Reinvigorated

HAPPY NEW YEAR! (And since it's been so long since I've posted, "Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas" as well!) I have to admit that the primary reason I dropped off the face of the blogger planet was pure exhaustion. My Fall quarter of school ended the second week of December, and it was everything I could do JUST to squeeze in a few final comps and study for finals. My family didn't see much of me during that time except for a flash of scrubs coming in and out of the door and throwing out promises of quality time around Christmas. I comped on all of my required exams except one (tib/fib - I only saw one ALL quarter) and aced my finals. I am happy to report that I am still maintaining my 4.0 GPA. :) (If you happen to be an overachiever like me, you'll know just what a big deal that is...not necessarily for the academic benefits but for personal achievement and satisfaction.)

After three very long and relaxing weeks of a break at home, I returned to class on January 8. Clinicals began on January 9, and I returned to the same outpatient facility. (As I've mentioned before, I will go to a new facility in April.) On my first day of class and clinical, I was nervous. I was nervous that I wouldn't remember my positioning. I was worried I had forgotten my anatomy. What I discovered on my first day of clinical was that I remembered ALL of that. The ROOKIE mistake I continually made was not lining up the tube to the wall bucky. Can you believe it? Of A-L-L the information that I have been cramming in my head for the last two quarters, the ONE, should-be-no-brainer thing I couldn't remember is the tidbit that I learned on oh, let's see...maybe DAY ONE of the program? Geesh. I was so embarrassed. On my first day back, we had several C-Spines come in, and since I have to comp on a C-Spine this quarter, I jumped right in. My clinical instructor described my positioning on the three exams I did as "perfect." I even NAILED the Odontoid shot on all three showing the space between C1 and C2 and the odontoid tip beautifully. However on one exam, I didn't line up the tube and wall bucky; on the second, I forgot my marker; and on the third, I remembered my marker, but it didn't show up within my collimation. So, I got some great experience, but no comps. Several other class members turned in 5, 6 and 7 comps after the first couple of DAYS, and I didn't have anything to show.

I have tried to explain before just how competitive and how much of a perfectionist I am. My competitive nature is directly linked to my confidence. I wrote this in an e-mail to a friend on Tuesday night: I fully expected to be able to jump right back into my clinicals like I never went on break, but I'm finding that I'm almost as hesitant/nervous/unsure as I was during the first couple of weeks LAST quarter. I know things will get better, but I just hope this isn't how it's going to be at the beginning of EACH new quarter. I have five more to go and hoped that I would be more comfortable by now. Ahhh...just me being entirely too hard on myself again! :)"

My clinical day on Wednesday was MUCH better which leads me to believe that this blog does much more for my psyche than I originally gave credit. I had convinced myself that I was writing this blog for friends, family and other rad tech wannabes, but now I realize that I'm writing this for myself, too. Jotting down my thoughts about this new chosen profession helps to reinforce them in my mind and helps me to build confidence. I comped on four exams on Wednesday: knee, shoulder, hip and pelvis.

The great thing about all of this is that I truly do feel like I've found my "place" professionally. I love healthcare. I love almost everything about it. I love that at the end of the day, I can go home and not have to feel like there's something I should be doing (checking e-mail, paperwork, etc.). I love that when a patient looks me in the eye and says, "Thank you" I feel as though I've really done something to help them or have touched their lives in one small little way. And I love that at the end of ONE day of clinicals that I go home feeling more fulfilled than I did in 5 years of working in PR. I feel like I have made this amazing transformation internally/emotionally that I can't fully (or justifiably) explain. When I worked in PR, I was nice to people and cared about helping people, but it was never truly genuine. I would help them book a hotel room, help them register for a conference or join the association, but none of that was life-altering for them. I realize now that a lot of my "niceness" was strictly professional - I only did it because my job depended on it. Now, I realize that I am still nice to people, but it's in a totally different way. I GENUINELY care about the patients I see. I am concerned that they are in pain or sick without knowing why. I see the fear in their eyes when they come in for tests because they're more afraid of the results than they are the exam, and I sympathize with them. There's so much about the medical field that the general public doesn't know, and it's FRIGHTENING for them. I don't claim to be a genius or a doctor, but I can help them to relax a little while they are in my exam room whether it's by explaining a procedure or making them laugh. And I'm so grateful for that.

The friend I e-mailed on Tuesday night had asked me for a point-blank, one-on-one description of this experience of abandoning my comfort zone and going back to school, and I am so grateful for her. She is a writer, and maybe she did or didn't know exactly what she was doing when she asked me for that, but I'm so glad that I took the time to send her my thoughts. My passion for healthcare has been with me since day one of this quarter, but I was allowing my competitive nature to take over and that's not what this profession is about. Thank you, friend, for knowing just what I needed. :)

Remaining Comps for Winter Quarter:
Ribs
Trauma Shoulder (not likely at my outpatient clinic)
Cross-table lateral hip
C-Spine
T-Spine
L-Spine
Tib/Fib (from last quarter)