Happy spring loves. I’ve been busy, trying to figure things out about this nursing thing. Am I really going to do this? I’ve managed to find myself on the most challenging floor at the hospital for senior practicum. I like the folks on the floor, I like the work, I like the patients and I can see into the future that I can manage to do what I want to do, but first I’ll need to travel through working weekends and holidays and I’m not sure I’m all ready for this. The whole thing is fascinating to me, you have the general science-y ness of all the meds and the numbers and the procedures, then you have the whole bit about delivering medical care where management wants to come in and reduce costs and increase customer satisfaction (who is ever satisfied about being in the hospital?), and then you have the emotion of people getting terrible diagnoses, family members watching people they love suffer and die, people who are slowly killing themselves with drink and drug (lots of people are angry and pissed. lots of people are thankful and nice. some people are confused and delirious and remain that way.) and then you have a team of nurses/doctors/social workers/techs that are all thrown together to try and hold down the fort and you can see if the team is falling apart in certain places and really cohesive in other places. Maybe it isn’t so fascinating and I’ll become all upset and hardened. I think I have 5 (maybe) years worth of bedside nursing in me -and then I’m done – I’ll head to other endeavors. But I need to do the hospital work first.
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In other hospital news, Vince turned 15 on Thursday. Of course, it’s Vince’s birthday, but it’s also my anniversary of becoming a mother. I retold his birth story to him, like I do most years. How he was due on the 1st and when he wasn’t even budging a week later, I got all frustrated with him and walked three miles home down Lamar where I was at work at UT Austin to our house and by the time I got home I was in labor. I told him how I was determined to have the granola-hippie labor – no drugs, a midwife, Birkenstocks (but at a hospital), but after 40 hours of labor, his big head was stuck and then they cut him out of me. And then how he insisted on nursing 21 hours out of everyday and that drove me up the wall because I’d never been touched so much in my life – no one else could touch me (poor Jeremy) because I was completely touched out for months and months.
Happy birthday Vince! Thank you for being my best son and teaching me to be a mom. My kids! They teach me everything. All the time.
We celebrated on his actual birthday with my parents.
Tonight, the boys are here.
