For a non pregnancy/baby related post, I guess we could get back to the matter at hand. SCHOOL. For those doing the math, I am due October 11th. I finish School August 19 (2 days before my 26th Birthday!!) Thats a mere 7 1/2 weeks before the baby is due. I would love be able to pass boards before the little one arrives but I just don't know how quickly that will happen.
The way boards work is that the school has to send our information to the NCLEX people (the testing ppl) and then they have to process everything and then we sign up for a day. The only thing that makes me nervous is that my mom delivered both me and my sister 6 weeks and 4 weeks early. If I follow in her foot steps that doesn't leave a whole lot of room for me to take boards. But I've said all along, this whole getting pregnant was in God hands, and if he doesn't want me to take boards ahead of time, then Adam and I will just have to switch off parenting duties to make sure it gets done.
But now on to whats happening now. I am currently in Mental Health. It's not exactly my favorite subject and working in the hospital those with mental issues as well as medical ones are my least favorite to care for. You can't reason with them and I just don't possess the patience to deal with everything. (great nursing skill right???) But going into this clinical I decided to try it with an open mind. That was until I found out that my instructor was the same one I had for med/surg II. I almost quit right on the spot. I was so furious with their decision to hire her back I could have punched someone. But as luck would have it she's a little better this time around.
The shear amount of paper work and reading for this class is just insane. For our first exam there were 13, yes I said 13 chapters we had to read and study for the exam. well shirley we got some direction from our teachers...UM NO! but it wasn't too aweful bad, just glad it's over. Every test means I'm one step closer to meeting my little one!!! But on top of allllllll of that we also have an insane amount of paper work. It takes about 3-5 hours to complete it before each clinical. I swear my head is spinning.
But anyway. Mental health has suprised me in many ways. First of all, the people who are at the stress center, look just like me or the people I know. I don't exactly know what I was expecting but what I got wasn't it. It was just amazing and eye opening that these people with such big issues could be someone I run into on the street. But what really gets me about mental health is the complexity of it. Our brain works just like any other organ we have only it's the least understood. When a person has heart disease the doctors are usually able to perscribe a medication that lets them get on with life, they may not live forever but at least they are functional. This is not the case with mental health. I honestly have to say being a sufferer of depression myself, it's the most debilitating disease out there and there isn't a whole lot people can do to fix it. Sure there are meds that sort of work, but not all the time. It just breaks my heart to see these people have to go through all of this. I have been lucky enough to work through my depression, recognize my triggers and lean on my wonderful support system. These people don't always have that, and their disease is much worse than mine.
This really makes me want to do something more for them but I just don't know what. I'm a fairly compassionate person and one thing I've realized is that although I want to help them, being a mental health nurse just isn't in the cards for me. I would probably come home everyday and cry, I'm just not strong enough to deal with it. Plus I also know that when I'm around negative and sad people I tend to feed off of it more and I have a harder time staying postive and not sinking into my own depressive episode.
I hope that someday doctors, and clinicians are able to get a clearer picture of what drives mental illness. It would be so wonderful if we would be able to help these people as a whole. I just don't know how to go about it. Those with mental illness will always be in my heart and prayers. I hope someday there will be a cure or a way for them to live with their disease.
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