Watch out lady parts and babies! I'm coming for you!!

So, I've fallen in love again; hard and fast and with every cell of my being. In our nursing program, our nursing teacher gave us each experiences on the Labor and Delivery floor. The second I stepped foot on the floor, I felt like I was home again (in that not-really-home-because-my-house-doesn't-smell-like-amniotic-fluid-institutional-grade-cleaner-and-hospital-food kind of way). I was reminded of what brought me into this program in the first place; ladies' parts, blood, and baby! Not only was I reminded of how much I love babies and mommies, but I also found an answer to a question that had been slowly munching away at the deepest recesses of my mind. Do I really want to be a midwife or do I really want to be an Obstetrician? Did I decide to become a midwife because I was really drawn to the idea of empowering and accompanying women in one of the most exciting journeys in their lives, wanting to be there every second of every contraction, reminding them to breath, and helping them to achieve exactly the labor story they wanted....AND YES! Midwives give drugs!!..., or was I just a coward, afraid to take the MCATs, sure I would end up in some online medical school...or worse...at some Mexican medical school that advertised in bar fliers. Well, we watched a Cesarian Section, and I got my answer. I have NO DESIRE WHATSOEVER to become an OB. I most certainly do NOT want to be a surgeon. It was amazing, and I didn't get sick or anything, but it was so precise, so nerve-wracking. It's the kind of thing that you need to do every time with an underlying sense of fear because the second you get too comfortable you end up leaving a sponge in the wound or accidentally knick the bladder...or something even worse. I don't strive to live my life with a low undertone of fear permeating my professional career.

I realize that, professionally, I may still have to make rounds on a medical/surgical floor, with my only responsibility being emptying bedside commodes and delivering meds, but now I've been reintroduced to the light at the end of the tunnel...the light that hunted me down a year and three months ago, taunting me with it's allure and promise of baby cries and an invitation to attend the purest and strongest example of female achievement. Old people fanny...watch out! Here I come, and I'll be wiping you faster and happier than any other fanny wiper you've had in your life!

Getting my hands dirty while soul searching for the perfect job

A classmate of mine truly opened my eyes tonight. I was commenting on her facebook status discussing our clinicals tomorrow, oh dreaded clinicals be damned. There was an exchange between her and another classmate talking about the clinicals for next semester. They were saying how they weren't looking forward to tomorrow, and I mistook their reasons to be because they hated going to the hospital as much as me. However, I was wrong. I did not have an ally in my hate, rather she felt completely opposite. She said she loved clinicals and going to the hospital, and in fact being there all day didn't bother her at all.

WHAT?!? REALLY?!?

It got me thinking... Maybe my dislike (hate) may have less to do with the fact that I'm a poop-wiping virgin, and more to do with the fact that me and this job are not going to live happily ever after. I'm not giving my all to this degree. I do what I need to and then spend the rest of my time playing or doing anything other than school work. We were told to give something like 45 hours a week to this degree...yeah...that's NOT happening. It's so unlike me to disrespect education like this. I got thinking that maybe my desire to puke every morning prior to labs may not necessarily be related to morning sickness. I think I hate life right now. I'm contemplating taking next semester to finish up the last few classes I need to wrap up my Masters in Public Health. I called my mom after the realization that I didn't care if I have to stay home tomorrow with Giovanna because of her icky cough, which would result in my getting kicked out of the program. Of course I'll be more responsible than that, but it did open my eyes. I told her how much I hated wiping large, elderly butt, and how I dreaded that this would be the rest of my life...FOREVER. She told me she didn't think it was a good match when I first told her I was thinking about traveling down that path. REALLY!! That would have been AWESOME information THREE DIARREHEA-LADEN, FAT, ELDERLY BUTTS AGO!! I'm now picking up my life's lessons and continuing down my neverending path of self-discovery. My thought is, I might as well finish up my masters and get paid to do a job I don't love rather than spend money working towards a degree so at some point I can work a job I hate even more. What a challenge this "being an adult" thing is...

No patients for patience

So...I'm working on my RN degree right now, and I think I hate everything about this experience. I have lab clinicals every Friday, all day. During clinicals, we are assigned a patient and our job is to just generally take care of them. We give them a bath (I hate touching people), change and make their beds (I don't make my beds at home), and then tend to their issues for which they're in the hospital. Of course I can't really discuss the patient, but I can tell you, between my pateint and the roommate, that I spent my whole morning cleaning up elderly person poop and wiping said large fanny, and the amount was astonishing. Can I really do this for THREE MORE SEMESTERS?!? I took a second to consider what other kind of patient I would have preferred. I asked myself, "Hilary, if you could "design" your own patient, what would you want?" I thought about the patients that the other students had. Would I rather change colostomy bags? Perhaps dressing weeping amputations? Maybe I'd rather monitor the urine output of the jaundice patient and his dressings on his pancreatic drain? I was confident answering a resounding no. It all grosses me out. I started to think that maybe I hadn't really had such a bad patient, until I remembered how it felt when I heard, "I made a mess again". Aw man...really?? AGAIN?? You were only clean for 15 minutes. How could one person have that much to eliminate?? Now I'm scarred. Every time I walk through stores where large people are riding on those electrical carts, mostly Wal Mart, I now think, "I'll be wiping your butt in a couple years. For God's sake woman, get up and walk to get your hot dogs, frozen pizzas, and Little Debbies. Have some dignity!" Perhaps I'm not the best candidate for this position. I love the idea of becoming a nurse practitioner, but you have to work a year as a nurse before you can apply to that program, so I'm stuck butt-wiping. I'm hoping to find a good school nurse position in which to gain experience. I can handle little kid puke, lice, and pants-wetters...and summers off! Three more semesters, three more semesters, three more semesters...

Here I go, here I go, here I go again..what's my weakness? um...blogging?

Ok...so this is the beginning of my blogging experience. I'll start by outlining some important information about myself.

1. I'm highly unreliable. Not because I don't WANT to be reliable, but more because I get very ADD/ADHD about daily activities. If you were to follow me around for a day (good luck...) you would see the problems I have with arriving anywhere on time and/or when expected. I start out noticing some dust on the television screen and before I know it I've rearranged the bedroom furniture, washed all the curtains in the house, and repainted the window sills, and HAD to stop off and buy a new pair of jeans because...let's be honest...the ones I have just show/don't show off how much weight I've gained/lost. As my best friend Kath put it once, "I know you're going to be there eventually, but don't really worry about brushing my teeth or taking a shower until a couple hours after the time you've told me". The funny thing about this is that I truly had no idea I was as bad as I really was. I figured I was about 70%/30% punctual and reliable not/not. It's good to have somebody who knows you better than you know yourself.

2. I LOVE DINOSAURS. I have had an ongoing love affair with the prehistoric beasts since I was seven. I love dinosaurs in the way that sociopath children love fire. As soon as something dinosaur-related comes on the scene, I stop talking/hearing/seeing anything other than said dinosaur item. Don't even TRY to get me to remember you exist when Walking with the Dinosaurs comes on television. Just to further illustrate my love and devotion, perhaps addiction is more appropriate a term, to all things dinosaur, I actually have on long-term loan the Walking with the Dinosaurs VHS set. I borrowed it from a small boy. I'm hoping that the small boy's equal devotion to sports indicates an unspoken "gifting" of the VHS set to me on a permanent basis. Basically I'm confessing to you that I stole a dinosaur VHS set from a little boy. Yes...addiction may be a better term.

3. I love my family and best friend so much that not being near them is slow, determined torture. If we could move closer to them, I'd pack up tomorrow...ok I probably wouldn't wait that long. When my husband looks online at other companies closer to family and Kath (the best friend), I actually start looking for houses to buy online right next to him. I never imagined a life without these people all up in my business everyday, so having that be my reality is a little more than I can comprehend on a daily basis. I actually pretend that I'm only down here until I get this degree, and when that's done we'll move back home. I bet if I actually admitted this was our home then I'd make a friend or two, but I'm not ready for that kind of commitment yet.

4. I love my daughter Giovanna so much. She rocks. Everything she does is amazing to me, and I think all of the people we encounter everyday should feel the same way. When she waves to you...you'd BETTER wave back, and think that it's the cutest dang wave you've ever seen...no other kid waves quite like that, with those fingers and that hand and that smile... Because of this, I don't think your kid is quite as cute or clever. I totally understand how moms and dads of ugly or stupid children can still think their kid(s) are incredible. I never quite understood how moms would still send pictures of their hairy, bushy-eyebrowed, buggy-eyed kids into beautiful baby contests until I had my own. I can't wait to see what this next kid looks like! Although, I'm not in too big a hurry. Two kids is WAY more work than one.

5. I'm beginning to come to terms with the idea that I will NEVER have a real job. Each time I start a degree, I find twenty reasons why I should change my path, and not just a small change...like from studying Art Education to studying Art History...but HUGE changes...like changing from English Education to Fine Arts Painting to Modern Foreign Languages to Molecular Cellular Biology to Philosophy (and for the record I truly have had all of those majors. I finally settled on Molecular Cellular Biology and Pre-Medicine). I now am here finishing up my Masters in Public Health and a Registered Nursing degree. I'll be continuing on as either a Midwife or Nurse Practitioner in Family Medicine, most likely the latter because I cannot wait to go to my children's events. I don't want to have to stop yelling to Giovanna, "OTHER GOAL HONEY...TURN AROUND! YOUR GOAL IS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FIELD!", to go and deliver some woman's baby.

Well, that's a good chunk of who I am and an introduction into my world. I'm actually really looking forward to blogging because I always read about how woman bloggers go to fun mommy blogging events, and I'd like to someday attend one. Writing a blog entry is all it takes right? I should probably get my invitation any day now...