really hurts these days. It's a pain that's so swift and punishing. Indescribable at times. It plagues my posterior midsection to the point that I cannot even concentrate at times. And all the ibuprofen in the world probably wouldn't work at this point. I scheduled the surgery. November 22nd with the pre-op tests and pressures and vital statistics taken on the 16th, one week before. I wish the 22nd were already here and gone and the pain went with it. Until then, I can take it. I'm a soldier. For now. I just know that I can't deal with this once the real nursing school starts up for me in... three months... wow. Right at three months.

Enough rambling for now.

No Break in My Break

Although the weather outside is perfection, indicative of my most favorite time of the year, I seem to always be cooped up in my bedroom, chained and slaving away at recopying notes and pouring over power points from previous lectures. I know that none of it is in vain, it's all geared toward making the best and the brightest future possible for myself. I just wish that I could make a little more free time to go out and play. I miss riding bikes and rolling around in the grass, the days when my biggest worries were simply how to maximize the daylight hours and what sheets would work best to build a backyard fortress to keep the invaders away. Now, my worries are those of the real world: working enough hours to pay bills and keep my insurance(s) up-t0-date, doctors visits and plans for this spinal surgery to correct all the abnormal stenosis that's presented itself in the past couple of years. Despite it all, I can not help but marvel that it could always be much worse, and I thank my higher power that my suffering and set-backs are nothing compared to those I see daily in news broadcasts in third world nations and see stateside with all the natural disasters, poverty, and violence.

Today, I'm working on the clinical packet application. It only arrived this past Saturday morning, and I have much to do to ensure its prompt and proper completion and remission to the school and the Louisiana Sate Board of Nursing. Thankfully, I had forethought to compile everything that I knew they were going to request, so I only have to get the fingerprints and the passport pictures, affix some postage to the envelope and drop it in my nearest mailbox. I also have to contact the Cobra people to pay a rather hefty sum to continue health insurance as it seems that the specialists prefer that I no longer put off this necessary corrective laminectomy that is supposedly the remedy to the nearly constant grinding pain at the base of my waist, drifting its fingers all the way down my leg to the back of my knee.

These days, I'm wondering about sponsorships. Are there individuals or corporations out there that recognize true ambition when its presented to them and agree to help finance a nursing education? I wish that there were truer and more available mentorships like in the days of the artisans and noble benefactors aiding and abetting the young, the worthy, and the promising. Who knows. Maybe I worry too much about the affordability of things. After all, other students embark on their journeys into the medical field without a hitch. I just wish that I didn't always have to work so hard to get from point A to point B. However, I've appreciated my accomplishments thus far. Maybe the harder I work, the more deserving I'll really be when I step in that room to take the NCLEX-RN and go on the first real interview for a role in my field of choice.

I'm rambling, I know, but I promised myself to use this blog as more of a journal from here out. I guess this is what I meant.

A Promise

"Sun is shining, the weather is sweet. Make you want to move your dancin' feet, yeah..."

-Bob Marley

October is here, the best time of the year. I have the windows all open to the max. I have been thinking about my poor, very neglected blog for several days now. I'm hoping that by adding a link to my bookmark bar (a feature provided by Google Chrome, the new searcher that I'm using and really digging), I might remember to journal more on a daily basis. There was a period of time when I was actually updating this baby on a fairly regular basis, but I have sorely neglected my adherence to this task, about as much as I've been neglecting daily meditation and meeting attendance. Still sober. Still clean. But I do a lot less of all the things that got me here, and the worst part is that I don't feel an ounce of guilt or remorse. I feel as if I'm doing everything that I possibly can and still putting my best foot forward, trying to live the best life I possibly can and trying my best to hurt no one in the process.

Because I am so hyperextended in everything I do in life, I hope to start using my blog as more of an outlet. More of a journaling space. More of a jumping off point for anything and everything that I think and do and feel. I'm pretty sure that no one is out there reading this these days, but maybe I'll say something impressive and meaningful and realize through my writing something that I wouldn't otherwise without some degree of reflective consideration.

It's not like I don't already have a ton of everything else I really should be doing right now. I'm behind in my reading for every class. I have assignments that are due by eleven o'clock tonight, some of which I've not yet begun. I have notes to recopy and key words to highlight. I have pathophysiology cards that I have vowed to complete one of each and every day. I have the SGA blog and the SNA blog and their respective Facebook pages, everything requiring, needing, deserving updates. I have situps that I could be performing and pushups that are growing more and more necessary. I have discussion boards that are needed on Blackboard. I have hours and hours of Tivo that need to be watched and deleted. I've not yet seen an episode of this season's Grey's Anatomy or The Middle or Modern Family, but I did make my time for Desperate Housewives last Sunday, and I'm strongly considering taking up painting as a secondary, regular means of creative effort to escape from the day-in, day-out pending to-do's and must completes. I just need to grab a couple of new canvasses and get to work.

Although I'm in love, I'm pretty sure that my relationship is hanging on by little more than thread, and I'm not all-together certain that it's the healthiest relationship to be in besides. I received my clinical packet from Northwestern yesterday, and I definitely have a ton to get moving on to be sure that the information is included and submitted and ready to roll by the October 11 deadline. I suppose I should be more excited about it. I am excited. I've worked hard for it. I've sacrificed parties and Saturdays and trips and other fun things in favor of reading and studying and learning everything I can to do the very best I can. I'm just not jumping for joy yet because the information I include in my return of the completed packet will decide which way I may go. Not whether or not I'll get in, but what degree of probationary measures the Louisiana State Board of Nursing may choose to implement as they accept me into the next phase of my education. I really don't want to put up with any kind of extensive probation. It just seems like yet another thing that I have to add to my list of all the other stuff that I have to do and have to pay for; however, I suppose I should be more grateful for having the opportunity of probation at all. There are others, close friends, who weren't even allowed into this aspect like I am. Things can always be worse.

I have a grocery run to make, but I think I'm about to write out all the discussion questions due tonight for Addiction Studies and Social Problems and Technical Composition so that I can come home and write and submit and get moving on other assignments and notes and get caught up. Maybe ahead.