So, Where am I?

So, where am I?                                                                               

Reflecting on the last few years of my life I have made many changes that have been of great benefit to me both physically and mentally. It all began almost six years ago when I married Jessica and became a father to two little girls. I gave up drinking and smoking, lost 20 pounds (not really enough and gained half of it back) and a year later went back to school to get my bachelor’s degree in nursing. Incidentally, starting college at the age of 37 is enough to make one take up smoking and drinking but I settled on coffee.

I had hoped to be able to get a nursing degree for years but it was both financially challenging and scared the hell out of me. The idea of school at 37 was both unappealing and daunting. However, with the support of my family I decided to pursue the possibility, especially after a few years of working at a VA hospital. The question was, how?

As I have told many people over the years, I can no longer go jogging without my knees swelling up like grapefruit and barely being able to walk for several days. This problem began in the Army while serving as a paratrooper when I tore my meniscus in my right knee. Sadly, it was not properly diagnosed until a few years later when it tore further and displaced, leaving my leg unable to straighten. I had surgery which corrected the problem (twice) but it left me unable to perform any kind of impact exercise, even walking starts to hurt after too long. BUT, because of this injury and disability rating I was granted by the VA, I qualified for vocational rehabilitation. Go figure, I had to get myself hurt in order to help heal others.

After developing a good addiction to Starbucks and espresso over four years, I graduated. I had made many new friends, although I was the same age as many of their parents and it had taken over a full semester for them to decide I was safe to talk to. By the way, if any of you out there have sons who want to go to college but are hesitant to enter the nursing profession, give him the following points:

1. It’s a great and rewarding job (although you do earn that paycheck).

2. There are always jobs available, even if they aren’t necessarily your ideal position.

3. And perhaps most importantly the girl to guy ratio in my class was about 70:5! If I was younger and single I would have…

Anyway, you get the point.

So, let’s see…addicted to coffee… yes, at the age of 41, I was starting over again with a new career, only with several years of bills, a mortgage and two young girls rapidly cruising through adolescence and thinking about all that stuff that comes with the teenage years. If not pressing the panic button I was certainly eyeing it warily and trying to maintain a smiling exterior.

I got my first job at Three Rivers Medical Center in Louisa, KY. Initially, this was not where I wanted to work. I had done my clinicals in the bigger hospitals in the area and that was where I wanted to be. Three Rivers is a small 90 bed hospital in a small town in rural KY, but it was a perfect first job. I worked on the Medical/Surgical floor and not only sharpened my basic nursing skills but shed a load of personal bias. I worked with a great group of people, not only on my floor but in the whole hospital. The benefit of a small facility is that you now everyone on a first name basis. Sadly, it was a long drive and there didn’t seem to be enough sick people to be able to work every scheduled day. Or, you got so many admissions during the day, you were barely able to keep up.

Anyway, during that year and a half, life pressed on around me. I continued to not lose 20-30 pounds, the girls continued to grow up and I stared at the pile of bills and wondered, how? I watched others make changes in their lives and really wanted to do something too, I just failed to find the motivation.

Then I woke up one day and there it was.