Another week looms!

Ah, the beginning of another week looms in front of me!  If I can just make it through this one, I will feel a LOT better!  Of course today is CD 1, but it ’s no big suprise really.  I was expecting it and sure enough, right on time.  I’m like clock-work, it’s almost sickening.  How can I be like clock-work and still be totally infertile.

Anyway, the good news is that I am already feeling light years better than I was a few days ago!  Yay!  I am back!

Also good news, as I was praying at mass today I just got the strongest feeling of peace from God.  I was thinking about school and everything I have to do this week and how crazy busy I have been and I was once again strongly reminded of how good it is that I don’t have a child right now.  As painful as this whole process has been (and still is at times), I am actually really grateful and how it’s all turned out.  I know I’ve mentioned this before but it just hit me again really strongly.  I just realized that if I had a child right now, I would be missing out on so much of his/her life and that would KILL me!  I find it hard to study now when my dog walks up to me and wants to snuggle.  Imagine if that were my own child….?

So I literally thanked God for not giving me what I asked for…am I crazy or what?  That being said, it would be really really great if he could flip the fertility light switch back on for me sometime over the next 6-10 months…ha ha!  But who knows what He has in store for me!

By the way, I’m all done with my blood draws but I haven’t had time to get it shipped to PPVI’s hormone lab yet!  Hopefully I can do it on Wednesday.  Too bad my doctor said it can take over a month to get the results…but no biggie, I am obviously used to waiting by now!

Bombarded…in more ways than one!

First off, I am swamped with school stuff at the moment.  I mean SWAMPED…even more than I was last time I posted.  The problem with only preparing for the NEXT thing (my current plan) is that on that one day when you finish that one thing and you suddenly realize you have FIVE NEXT things due in the next 48 hours (one of which could take the whole 48 hours by itself) you have a major freak-out moment.

As a result, I spent 15 hours studying/doing homework today with a few short (and I mean really short) breaks here and there.  Tomorrow I will be doing the same thing…sigh.  My butt is really hating me at the moment.

Secondly, I am still fighting through survival week.  As much success as I had early in the week, I have definitely seen some ugly-tude the past 2 days.  To top it all off, I had a lovely birth announcement arrive in the mail PLUS a phone call from a long lost friend…yup, you guessed it, pregnant and yes, all in the same day.

I mean, come on!  I have been so…incredibly…good…about pregnancy announcements the past few months…HOWEVER, when they are bombarding me left and right…

in the middle of survival week…

while I’m barely keeping my head afloat with the stress of school…

Well………that’s just mean!

All kidding aside, the good news is that I have been so busy today I haven’t much thought about it.  It was just tough getting to sleep last night, being that the few self-pity tears that snuck out plugged up my damn nose.

Ahhh, this is the life, the life of an infertile, pms-ing nursing student!  It can only get better from here!

Busy Busy and Quick Question

Sorry for the long absence.   I’m still trying to get the hang of this whole school thing.  I’m doing well so far but only because I’ve been studying as much as I have been.  I’ve been learning some cool stuff though!  This week our validation includes passing meds through IV’s!  It’s really fun!  I love the way all the equipment works and I think it’s cool that I know how to do it now. We haven’t learned how to actually start an IV yet (meaning the initial poke in the arm), which is fine  because I’m really nervous to start poking people (because it involves inflicting some amount of pain onto someone)!  I did practice injections already, but only on an orange, not an actual person!  But heck, I’m practically a pro already with the subcutaneous injections after all my infertility stuff.

Onto cycle news, I have a quick question for my fellow NaPro girls:  So I’m doing the full hormone series this month and I’m almost done…yay!  What a pain in the butt this has been.  Talk about adding to my already full schedule!  Well, I am P+10 today.  Yesterday, I was supposed to get my P+9 blood work and I TOTALLY forgot about it, only remembering after the lab was already closed.  Argh!  So of course, today is a holiday and the lab is closed again…sigh!  So I guess I will just go tomorrow (P+11) and Thursday (P+13) to finish it up?

I don’t think this should be a big deal but I was wondering what you girls thought.  I’m really bummed that I forgot about it.  I will be missing a whole data point from my series.  But I guess if the P+7 (the really important one) and the P+11 are normal than we can just assume my P+9 would have been normal too, right?  Then it really shouldn’t be a big deal.  Either way, I can’t stress about it.  It is what it is and there’s nothing I can do about it now.

By the way, being that I’m at P+10, it also means I’m in the dead-nuts middle of survival week.  Amazingly, the only emotional meltdowns I have had have been brief and only directed at myself (i.e. when I lost something that was in front of me 5 seconds before).  No other meltdowns to report…whew!  Although I guess I still have a few more days to make it through before I can declare victory!

So even though I’ve been super busy, I have still managed a few visits to visit my goddaughter, JEM.  Can I just say again that she is the sweetest thing!  Last night we went over there for dinner.  After JEM ate, she fell asleep and I got to hold her.  She snuggled up to me and slept for almost 2 hours while I sat in the rocker.  My friend and I watched the movie Bride Wars and I had her almost the entire movie.  I am in love!  I swear, I could hold her all day long!  Even when she got a little crankier later in the evening, I didn’t mind doing laps with her to keep her calm and happy!  It was so so nice!

Alright, back to studying for me!  I am learning all the functions of the cranial nerves and how to test someone to make sure nothing is going wrong in their brain!  My validation is at 11:30 tomorrow!

I Passed!

I passed my validation!  Yay!  I did forget a couple things but nothing major.  That’s all I could ask for!

Now I have a bunch of homework type stuff to work on and an exam to study for that is on Friday….at least I will be at home pretty much all day tomorrow!  I should be able to get lots done. 

I will probably try and squeeze yoga in too though!  Well, that and my blood draw (it will be CD 13 tomorrow and I think my peak day is going to be any day now).

Ok, I gotta get to bed.  I hope you are all having a wonderful week so far!

A Happy Mother’s Day and Stuff

Well, my first week of school is over but I haven’t been able to catch my breath yet.  I have a LOT to do.  I think I am just especially nervous to do well.  I don’t want to just get by, ya know!  But wanting to do very well also puts a ton more pressure on me!   Ahhh….!

I have a “validation” on Tuesday morning which is basically where I have to perform a series of nursing skills and my professors (also nurses) grade me on how well I do.  I have to memorize the steps and perform them without asking any questions or getting any guidance.  This week we have to do 3 things:  a full assessment of the Head and Neck (including eyes, ears, nose, and throat), take a person’s vital signs, then do a hygiene series including giving a bed pan, giving a bed bath, giving oral care (teeth brushing), and changing the sheets of an occupied bed. 

Now these things aren’t really all that hard, but doing them in the proper order without forgetting anything is tough, especially under pressure.  The worst part is that we have 8 weeks of these and we have 3 skills per week.  If we do not get a 70% or higher on any 2 skills it is considered a fail and, we are KICKED OUT of the program.  Some of these skills have specific tasks that if you miss them, you automatically fail, even if you get everything else 100% right. 

Talk about pressure…sigh!  I guess I will just be praying big time that God helps me remember those important things.  It’s just that some of them are so easy to forget.  For example, when you are helping a patient, you are supposed to raise the bed to a comfortable working height, however when you are done you MUST remember to lower the bed.  It is a huge fall risk otherwise.  So if for some reason I forget to lower the bed when I finish, I will fail…scary. 

Oh a happier note, I got to babysit JEM on Friday for an hour.  She is the sweetest girl ever!  My friend says she never cries.  In fact, she has to wake her to feed her during the night.  So when I babysat, she didn’t cry.  She just made the cutest little squeaks and grunts.  At times it even seemed like she was dreaming…what the heck does a one week old dream about?

As for Mother’s Day, I actually had a really great day today!  M and I went to church Saturday night to avoid the whole Mother’s Day focus we usually get on Sunday morning.  But even today, I really didn’t even have any “I’m not a mother” pains that I have felt in years past.  Maybe it’s because I am crazy busy with school and I am relieved to not have a child to care for or maybe it’s because I have a new goddaughter to fuss over.  But I don’t really care why, I’m just glad I was able to have a wonderful day with my family without even the tiniest ounce of self pity.  It felt really good!  It’s almost like God knew just what I needed to get through nursing school…a goddaughter to help soothe my heart a little without the full time stress of a baby of my own!  I’m glad He’s in charge!

Ok, I have to go practice my skills one last time before I hit the sack.  I need to go recruit my hubby to be my lovely assistant (or patient in this case). 

By the way, I just said a prayer for all of you still longing to be a mother, especially several of my close friends.   I prayed that God would grant you the desires of your heart and that in the meantime He would give you his unending peace until He does!

Cheeks

Look at those cheeks!

Hormone Series – Day 5

Thanks for all your sweet comment on my goddaughter post!  It was such a fun day!  Last Friday I was able to go back and visit them both at the hospital again.  This time I got to hold JEM for a long time….ahhhh!  It was so wonderful.  She is so adorable.  She has the chubbiest little cheeks!  I have to post a new pic I took that day!  (It’s not working, I’ll have to post it later!)

As for me, CD1 was last Friday.  Considering it was May 1, it makes it easy to count cycle days this month at least!  So today is CD5 which means it is the first day of my blood work for my NaPro hormone series.  I headed over to the lab this morning and got my blood draw.  The lab was a bit confused considering I’m only having the blood drawn there.  They have to hold/freeze the blood and at the end of the month, they will ship all the blood at one time to the Hormone Lab at PPVI in Omaha.  When I tried explaining this to the lab tech, she looked at me like I was crazy…LOL! 

In the end, they seemed to understand what needed to happen.  I just have to supply the box/packing supplies to ship the blood at the end of the month.  This may be difficult though.   I need to get some sort of Styrofoam container because the blood needs to be shipped on dry ice.  I’m not exactly sure how I will do that but I guess I will figure it out.

On the school front, yesterday was my first day!  It went very well.   I heard two of my professors lecture and they were both good….whew!  I have a real problem when my professors are bad lecturers.  I hate that that means I have to learn a lot more on my own.  I know that is just how life/school is sometimes and you just have to deal with it, but it is still nice when you actually have someone who’s good at teaching!

Today is our first lab day!  I think it should be a decent day!  I still have a lot of reading and studying to do already though! 

Ok, I have to run!  I have to go meet my lab partner/carpool buddy in a few minutes!  Have a great day everyone.  Sorry I’ve been so bad about reading and commenting on all my regular blogs lately!  I need to get a handle on everything so I can balance my time better!  Once I get in the groove it should be better!