Interview Season

One down, three to go. 

I am so excited to be at this point in my journey. Interview season is driving me to self-discovery and I like it. I feel more in-sync with my path now more than ever. I am still worried, still afraid that I will make a damn fool of myself, but I have invited myself into the arena. I have my past, my strengths, and my courage. I have faith that I am on this road for a reason. Asit tal-eb. 

(Yup, just quoted the Qun. Judge me.)

Drop me a line. We can walk this scary year together. 

INTERVIEW INVITE

Yesterday, I received my first interview invite. I am leaving this here as a future reminder of the overwhelming mix of joy, excitement, and nervousness that I felt when I opened that text message. I have been in a near-constant state of anxiety since submitting my secondaries. I am finally seeing an end to years of pre-med effort and I cannot be more stoked that I might not even need to give up my house and my awesome workplace for my dream. I am riding this wave of relief and anticipation for as long as I can manage before the inevitable anxiety comes crashing back in. Thank the deities and on to interviews!

Did you ever think...

How could I have prepared myself for this? How do we tell our pre-meds, our pre-nurses, our kids, that, one day, you could fight with every ounce you have to save a life, lose spectacularly - bloodily, miserably - then find yourself held in the arms of your patient's wife as she thanks you, profusely, for your valiant effort? How do we teach the proper etiquette for that moment? What do you say when this weeping Middle Eastern lady says, "You know.. you know, he must have known you in your past lives. There must be a reason you were his nurse today. Thank you."

How do we learn to deal with that? How do we prepare?

Six Months After

Here we are, loves. It's six months since my last post. MCAT has been well and truly destroyed. It took an exhausting seven hours, but I came out with a 90th percentile and now have a real hope of becoming a physician. I cannot be more nervous, neither can I shake the excitement with which I wake up every morning. I want this so much and, though I know acceptance will not define me since I already have a profession and a life, but I am so stoked that I might be a medical student by next year.

AMCAS is already verified. AACOMAS is on verification, and I am about to start on secondaries. I hope everyone is having a wonderful year. Keep your heads up. We're all going to be okay!

It's Aliiiiiive!

Alternative Title: The Biochemistry Saga


I apologize for my absence, everyone. This semester kicked my little nurse butt like no other semester has. I finally transitioned to the major university where I had been taking my online RN-BSN classes. I had Biochemistry and Physics on top of my nursing classes for a total of 13 credits. I dropped down to part-time at work, since school now demanded I come in five days a week.


It was hell. I got a whopping 76 and 68 on my first two exams. My confidence plummeted and I was ready to drop the class. I went to my professor (who was a brilliant, callous, terrifying man), prepared for him to agree with me. To my utter surprise, he told me not to do it. He said there was no reason for me to and gave me advice on how to prepare better for the exams.


I was skeptical but I let the Drop deadline pass with my fiancé's blessing. "Just get a B," he said. "You can do that."


The next exam had my nerves on overdrive for days after taking it. It wasn't until the result was released that I found myself able to breathe again. I had gotten a 96 which meant I only made one mistake in the entire exam! Suddenly, my barely-a-C- was a solid B and a shy sliver of hope and confidence lodged itself into my chest. I knew that a single A would not do. It might have been a fluke, afterall. It was an anomaly, an outlier in my depressing Biochemistry grade statistics.


My fourth exam came around and I was sure I bombed it. There was no way I was going to recreate the miracle of the previous test. Oh, how wrong I was. The result came out: another freaking 96! At this point, I was beginning to feel redeemed. I had dragged my pathetic almost-D to an A-. In what world was that even possible?!


Last exam. I went in ready for this semester to be over. I knew I couldn't hope for a result high enough to keep my A-, but it would take a grade below 70 to bring me down to a C+. I was content to not stress myself out by aiming for an A. I would get a B in the exam, a B+ in the class, and just count myself lucky I survived the semester.


Today, my professor finally posted the final exam grade. Half-asleep and just acting out of habit, I check the online campus and almost jump out of bed, startling both my cats and the sleeping doctor beside me. "Baby, I got a hundred! I got a hundred on my finals!"


"What?" Even my fiancé thought I must be imagining things. "That's impossible."


"No, look!"


"Wow." He kisses me on the cheek and hugs me tightly. "You did the impossible," said the most pragmatic, most straight-forward, most realistic man I had ever met who had never over-exaggerated anything in his entire life.


So now, for the first time in months, I actually feel good about this journey again. Maybe I can do this. Maybe I wasn't quite as out of my element as I thought I was. Looking back, I am so glad I did not drop the class. It was hell trying to climb out of the grade hole, but now my confidence has received a much needed boost. It is so boosted, in fact, that I finally registered for the MCAT just now. I can't believe I am at this point of the process now. In a few more months, I'll be starting the application process. Jeez.


--


ANYWAY, now that that's out of the way... I got engaged, guys! The boy popped the question and we're getting married in a month. It's going to be a crazy, Game of Thrones themed extravaganza in this grand, old property that looks like it's been pulled straight out of George R.R. Martin's books. I am so excited! The ballroom has this amazing staircase that I cannot wait to take pictures on.


Also, we did engagement photos. I brought Orcrist with me. It was epic. :D Hope you guys have a wonderful winter break!

Victory!

Aced my first O-Chem test. Booya!

Wearing the White Hats, Part I

Part 1 - The Nurse

I'm a Switch. Is there any other term for it? I live two lives. Three if you count the few hours I have to spend on my personal affairs. I change hats so often that, sometimes, even I can't keep up. I have an unhealthy relationship with my calendar. I do not have OCD, which sometimes feels like a curse. How much easier would organization be if I had a touch of it like my mother did? But I digress. Let's begin with the role that has defined me for the past few years: the nurse.

I spend half of every week as an ICU nurse, administering both medication, comfort, and critical care skills in near equal quantities; fighting tooth and nail alongside  my team, my comrades-in-arms, my friends, to save as many lives as we can -- or at least to be able to say we tried our damned hardest to. I battle the Angel of Death, often for days at a time, and I don't always win. He takes a soul with him, a soul I've been killing myself trying to save, whose family I've been advocating for, fighting for, praying for. They become my comrades too, and I mourn with every single one whose loved one doesn't come back from that brink.

Sometimes, I come home an emotional wreck, a defeated remnant of myself, aching and ready to surrender the war. There are times when the distance between my front door and my couch becomes unfathomable. I shuffle just far enough into the house that I escape the cold tiles. My living room carpet is my friend. I lay on the unforgiving floor and, God, the rigidity feels amazing on my back. I vaguely remember that I need to employ better body mechanics. Need to work on my posture. Can't let my back go out on me. My mind wanders everywhere, anywhere to avoid the overwhelming sense of tragedy that threatens to bring me to tears. Once again, I wonder how I have survived this profession this long. How am I going to keep surviving it?

At work, we pretend nothing touches us. We snicker at the face of death and stare unfazed at loss of limb. No one talks about how ridiculously fucked up our world is, how we can joke around with a recovering patient while a body bag sits next door, awaiting "arrangements", how that 28-year old mother of one will probably never wake up again. No one talks about how much stronger we're all going to need to be if we're gonna do this for another ten, twenty, fifty years.

We all just go home and do our versions of nurse-on-the-floor. We do this for hours until we can get up again. Until we can wash off the day's madness and take our sleep aids and fall into dreamless sleep.