On Tuesday, I failed my injection skills criteria and passed my skills criteria on giving NG tube medications...  I feel like an abject failure, because I can't even stab someone correctly with a needle.  Though I feel like I did a great job otherwise.  I would have had more time to reconsider my needle length had the examiner not been questioning everything I did, and making me supremely nervous.  When I said I'd be charting, she said, "Well, what do you chart?" and when I replied correctly, she said, "Well, what WAS the pH of the residual?!" and then it became me saying, "It was below 5, which is normal," and her going, "Well, what number was it!?"  Okay lady, it's a dummy with a tube in it, and some pulse and stomach sounds.  If it was a real patient and I didn't have to invent a number to satisfy you, I'd be okay.  But winging it when I did answer with the grading criteria, is going too far.  Ugh.  Talk about nurses eating their young--teachers do it, too.

When I left, I had to go outside and get fresh air, because I was sweating nervous-flop-sweat and my back was warm and I felt like I was going to cry.  I get to return on Thursday and retry it, after some practicing.  It was a bit harder than just drawing up regular medication, since it was Fentanyl in a glass ampule and I had to deal with a filter needle.  Then I got my ventrogluteal and vastus lateralis muscle landmarks wrong, because I was palpating for the greater trochanter and instead, out of sheer worry, was putting my palm on the stupid iliac crest.  Fail.  Though I do say, I did verbalize everything right.  She couldn't harass me for that.

Instead of going home and punching a wall, I drove home the long way and ended up rescuing a dog from traffic.  Accidentally.  Someone else had stopped and he was willing to take the dog from me, to get him to a vet and check him for a microchip.  I picked the little scared pup up, after he came over and licked my hand when I made kissy noises.  He was shaking and terrified, a little chihuahua mix, and very sweet.  He clearly trusted me and he licked my face several times, and when I handed him off I knew the guy was clearly interested in his safety too.  He had two rescued dogs and lived across the road, and I knew it would be fine.  Second stray dog found in the past 6 months.  The feral / stray cats don't bother me as much, because it seems like everyone around here either feeds a cat, lets one live under their porch, or has an indoor-outdoor cat of their own.  The neighbors across the street have a few outdoor hangers-on, and their next-door neighbor has two cats.  One of them I call "The Darkness" because it's large, has long black fur, and glares at me when I park my car and walk inside the house.  You can see its yellow eyes across the road.  Our cats are thankfully indoor kitties, and relatively safe and sheltered. 

So, nursing school is a ball of stress and panic, and makes me want to curl into a ball some days, and sleep or cry it off.  Other days I feel like I did something amazing, or at least acceptable and proactive.  I finish my first semester in a month, if I do okay, and then I'm 25% finished.  It feels like the past few months has rushed by in a blur of exams, skills tests, clinicals, patients, nursing process assignments, and long, tedious lectures.  I love clinicals so much, and I want to be at the point where my instructor doesn't assume I'm dense or oblivious.  I know I can do a lot of things, but I always look for complicated answers when it could be a simple one.  Maybe I should have gone to medical school and over-thought my entire career.  Hm.

To stay sane, I'm knitting a cabled cowl out of bamboo yarn from Stitch Nation.  It's a pretty sea green and may even look pleasant with my ugly white scrubs.  The knitting thing is keeping me from going completely unbalanced, or kicking the dogs, or yelling at someone.  That's always good.  Next week is Thanksgiving and I'm feeling so thankful, mostly that the semester is close to finished.  Maybe I'll be able to make a few items for dinner this year, because normally my husband takes over the kitchen and refuses to let me near it.  I'd like to at least make a cake for after dinner...  Not pie, not a pie fan.  At least, the crust irks me.  So, despite having a crazy schedule, having failed my injection skills, and having a lot of crap on my plate... I'm still thankful for this year. 

I just keep having to remind myself of it.