Giving thanks

This week we only had class on Monday and Tuesday because we have Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off for Thanksgiving, which was WONDERFUL. It was so nice to not have clinical this week and be able to take a break and relax. We had our third exam on Monday so it was kind of stressful to study for that but Cheryl and I tried to be really pro-active and study throughout the week so we didn't have to cram the day of the exam. But don't get me wrong, I still crammed the day of the exam. Totally paid off though, got a 94%. Happy Thanksgiving to me :)

On that note, this week has made me (along with the rest of the country) think about all of things that I am thankful for in my life. On the subject of nursing/school there are so many things that I am thankful for. First of all I am thankful for the opportunity that I have to even be in college. There are so few people, and even fewer women, around the world that have the opportunity to go to college at all, let along go to college for five years. I am also thankful for my grandparents and aunt, who have all passed away but provided me with enough money to help pay for a substantial amount of my first few years of college. Without their help, paying for college would have much more of a burden on myself and parents and I am so grateful for them. Which brings me to my parents, who have been constantly supportive both emotionally and financially. My parents have helped me to not have to stress about money throughout my time in college, and they have been supportive when I thought I wouldn't make it in nursing, and when I told them it was going to take me five years to graduate. They have always been there to tell me I could do it and that things were going to work out. They are always interested in what I am doing and just generally always there for me. I am so so grateful for everything that they do for me. I am also thankful that I am going into nursing because it gives me the opportunity to touch the lives of the people I care for. I think that being a nurse is the greatest job in the world because we get to be there for people when they desperately need someone to be there for them. I can't wait to graduate and be a real nurse. The nursing program at Grand Valley, though frustrating at times, is amazing and wonderful and provides us with so many great opportunities to grow and learn and get real world experience. The final thing that I am thankful for is my FRIENDS in the nursing program. The people that I have met in the past 11 months are so incredible and have become such a huge part of my life. They are all just genuinely kind and nice people and I am so blessed to have met them and have them in my life. I am so thankful that I have gotten to know them and that they are there for me when I need them.

Moral of the story, I am so lucky to be where I am right now. There were so many times when I never thought that I would make it into the nursing program and thought I would never be able to become a nurse. Now that I am here I feel so blessed that I have made it this far and that in less than nine months I will graduate and be able to finally be a nurse. I am so thankful for all of the people that have helped me to get to this point (my bestie/roommate Courtney for putting up with my crying and frustration for two years) and I am thankful now for all of the people helping me along this journey. So thank you thank you thank you to everyone, I love you all.

Phase 10-ed OUT.

At the of last week I was feeling pretty renewed and excited about being at Ferguson for two more weeks, but after this week I'm feeling much more ready to be done. It's not that I am not enjoying getting to know more about people, it's more so that we only spend time with the SAME 8-10 people every single day. I am just getting sick of sitting around and playing card games all day. And sometimes there are only one or two residents down in the conference room so most of us just sit and play card games with each other. I know there are still things that I am learning, but I just wish we were able to meet more residents and get to know new people. Some days I literally play 3-4 hours of Phase Ten, which, though it's my favorite game, I can only play so many hours of it before I start to go crazy. Especially when I play it with a resident who takes 5 minutes for each turn and also can't hear what's going on. It makes me a little nuts. So I'm at the point now where I'm about ready to move on to something new, so I'm glad we only have one more week left. I think I'm also just ready to be done with this semester, which is how I always feel when we are nearing the end. I have really enjoyed my time at Ferguson though and I definitely have learned SO much about working with and communicating with people who are mentally ill and I have seen my biases and opinions change so much in the past five weeks that it amazes even me. It's funny how you don't realize how many stereotypes and biases you have until you are actually forced to confront them. Honestly, spending time at Ferguson should required to graduate from the nursing problem, because it will forever change the way you will look at people with mental illness. It's unbelievable how much I have changed my outlook.

In other news, we have our third exam next week so I'm trying to actually be productive and study for it ahead of time. A group of us from class got together on Tuesday to start studying for it, and then Cheryl and I went out for breakfast this morning and studied for about an hour and a half so I'm feeling like I'm already ahead of the game since usually I don't start studying until the day of the exam...Haha so hopefully I will do well on it. AND we only have two days of class next week and then we are off Wednesday-Friday for Thanksgiving break! Then only two weeks and one final until the end of the semester. I can't believe how fast it's going :)

Group Therapy

If you haven't figured out by now, instead of trying to focus on the mundane details of everything I do all week, I'm trying to pick out the most significant things and talk about those. I'm doing this because I feel like by picking out the most important things I will end up with a more genuine blog to look back on at the end of this nursing shenanigan.

So that being said, this week we had seminar for the first time in well over a month. The topic of this seminar was "Mental Health Topics," so we didn't really know what to expect. It turned out to be a seminar about therapeutic communication, which is something we actually talk about every day in my clinical rotation. Therapeutic communication in a nutshell, is when you have a conversation with someone with the intent of digging deeper and finding out how they are feeling. It is not focused on you, you don't use any self-disclosure, and you focus on how they are feeling and ask questions to learn more. So we talked a little about therapeutic communication and then our instructor asked for a volunteer to come up and help her demonstrate what we would be doing later when we broke up into groups to practice. One student volunteered, and though we had scenarios that we could choose to use, she chose to talk about her real life (another option she told us we could use). Within a minute or so or her talking, we realized that she was genuinely having problems in her life and she got really emotional in front of the whole class. The instructor kept going with the demonstration and at the end, the entire class was absolutely silent. So then we broke up into groups and took turns being the nurse and the patient. Since the student who had gone up in front of the class was in my group, I felt that it was only fair that all talk about real life when it was our turn to be the patient. So we did. Megan and Cheryl were the other two people in my group (two of my best nursing friends), so it was pretty easy to just talk to them. It was such an awesome day though. All of us got to talk about our stuff that was going on, and it made it much easier to have a genuine therapeutic conversation. I love group therapy so it was great :) It's so amazing how these people that I didn't even know a year ago have become some of the people I relate to the most and have come to trust more than a lot of people in my life. Love them.

Sticking with talking about therapeutic communication, we talk with residents in Ferguson all day during clinical. Most of these people have really serious mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, bipolar, depression, OCD, etc., and they have a lot of issues and problems in their lives. Over several years of students coming in, they have learned that the students are "safe" and therefore they tend to cling to us and want to talk with us about the things they are feeling or the things that are going on in their lives. So we spend all day trying to use the things we have learned about therapeutic communication to help them to feel better, and help us dig deeper into what they are feeling. It's really interesting as we are starting to learn more about them both from figuring it out on our own, and by talking with our instructor during post-conference. Some of them have just had such hard lives. Being abandoned by friends, parents, siblings, spending time in jail, spending time in rehab, being hospitalized frequently, and so many other things. It's been such an incredible learning experience to spend time getting to know these people and learning so much about their lives. Earlier this week I was sort of feeling like I was getting bored with clinical and not really getting anything more out of it, but now I've sort of had a renewed sense of wanting to learn more from the residents. Which is good because I still have two more weeks there :)

Friends for Life ♥

In my first blog entry I talked about how I already felt like I was making friends that I would stay friends with for the rest of my time in the nursing program, and as it turns out I was right. I have met so many people in the nursing program that have honestly turned into my family over these past ten months. When you spend as much time with people as we spend with each other, it would be impossible to not get close. So my friend Jenna decided that the group of us that it really close should all get together and take a Christmas card picture of our "Nursing Family." I am in love with the pictures. And these people. They really do get me through the program, keep me on track and keep me sane. I can't imagine what my life is going to be like in ten more months when we all go our separate ways. Jenna was also the one that on our very first day of lab in Nursing 315 asked us if we thought we were all going to be friends for life. At the time we all thought that she was crazy, but now I wonder if we really will all stay friends down the road. I am so lucky to have met so many amazing people that have become some of my best friends. It's cheesy, I know. But if you look at the pictures you should understand that we are just really cheesy kind of people :)

Also, clinical was really uneventful this week and we only had one day! I got my clinical placements for next semester and I am at Helen Devos Children's Hospital 9C for my pediatrics rotation and back at St. Mary's on 3 Lacks (which is BRAND NEW and not even open yet) for my second Med-Surg rotation. I will update more on those next semester though.