Who Am I?

 I am a daughter, a sister, a mother, and an aunt. I am married to my best friend.  I have two children from a previous marriage. I am a nurse and a paramedic.  I am also an EMS instructor and a nurse practitioner student.  I am from a large family who is made of military veterans, teachers, and public servants.  My mother is a paramedic and a former firefighter and police officer.  My stepfather was a police officer and an Air Force veteran, retiring as a master sergeant.  I have a brother who is an EMT and another brother who is a firefighter/paramedic.  My grandfather was an Air Force veteran, retiring as a tech sergeant.  My husband is an Air Force veteran.  Public service is a strong theme in my family.  I have four brothers, one of them is my “full” brother, and the other three are my “half” brothers, although none of us cares about that sort of thing.  My dad was a house painter and he died a few years ago after battling esophageal cancer. My beloved maternal grandmother who was my major influence in life died a few years before my dad after battling brain cancer.  Of all the people in my life, it was my mom, my dad, and my grandma that I strived to please.  My grandma was my biggest supporter and she even babysat my kids while I was working or in class.  Without her, I honestly don’t know where I would be in life.

I got married at 19, which is far too young an age to know how to choose your partner for life.  I didn’t even know who I was at 19.  My daughter was born when I was 20, again, far too young an age to be responsible for another human being.  My pregnancy was easy and uneventful up until labor started a full four days past my due date.  Labor was long and painful as my child was occiput posterior.  I opted for the epidural and it helped initially, but then wore off and I felt every thing but couldn’t really move my lower half.  My mother-in-law was in the room and refused to leave so she got quite a show when the action of delivery finally happened. My daughter was a wonderful baby. She slept a lot and wanted nothing more than to be held by her mama.  She grew in leaps and bounds and was walking at 10 months, talking in sentences at one year.  My son was born when I was 23.  He was a planned baby in that we wanted a second child and actively pursued getting pregnant.  About a month after I saw those two lines on the test, my ex lost his job.  He remained unemployed throughout the pregnancy and this would become a theme for the remainder of our marriage.  I worked part time as a secretary and was grateful to come home in the early afternoon and nap in the recliner.  I spent the first six months of my pregnancy nauseous and exhausted.  This one was completely different than the first.  Labor was easier and I refused the epidural this time.  My mother was present this time and annoyed me so much that I finally snapped and told her to shut the F up.  She left the room, along with the nurses, so that I could get up and walk as labor was stalling.  I made it two steps to the nightstand and felt my child move down fast.  My ex ran into the hallway, yelling for help.  My son was born about two minutes later, with me half squatting/half standing and the nurses caught him.  He was blue and had a nuchal cord.  Seconds later he was screaming and everything was great.  He was a difficult baby for the first few months, constantly fussy and wanting to nurse all the time.  He also had reflux and would have these lovely episodes of projectile vomiting after most meals.  Thankfully he grew out of that after a couple of months.  He was much more relaxed about hitting those developmental milestones that his sister attacked with such gusto.  He finally walked at 18 months and was very quiet.  He could talk when he wanted to, but most of the time he let his sister do the talking for him.  She also carried him everywhere until we forced her to stop.  Years later, I think she would still talk for him if that were an option.

As my children grew, I began to think about what I wanted in life and began to look at colleges and potential careers. After my children’s births, I really wanted to pursue a career in healthcare, maybe eventually becoming a midwife.  I enrolled in one college class – English 1101 – to see how I could handle juggling work, school, and family.  Somehow I made an A in that class and enrolled full time the following semester. School had its ups and downs. A&P was a big slap in the face, as I had to repeat a course for the first time in my life.  I also had to learn how to study.  In high school I didn’t have to work very hard.  I was always in advanced/honors classes and somehow I just did well.  I made good grades (A’s and B’s mostly) without really trying.  College was a different story.  I had to work my tail off in A&P and I still didn’t get an A. While I was working on my core classes, I enrolled in an EMT course in 2006 as a way to convince one of my brothers to return to school.  He quit before the first semester ended and I graduated with honors the following year. I began working as an EMT-Intermediate and I loved every minute.  I continued to work on my core classes for nursing and then got accepted to a paramedic program and a nursing program in 2008.  I agonized over my decision and finally decided to go to the paramedic program. It was one of the hardest years of my life, but also one of the most rewarding.  I learned more in that program than I thought possible.  I also gained one of my most important mentors in my professional and personal life in my paramedic instructor.  She had so many credentials that they didn’t all fit on her nametag.  The woman was a paramedic, a RN, a respiratory therapist, and had at least one master’s degree and held an EMS instructor license.  I cringe when I think about her continuing education requirements.  She inspired me to pursue teaching and also to reach for the stars in my own education. I still hear her voice in my head when I think about certain concepts.

After I had worked as a paramedic for a few years, I began to think about nursing again and enrolled in college again for a paramedic-to-RN bridge program.  It was a rigorous program, but it still paled in comparison to my paramedic program. People often ask which was the easier program.  I tell them that nursing was much easier for me, but that may be because my paramedic program came first and I had that background and experience when I became a nurse.  I still had to study in nursing school and I still freaked out when I took the NCLEX. Who wouldn’t?  That’s an expensive test!  About six months after I finished my associate’s degree, I decided to pursue my BSN.  I enrolled in school yet again and completed my bachelor’s degree in 2015 at age 35.  For me, this was a huge life moment.  My kids have been at all of my graduations (BSN was #3!) and this one was by far the most meaningful to me personally as they got to see me achieve one of my lifelong goals.

The majority of my nursing career has been in the ER with a brief stint in the ICU.  I learned a lot while working in the ICU, but I also realized that the ER is my nursing home.  I am totally comfortable with the chaos that is the ER.  I even sought out more chaos when I transferred to a larger ER earlier this year.  I love the craziness and the unpredictable nature of the ER.  It’s as close to EMS as a nurse can get without being a flight nurse.  I love that every day and every patient is different.  I might have an elderly man with a UTI in one room, a middle aged woman having an MI in one room, a child with a fractured arm in one room, and a pregnant woman with abdominal pain in another room.  This huge potential variety forces me to remain current in many areas of medicine and to be flexible.  I love it.

I also became an EMS instructor along the way. I am currently an adjunct instructor for an EMT class on a very part time basis.  I love seeing those “light bulb” moments of clarity when they understand a concept for the first time.  I am often tasked with teaching specific parts of the curriculum such as A&P, pharmacology, documentation, and women’s health topics.  It’s interesting how much you can learn by breaking down a topic to the basic concepts and teaching it to beginners.

In mid 2017, I decided that I was ready to return to school one last time to pursue my master’s degree and to become a nurse practitioner.  I signed up for the necessary entrance exam (the Miller Analogies Test – I highly recommend it if you were good at analogies on the SAT) and gathered the various things I needed for my application.  The process was a bit arduous as I had been a student of several institutes of higher learning and they needed transcripts from all of them. The hard work paid off a few months later when I got the acceptance letter.  My husband said he knew I would get in, but he’s a little biased.  I began my journey to become a nurse practitioner in January of 2018 and immediately felt like a fish out of water.  Most of my classmates are ICU nurses who had gotten their BSN straight out – not through several steps like I did.  Many are young, mid-20’s, and without kids or significant others to worry about.  While I wouldn’t trade any of my life experiences, I can only imagine how awesome it would be to only have you to worry about.  My first friend in my graduate program was a 23-year-old woman who still lived at home with her parents.  I told her how amazing it was to be at this point in her life at such a young age.  I think that she’s awesome and I’m a bit jealous that she figured out her life plan so early.  That first semester was challenging.  I’m at the end of my third semester and this one has been the most difficult thus far. I’ve also had some struggles in my personal life this semester and haven’t had nearly enough time to study. As a result, I will have to repeat a class.  I’m not at all happy about this, but I realize that it’s my own fault.  Failing a class is a very humbling experience.  I should have cut back on work sooner and made more time for my schoolwork.  Which brings me full circle to the job interviews.

So that’s me in a very big nutshell.  I am a complex yet simple person.  I believe in telling the truth, even if you’re not proud of the truth.  I believe in reaching for the stars, even if you don’t think you’ll ever be able to reach them.  I believe in loving your family and your kids, even if sometimes they aren’t very loveable.  I believe in always being yourself, even if people don’t like or understand you.