Monthly Archives: September 2018

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Nursing Boards

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Brian has been laying hardwood in the bedrooms. He has finished Kayla’s and Allyson’s room and is currently working on ours. This requires everything to be moved out and going through everything. I refuse to discuss how much stuff I have either given or thrown away. I still have more than enough junk and I can’t help but wonder where it comes from.

Yesterday I was cleaning out my night stand when I found this gem.

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It has been in the same place well protected for THIRTY years now. I still remember this like it was yesterday. Back in the day, NCLEX was a class you could take to help you study for boards. I am thinking it was a couple of hundred bucks to which Gena and I said nope not taking it. It was optional and the acutal test was just called  boards. Now the test is called NCLEX which is very confusing for me.

Back in 1988 it was a two-day test given in Springfield Missouri, The test was in four parts, two each morning and two in the afternoon. Gena, Katie and I all drove down together. I borrowed my moms car because it had air conditioning and my personalized plates had already arrived RACH-RN. I figured it would be bad karma to drive mine to the test as if I had already passed. We shared a hotel room as well. I can’t remember which night we went to the mall and had this done but we each received a copy.

The test was awful. For starters people walked around the entire time staring at you making sure you didn’t cheat. If you had to use the restroom, you had to raise your hand and be escorted to the bathroom like a three-year old. I remember the room was filled with long cafeteria like tables. It seems like we had two hours for each portion. This led to once everyone was finished, we would all start comparing answers and be convinced we had all failed. I had smoked during nursing school but quit when I graduated. Over those two days I easily smoked over a pack of cigs by myself. I remember throwing what I had left out the window on the way home.

I think it was a good six weeks before our results arrived in the mail. I was so thankful to see a small envelope because that meant I had passed. I swore if I failed, I was working at Hardees for the rest of my life because I wasn’t going through that again in December. Boards were only offered twice a year back then. Gena and Katie also passed as well, although by the time we had arrived home we just knew we had failed. Katie and I worked together at Deaconess until I left for St. Johns burn unit. I must really be getting old because all of these memories just keep flooding back and I am starting to feel like an old person with all my “back in my day” stories!

 

Mole Moral ~ You never know what I am going to find in my house when I actually go through stuff. This was a true gem and put back where it has always been kept!

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Monday Night Golf League

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Brian has been in the Monday night golf league for what seems like forever. He has no idea when he joined and neither do I. This past Monday he came home early and totally freaked out. I thought for sure he got his first speeding ticket of his life but his evening was way more traumatic.

Golf was finished for the night and some of the guys were sitting outside drinking beer and doing whatever it is guys do when all of a sudden Dave falls out of his chair. He lands on the ground and is unresponsive. Brian springs to action to see if he’s breathing. His chest is not moving so he tells one guy to check for a pulse and barks at the others to call 911. The other guy can’t find a pulse (I’m really not sure if I could find a carotid pulse either in that situation) so Brian says to him you are going to have to start chest compressions. The guy is like I don’t know how to do that. Just then Dave wakes up and says he is fine except his neck hurts. No one had managed to call 911 so they skip calling them. Brian drives Dave home from golf and stays with him until his wife gets home. The next day after work I make Brian text Dave to make sure he is still alive. A person usually doesn’t go unresponsive, apneic and potentially pulseless for no reason. Dave answers right away that he is fine but his neck still hurts. Sometime later that evening Brian’s text message buzzer goes off and the next words out of his mouth are something to the effect of holy shit. Well I have a nose problem and ask him what is up. The text is from Dave.

Dave decided to go to urgent care because his neck was hurting so bad. They did a CT scan and determined he broke his neck and they were sending him by ambulance to Barnes. So the paranoid nurse in me was like, he was walking around with an unstable neck fracture for 24 hours, he’s lucky it didn’t extend into his spine and paralyze him. How crazy is that a fall out of a chair can lead to a broken neck. I am also secretly thinking they will check out his heart to see what caused the episode leading up to the broken neck.

Brian heard back the next day and after 2 CT scans, 15 x-rays and an MRI they determine surgery wasn’t needed but he will be in a brace for two weeks. I of course ask what about his heart. “I don’t know” was Brian’s response. Trying to get information out of dudes is almost impossible. I do know Dave won’t be finishing out the golf season except for maybe the after golf drinking and doing whatever it is dude’s do.

I was super impressed with Brian’s take charge attitude of the situation. He has taken CPR at least three times that I can remember. It’s probably because he has lived with bossy pants me for 28 years. Also so caring of him to drive Dave home as well. I really do have an awesome husband!

 

Mole Moral ~ Guys never stop thinking they are invincible even when they are all over the age of 50!

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Running Down Memory Lane

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As most people are aware Pokemon Go is still my current obsession and it’s turned out to be one of my better ones if I am really honest. For starters, it really makes walking and running way less boring. Thanks to one of the guys that use to work at U-Gas I found a Facebook group for it that is fantastic. Tony who runs the Raid Bus decided to start a facebook group chat for people to talk smack. I joined it because I am almost childless and it gives me something to do. So this weekend I was home alone and started talking-to the girl who sat by me on the bus twice. Her first time, I think Tony twisted her arm to come and she was afraid it would be weirdos. And so so happened to sit next to me, the biggest weirdo of all. SUCKER. Ha. No actually if I don’t know someone I really am shy and don’t talk a whole bunch. I must have been OK because she sat by me the next bus too. I really liked her and thought maybe she was twenty-four at the oldest.

Anyway we are talking and she asks me if I by chance live in Arnold/Imperial area. I knew exactly where this was headed. Yes, she sees me almost every day running or walking. This debunks my “Im invisible when I run” theory. I wouldn’t be able to run without thinking no one can see me. It’s part of my mental disorder called low self-esteem, not an athlete, and not wanting to be noticed. So she told me where she lived and the next day on the way home from Kimswick (yes playing Pokemon) I decided to see if I had the right street. Oh yes indeed it was the way we always went to Emily’s friends house so I decided to drive out the other way through the subdivision. I then started naming off in my head all the cool people who I went to high school that lived there. Scott Hart, Steve Underhill, Pam Bridges, Mike Hammers and then when BJ Bock got married he and his wife moved into the subdivision. It’s so weird how I can remember this stuff but not be able to keep daily life straight. Anyway, after that I remembered the summer my sister and I raised money for Muscular Dystrophy.

My sister and I went skating almost every Saturday night at Rock Roll-O-Rena. I always wanted my own pair of roller skates like the cool kids but they were a luxury and too expensive. However the skating rink did a fund-raiser for Muscular Dystrophy and if you raised two hundred dollars you got a pair of roller skates. It was game on for my sister and I. It seemed like every night for two months my mom would come home from work and drop us off at different subdivisions and come back a couple of hours later to pick us up. Imagine this is back in the day of no cell phone how did we survive. Anyway I was super shy back in my middle school days so for me to go door to door and ask people if they wanted to donate shows how badly I wanted my own roller skates. As I was driving through the cool kids subdivision I remembered the lady that gave us a couple bucks but also told us that we were probably lying and using the money for candy. My feelings were hurt because I am not that kind of person. When my mom came to pick us up we told her the story. She asked which house it was and drove to it. She got out of the car knocked on the door and made the lady take her money back. It was awesome! I am sure the lady felt like a real piece of work after that! Crazily enough I can still point the house out even though I have maybe driven through that part of the subdivision a handful of times since high school.

We hit our goal and I picked out a pair of white skates with blue wheels. I had them probably until my mom pitched them long after I was married. I can’t remember what my sisters looked like. We also made it into the drawing for a ten speed bike and I ended up winning that as well. I’ve been back to the skating rink a few times in my adult life. I think the last time I actually skated was almost nineteen years ago at Emily’s skating birthday party. As long as it is not in line skates but the old-fashioned four wheels, I am pretty sure I could still skate. The skating rink looks the same. I mean it’s updated but the same people still worked there and owned it and they remembered my sister and I. Heck we probably paid their bills back in the day. My sister was the Pac-Man expert. She was really good at the game and used her extra money for that. I of course hoarded mine or got a drink with it. My girls really never got into skating which is just as well since it was never over until ten. It use to drive my mom crazy because she would get stuck picking up instead of taking and my friends lived all over the school district.

 

Mole Moral ~ It’s amazing how much more your appreciate something when you work hard for it. And yes I really am shy until I know a person and then I don’t shut up!