Hi Friends

My stress levels have decreased, so excited. I realized I can't change how things happen, I can only choose how I react. Every time I get frustrated I just say "flexible" a ton of times in my head til it passes. So far it's working. 

This weeks goal, since my stress is under wraps, clean my house. My goodness it's such a mess. A pile of clothes so huge it looks like a mountain is growing everyday in my room. Today's goal is to put all those clothes AWAY!!! 

One midterm done another one on Halloween, officially half way done with this quarter. I get to go back to the bay area in 2 weeks and see my friends and also work to make some money so I'm looking forward to that. 

Below is a funny pic one of my friends posted on his fb, it cracked me up so I thought I'd share. Laughing is a great tool to relieving stress.

Bye for now...

A little funny...

Top 10 reasons to become a nurse

1. Pays better than fast food, though the hours aren't as good.
2. Fashionable shoes & sexy white uniforms.
3. Needles: It's better to give than to receive.
4. Reassure your patients that all bleeding stops....eventually.
5. Expose yourself to rare, exotic, & exciting new diseases.
6. Interesting aromas.
7. Do enough charting to navigate around the world.
8. Celebrate the holidays with all your friends.....at work.
9. Take comfort that most of your patients survive no matter what you do to them.
10. Courteous & infallible doctors who always leave clear orders in perfectly legible handwriting.

STRESSFUL!!!!!!!

Hi Friends,

Well since my last post, my stress level has increased a HUGE amount. I even considered dropping the program and I'm not the only one. Out of 22, it looks like we have already lost 1 person! :( It's not that I don't want to be a nurse or don't think I can do the job, it's that I'm not sure I can handle the structure of nursing school. Last week was just bad. It was so bad, I gave up Friday and went out and drinking. Drank WAY TOO MUCH. Which left me sick all day Saturday and unable to study and in turn made me feel horrible about myself. Lesson learned, alcohol isn't the answer. Didn't I learn that a long time ago away? Duh!

I have realized that I don't do well when things are disorganized, which seems to be how a lot of things in nursing school go. For example, sometimes it takes 20 minutes just to figure out what we are supposed to even be reading for that week. After the 20 minutes I get discouraged and I haven't accomplished any reading yet. So then I get distracted, do something else and end up getting nothing done. This Sunday I just told myself, oh well, it's not organized just read. I read and read and read and finally I just went with it. It helped because I got 5 out of 5 on our quiz Monday! YAY!!!!!!!!!! But then only got 3 out of 5 on our quiz today. Man, I'm trying, that's all I can do. Trying my best and doing my best.

At this point, although I know working out helps me keep my sanity, it's not really on the top of my todo list. I don't really care how much weight I gain as long as I make it through the 3 years. Last week I went to the gym 4 days, hopefully this week it will be back to 5-6 but we'll see. I can't keep beating myself up about not meeting the personal goals I set for myself. I need to just go with it, need to be flexible. Goal for this week: BE FLEXIBLE!!!!!!!

I'm exhausted, feel like I'm about to pass out typing this blog and still have work to do so I have to go...BYE FRIENDS!!!

Weekly Update

Hi Friends,

I wish I could say this last week was easy, it was not. We took our 1st quiz and I'm pretty sure I failed, took our 2nd quiz and I'm thinking I missed 1 OUT OF 5! Wow this is going to be rough!! Oh and about watching my weight, I'm watching it increase...see lovely photo.

I'm blaming a new medication I'm taking for the weight gain. Seriously, how can I gain 5 lbs without even eating anything fried or fast food in a week?????? That seems so unfair. I did have some hard candies last week but geez, I can't sit for 4 hours and not snack on something. Goal for this week, try not to eat anything I didn't prepare myself. So far, today sucked. Spent 12 hours at school so it was hard not to eat something someone else made but I still didn't cave and eat fast food. YAY! I did eat a yummy brownie that someone made for the speaker tonight though. BAD SHANA!

Today my instructor said I'd make a great ER nurse, I think it's cause I yelled at Bridget something like "no more talking" while I was trying to exam her lungs. hahaha Below is a few pics of Bridget and I doing an abdominal exam to each other. Bridget is smiling while I'm so serious and trying to hear that noise in there.

Stress level is pretty much still at a low, for some reason I'm not freaking out yet. Getting to the gym 5 days last week probably helped. If my weight continues to increase and I keep failing quizzes, you might see me start to freak. YIKES! Why does it feel that the only thing that will make me feel better is See's candy? OK enough about food. This week my goal is to step up my gym time to 6 days and continue leading a semi-stress free life. I'm also trying to fit in a bikram yoga class, Bridget and I tried a class last week since there is a studio close to campus. I'm not sure I like it but I'll continue to try anything that's supposed to keep my stress down.

I wish I had something more interesting to say but until next week kiddos....

My New Personal Intervention Blog

Hi Friends,

My University Studies course requires me to keep a personal blog journaling my stress levels and how I will accomplish staying CALM even in times of extreme stress aka 300+ pages of reading a week not including studying or homework. I love the idea because every week I will have to take responsibility (publicly) for how I handled my stress and what I did or didn't do to help my stress levels. I feel it will motivate me to continue on the healthy path that I vowed to stay on once starting classes. I promised myself I would continue to eat right and go to the gym 5-6 days a week no matter what. NO MATTER WHAT!!! I refuse to gain the 20 lbs they said we would gain in nursing school. Although, I already see how easy it could be to gain the weight. Every night on my drive home, fast food just seems to be so much easier to grab than actually cooking something healthy but I've been good. No fast food yet!!!

Going to the gym and eating healthy is currently my way of coping with stress and staying sane. I also love to cook and bake! Cooking and baking, making my family and friends smile with my food or sweet treats, is another way I keep my stress levels down. My goal for this school year is to create a yummy protein packed low fat/calorie muffin or cupcake using my favorite protein powder. Wish me luck, all of you will be my test kitchen bunnies. I know, I'm thinking big, I have no clue when I'll have the time to figure that one out but it's on "the list" hahaha.

Well it's only Monday and officially our 3rd week of classes and my stress level is measuring at low. I've managed to eat healthy and keep my gym routine since classes began. There is a lot of reading but the biggest thing stressing me out is trying to make this blog look pretty!!! Oh and having to rush my mom to Desert Regional's ER yesterday. She came to visit for the weekend and ended her trip at the ER. I will try to attach the picture she asked me to take after she got a shot of morphine to kill the pain...awwwh the power of pain medication. Poor thing was in so much pain I thought she was going to code. I kept praying, please don't let her code and my mom be the 1st REAL person I have to give CPR to! Funny part is, I almost made her copy her records, I was thinking CARE PLAN OPPORTUNITY. Guess I'm already thinking like a nursing student. Thanks to the staff at DRMC she's feeling much better and made her flight home today.

To be continued next week....or sooner if I have something interesting!!