I Owe You an Update!

Thank you all for being such faithful readers, and coming each day to check my blog. I feel awful that I've been such an absentee blogger, and I actually think of my blog every day, but you know. . . I've been BUSY.

School is going great, really. It's actually quite fun. Our nursing class is made up of 60 students (actually, I think the number is 54 now) and we're divided into clinical groups of 10. We're with those 10 students for all of our classes, except for the big lecture class on Fridays, when we're all together, if that makes sense. This means that we spend a LOT of time together every day, and we've already become like a little family. My group of 10 is awesome. So culturally diverse, most of us are in our 30's, but 2 in their 20's, and one in his 40's. We have 3 men, 7 women, and we all work really well together. And we make each other laugh, which is a wonderful element of being together as often as we are. I've developed close friendships with several of my group members, and I look forward to seeing them each day.

So far we've been learning lots of basic nursing skills. We've learned aseptic technique and sterile technique, taking vital signs, bed baths, bedmaking (with and without a patient in the bed), several kinds of enemas, feeding tube care, and medication administration (drawing up syringes for different kinds of injections, and measuring other meds), among other things. Starting next week, we'll be caring for patients at a long-term residential care facility. We're all feeling excited about actual patient care, but nervous too. There are so many ways to make mistakes, and learning from books, videos, and on dummies is obviously a lot different than real people. But we'll get it, and soon these kinds of cares will be a piece of cake. So, we'll be at the clinical site two days a week, and at the campus lab for another day learning new skills to add to our hats. Then, the other two days will be the research class and the lecture class.

My schedule at home has gotten so packed. My goal when I decided to start school almost 3 years ago was to make sure that it didn't interfere with what I consider the most important parts of my life as a wife/mother. It's important to me that I still cook breakfast, pack lunches, and cook dinner each day (very tricky now, I assure you. . . maybe a post on just that topic soon.) I still want to read to Conor each evening. I still want to have Family Home Evening and scripture study, and I want to have time for dates with my children. Time management has become even more crucial. I've got some work to do, but so far, pretty good. We're all a work in progress.

On a personal note, I want to thank all of you, friends that I know in person and friends that I have "met" from blogging, for your support and kindness and encouragement. I go back and read my initial "Should I go to school" post from time to time. That post got more comments than any other post, I think, and I'm so grateful for your belief in me! This goal would definitely have been easier had I done it 20 years ago, but I have never regretted starting down this path, and I couldn't do it without you. Thank you so, so much.