Dking1093

New to this board, so please forgive my ignorance and how long this story might get... here's my situation: I went to LPN school in Georgia back in 1996, never practiced there as my husband (military) got orders to Florida. Shortly after graduation, we moved to FL transfered to a FL license (did not keep my GA one because it was only temporary because I moved so soon after getting it). So, I worked for almost 3 years or so, when we got orders to Germany in 2001. Since I had a 1 year old by then and another on the way, I made the decision to apply for "inactive" status for the 3 year tour in order to stay home with my children. I also knew that it was almost going to be impossible for me to get a nursing job as an American over there but anyways... that just made my decision easier. I did everything I was told to do to put me into inactive status and we moved. I left a forwarding address for all my mail and we were off to Germany. I was enjoying staying home and a year or more went by and I ran across a site that you can check the status of a nurses license online so when I looked myself up it had something negative (I can't remember but it said pending cancellation) or something other than "inactive" so I called the FL Board of Nursing and found out that I needed to pay $350.00 in the next 2 weeks or my license was going to become cancelled/void. Turns out that they screwed up some paperwork, and resent it to my FL address and since they don't allow "forwarding" any mail to do with Licensure (which they failed to inform me) it was returned to them and they didn't even try to contact me at all. It ticked me off because I left them with an address and phone number to my MIL in the states if any problems arose with my inactive app and I never heard a single thing. Anyway, we had NO way of paying that $350 and I said since I'm not working anyway, I'll deal with it when I return to the states. Big mistake... we got sent to CA after Germany and when I went to renew my license found out it was null/void and I would completely have to take the boards (NCLEX?) all over again. It was too overwhelming to me at the time to even think about going through all that again, so I continued to stay home with my kids and work here and there in office jobs and medical receptionist stuff. So, skip to now... almost 9 years after all this took place and I live in TX now and my husband is retired from the Army now so we won't be moving anymore. Now, I seriously considering getting back into it. I really need to get back to work now that my kids are a little older and at least in school all day and we could definitely use the money. I'm tired of trying to find these silly jobs that I'm overqualified for that don't pay any money. I just don't have a clue on where to start. I need a TX license... don't know if I have to reboard for FL, then transfer to TX and take a refresher which obviously I would need. And not to throw another monkey wrench in here but I want to go ahead and bridge over to at least an Associate RN. That was my original plan before I stayed home... I always said if I came back to nursing, I was just going to bridge over and not stay an LPN. Has anyone else experienced anything close to this, I know it's complicated!! I only was a nurse for 3 years and have been out for 9, so I'm kinda freaked out. I also had some bad experiences when I was a nurse (got exposed to TB in nursing home that wan't checking it's patients according to the rules, needlestick of a IV drug user/Hep C patient... had to undergo the HIV testing for a year... super stressful stuff). That's another reason why I needed a "break" to rethink the whole nursing thing. It took me so long to make this decision to come back but now it seems so daunting... I don't want it to discourage me anymore that it already has. Please HELP!!! Any tips/advice would be appreciated. Thanks so much! ;-) Debbie