Beautiful Chaos

Many of you have asked about my first day of work so I decided to just give you the story here. Enjoy!

I'll start by telling you about my Monday. I had a long to-do list for Monday to prepare me for my first week of work. Some things I really wanted to do was have a long (long for me) run, plan out some new meals for the next two weeks, and do some intense grocery shopping for those meals. Instead, I woke up at 5 a.m. vomitting. I prayed it would be one time and over, but that wasn't the case. It continued throughout the day. I never left the couch more than 5 minutes. If you know me, you know that the absolute worst kind of sickness to me is nausea and vomiting. I truly hate it. After throwing up a glass of water I drank around noon...very painfully...I laid on the bathroom floor and cried. It was no fun. Sorry for the graphic details...that's the nurse in me. My day was made much better by the afternoon when the sweetest friend in the world, Jessica Lowe  brought me a survival kit with Gatorade, 4 different anti-nausea medicines to choose from, magazines, chicken noodle soup, and saltine crackers. She also cooked dinner for Bryan and brought it over so it was one less thing I had to worry about. When Bryan got home, he waited on me hand and foot and also went grocery shopping for the essential things to get us through the week until I could go grocery shopping. The service these two provided to me really made me get through the day. Absolute blessings.

I went to bed at 9 p.m. after taking 2 Dramamine to calm residual nausea and hopefully help me sleep. Help me sleep it did. It helped me so much that I didn't hear either of the alarms I set. I woke up at 6:20 a.m. (the time I had planned to leave my house) and screamed "You have GOT to be kidding me!" I proceeded to throw things around and turn on every light completely disregarding my sweet sleeping husband. I was very weak and had that disgusting cold clammy sweat that felt like it might lead to passing out any minute. Luckily, I clocked into work at 6:45 a.m. (when I was supposed to be there) looking rough as ever and feeling just about the same.

I was doing well until about 8:30 a.m. when I almost passed out after standing too long in a patient's room. I was thankful that they soon switched me to follow the Unit Clerk for the rest of the day. Not only did that allow much more sitting, but also I got to learn a lot about charting, orders, and the computer system. Those are all things I had little confidence about and understand much better now. Another absolute blessing.

My co-workers are fantastic. They are all very welcoming and sweet. I felt like I fit in from the first moment. I love that the nurse manager is so willing to just walk up to me and teach me things. Everyone seems to have confidence in me even if I don't have it in myself, and that is so reassuring. I think I will fit in very well on this unit, and I am so very pleased. Today my permit posted so tomorrow I get to go to work with a fancy "Graduate Nurse" badge instead of my "Nurse Tech" one. I'm pretty dang excited about that...especially since it adds an additional $11 per hour to my pay.

I'm still nervous about what is to come, but I'm also very thankful for the little reminders that even in the chaos, life is beautiful. As always, God is good.