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Early set backs in nursing; "180 degree" turns; word of my Best Man - Fate Fairies - book version
This entry was posted on 1/3/2012 2:00 AM and is filed under Fate Fairies:Fate Fairies - book version.
Starting the Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) program at Madison Area Technical College was almost like jumping in cold water head first. The only saving grace to the tough program was that I had taken some preparation classes by taking the Emergency Medical Technician, Lifeguard class, Nursing Assistant class, and had completed the Fire Fighter Academy . They all have overlapping training skills. But, they were not in a full-time format. The LPN class was full-time. Also, the LPN program deferred to a format like medical school that brings all the students through the program together like a rabbit being digested by a python. Regular college allows for arbitrary class choices. The LPN program was a bit rigorous and rigid for an old guy like I was at the time. Also, I was the only male in the program. The program was to last three semesters.
In the first semester, after some basic nursing training, there was numerous hospital training clinicals - on site in various hospitals and clinics with live patients. It was basically, a nursing assistant program on steroids or nursing assistant times ten.
I have been asked once in a while since and certainly during the program, what it was like to work with so many women. Straight away, when you work with often very ill patients, I myself, and I suspect my classmates, lost site of gender within five minutes. It's hard to think about women classmates as chicks when your patient is on the precipice of any one of many bad condition outcomes - bleeding, dying, in great pain, crying, fading fast...
Late in the first semester of the program, there came a major setback. Poetically, I found myself landing in the hospital as a patient. I abruptly ended up in intensive care with a major heart malfunction. It would profoundly change my direction in life. Needless to say, I survived the episode, but it made me extremely fatigued for quite some time to come. The riggers of the pace of a nursing program was too much. I was totally knocked off base by how physically exhausting nursing is even in good health. I should have went to the welding program. You don't have to lift 350 pound patients in the middle of the night as a welder. And most iron products are not breakable like human medical patients.
Just prior to my episode, my mom had mentioned that my Best Man had died. I did not know he had been ill. Mom cut out the obituary for me. It was not so much that I had lost touch with my past; the past had left me behind. Jack had been a few years older than me and he had managerial and partnership status at the bus company I used to work for way back nearly 20 years prior. His death had been weighing on the back of my mind adding fuel to the realization we are after all..., mortal.
After a brief mulling over of the heart situation, without skipping a beat - no pun intended - I requested a medical release from the nursing program; I then immediately plunged into regular college classes in the spring semester of 1997. Madison Area Technical College (MATC) offered university level and transferable classes. Some are virtually identical to the University of Wisconsin's classes. One economics class was actually taught by a UW-Madison professor who taught the same class up at the university - and the MATC class was a third of the cost.
In retrospect, it was fateful the heart setback happened early in my college career. It would rear its ugly head many times since and I adjusted my studies accordingly. And too, in retrospect, I suppose my life's experience allowed me to innovate and adapt with cautious effort or manageable angst.
I remember saying to myself, "Just keep moving on, man!"
Note: This blog "Fate Fairies" - book version Category is a work in progress. The original vignettes are being edited for book form. Go to the Cooldadiomedia Web site and the Fate Fairies Page for an ordered chronology of the book vignettes (chapters).
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