marysuehil

It is absolutely doable. I will be 54 next week and will graduate from my program in May. And I continue to work full-time (In class/clinical Mon-Thur and work Fri-Sun). You've got this.

I am 53 and just completed the first year of my program. It is doable. Just go for it.

Well as this post is nearing 200 pages, I figured I would add another story from my experiences. I currently work in a small hospital that is under going renovation. I have experienced quite a few things since coming to work here several years ago. I once was walking off the floor and saw the reflection of a lady in window on the door to the manager's office. She had short dark hair, and was wearing a white top and dark pants. I stopped and turned because in order for me to see her reflection, I would have had to pass right by her. There was no one else in the hall and yet she was reflected in the glass on the door. (It has blinds and they were closed at the time.) Most of us at one time or another have been sitting at the computer charting and felt someone walk up behind us and peer over our shoulder. This is particularly creepy feeling. And the pantry where the patient snacks, drinks and ice machine are located is another area of activity. It is locked by cipher lock and located right behind our station. We hear everytime someone goes in and out. I have walked in there many times and found all the cabinets and drawers wide open. I close them and return a few minutes later to the same thing. And I know that there has been no one else in there. It is very strange but we are all kind of used to it.

Ok, I am back with another tale of strange occurrences. As from an earlier post, I was once stationed at a base in NM and the hospital was downsized to a clinic. We still ran ambulance services, Family Practice, Immunizations, Women's Health, etc, just stopped inpatient care all together. When I was working ambulance services, all doors to the building were locked except the door to the ambulance bay. We had a security camera that watched that door and anyone that come in after hours we saw them on camera and they had to pass by us and check in so we could account for them while inside. I was working one night and one of my coworkers was trained in sterilizing instruments so she said she was going up to Central supply to run the autoclave and get instrument packs ready for the clinic the next morning. She didn't believe any of the crap the rest of us told her and didn't believe the story about the night we couldn't keep the doors and windows closed on the 2nd floor. She was on the 2nd floor 2 or 3 nights a week running sterile supply and had never seen or heard anything. We were in the military for crying out loud. Well she came back down a little later and says to me "Who came in while I was upstairs?" I told her no one. Well she had heard some children running around and giggling and heard someone tell them to be quiet. I told her no one had come in and ran back the video tape and let her watch. Nothing. She went back upstairs sometime later to get everything out and packaged up. When she came back down, she was obviously agitated and told me and the other tech that we weren't funny. We didn't know what she was talking about. When she went back up, all the doors and windows were wide open. And she closed them all and went on about the process of finishing up with the sterile supplies. When she came back out of there, all the doors and windows were wide open again and she could hear children giggling. We showed her our log, we had an ambulance call to a house on base and had been out most of the time that she was upstairs, alone. We had only been back a few minutes when she came down. I told her we even called her on the radio and told her we were going out on a run and that she answered back that she would be ok. She said she had put the radio down at the old nurses station when she was closing the windows the first time and forgot to take it with her into the sterile supply area. Needless to say we were all freaked out by that. As far as I know, she never would go upstairs by herself anymore after that.

Ok, I posted a couple of stories a while back so in the spirit (pun intended) of keeping things going and the fact that Halloween is coming, I will post again. I was stationed at a base in NM and worked in the hospital that was downsizing at the time to a "super clinic" (Day surgery, Women's Health, Family Practice, Peds, Dental, Optometry). I had been assigned to work Day Surgery and had an office next to the nurses station. We had set up shop so to speak in what had once been Labor and Delivery. Old delivery rooms were the holding and recovery rooms. I was still setting up my office one afternoon about a week after moving into this area. I was listening to the OR team talking and carrying on down the hall in "the bullpen". I decided to take a break and go hang with them for a few minutes. The bullpen was literally less than 50 steps away from my office. As I approached, everything fell dead silent. The bullpen had windows that stretched the lenght of the hall from ceiling to about 3 feet from the floor. The lights were off, the door locked and no one insight. I went back to my office and immediately started hearing talking again. I decided to go home for the day.....Another time, when I was working nights for Ambulance Services, it was my turn walk around doing a security check. I always started on the third floor and worked my way back to the bottom. When I got on the elevator and pushed the button for 3, the elevator stopped on 2. I stepped off thinking I was on 3. As I turned my head, I realized I was on 2 and also realized it was freezing. Every window in every office was wide open and all the office doors wide open. I radioed the 2 medics downstairs and had them contact Security Forces. They arrived, didn't find anything out of place or anyone else in the building. We secured everything. The medic that did the security patrol 2 hours earlier said everything was locked up tight. Security Forces sent a patrol over for the next round and found everything wide open again. They were at a loss as to why and thought we were pulling a prank on them. They stayed this time and waited for rounds again. Again, everything was wide open. They relocked everything and left and told us we were on our own.

Hi, I commute 88 miles 1 way. Thru a lengthy construction zone and around the Research Triangle Park. Traffic blows and I spend anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5 hrs one way in traffic. It can be annoying but I am in the school I wanted which makes it worth it.

Rather than printing things out, what worked for me was getting a Surface Book. I can write directly on the slides and hand write all my notes in OneNote. I just set up a "notebook" for each class and would take notes in which ever notebook I needed. I also used digital textbooks where ever possible. My Surface Book has a dual screen mode that allows me to have 2 things open side by side. So book and notebooks or slide open next to each other. Some of my Kindle books make flashcards from material I have highlighted. Everything is portable and goes with me where ever I need. And I can sync OneNote and my Kindle stuff to my Android phone and have all my notes to look at even when I don't have my Surface Book.

I think one of my biggest pet peeves is when you go in your patient's room and find the significant other "servicing" the patient......

Thanks. It's gonna take me about and hour and a half but I agree that it will be worth it. I go to UMO-RTP on Thurs to sign up for classes. I already faxed my VA paperwork to my financial aid person so hopefully that goes thru quickly. I didn't get my acceptance till right before Thanksgiving so I feel rushed. I was expecting acceptance for the fall. Meant to be I guess.

Thanks! I am really happy to have gotten in. (although not looking forward to the drive to Durham but one does what one needs to.)

Just wanted to post this and say that I have been accepted to the University of Mount Olive/Watts School of Nursing program! I will do my prereqs in Jan thru UMO and start Watts in Aug. I am excited and happy to be finishing something I started a long time ago!

Alrighty, in the spirit of Halloween week and because I have more than a few stories, here is another. This one is not hospital related as my first two were but I hope y'all like them. When I was around 6 or 7, I was at church and in between Sunday School and the Worship service was about 15 mins of time. So I was doing like the other kids and getting a drink of water and hanging out in the hallway before heading out to the sanctuary. My friends had all gone out to the sanctuary and I was getting one last drink of water. When I looked up from the fountain, my Uncle John was standing there. He told me that I better "get your little hind end out to the pew before your Momma comes and gets you." I said, "Ok Uncle John." He then went into the mens room. I thought I would wait and go out with him and sit with him and Aunt Edna. Well about a minute later, I realized that Uncle John had died the week before and I took off running for the sanctuary. After that I never stayed in that hallway by myself if I could help it. When I was around 12, I was helping with the spring church clean up. I had cleaned the nursery/toddler room and gone outside for a few minutes. When I cam back in, a ball came rolling out of that room. I went and picked it up and started to take it back in the room. When I looked in the room, my 2 yr old cousin was sitting on the floor playing with a bunch of toys. He looked at me and smiled and waved. Then he disappeared. He had drowned in a pond just a few months before. I went back outside and didn't go back in that room for the rest of the day.

Ok, one more before I call it a night. At my first assignment after training, I was at a base hospital in northern California. We had the usual stuff, call bells that went off when no one was in the room, tvs turning themselves on, etc. After about a year and half of working Med/Surg, I was reassigned to the ER. Late one Saturda afternoon, we got a call from the person that handled our education and training. He had come in to catch up on some paperwork. His office was on the 2nd floor which had been our old maternity ward. He said a call bell had started going off and he couldn't get it shut off. I told him I would head up and see what I could do. When I got up there, he had left so I was alone. I looked at the board and saw that the call bell wasn't going off on the old maternity ward (now all office and storage space) but rather in the old labor and delivery area. I went back there and wasn't able to shut it off at the board so had to go into the delivery room to turn it off. When I did that, I heard a loud crash in the room next to me. I ran out and although I saw nothing, ran into something that I could feel but not see. It was oppressive and cold and I started running and it followed me. I could feel it breathing down my neck. I jumped in the elevator and it did not come with me. When I got back to the ER, everyone said I looked like I had seen a ghost. I wouldn't tell them what happened. About 3 wks later, we called the OR team in for an emergency surgery. One of the guys came in and said he was going to the old Labor and Delivery to get something needed for the case that they had started storing down there. About 10 min later he came back, white as a sheet. I asked him what happened and told him y story. He said when he got off the elevator a man was standing there. He thought he was lost as we had a med/surg ward and an ICU but when he spoke to the man, he just smiled and walked around the corner. The surg tech followed him around and he had vanished. There was no where for him to go. All the offices were lock and the closest stair were way down a different hallway. Neither of us would go back to the old Maternity floor alone ever again.......

Ok, I have finally finished reading all these wonderful stories so I must add one of my own. I have many from over the years starting in childhood and continuing to present. I was a medic in the Air Force and since retirement, work in a hospital as a telemetry monitor tech. This story isn't a ghost story but on a scale of 1 to Twilight Zone rates Bermuda Triangle. When I was stationed in Italy, I was on call with another medic. We had to take a young lady to a large hospital due to her having night sweats, a cough and a suspicious chest x-ray. When we arrived at the facility, we were escorted to another building behind the hospital by local paramedics. They had a badge to get us in the building, put us on the elevator and sent us to the second floor. When the elevator doors open, the three of us walk out onto the respiratory illness ward. The only lights are on over the nurses station. All the patient rooms are empty and we can't find anyone. We get back on the elevator thinking that the paramedics sent us to the wrong floor. We go to the 3rd floor (no floor higher than that) and it is ambulatory surgery, everything is locked up and no lights are on. we go back to the 2nd floor and still no nurses, no patients, it is empty. We stop on the 1st floor and it is all office space that is locked up. We head back to the ground floor ( 0 ) and I look at the directory. 2nd floor is the respiratory illness floor. I call our Italian liason and tell her we can't find anyone. She basically says don't be ridiculous they are waiting for the patient. We get back on the elevator and go back to 2nd floor. When the doors open all the lights are on, there are patients in the rooms, and nurses and aides, very busy place. A nurse that spoke English greeted us and wanted to know what took us so long as they had been notified by the paramedics that they had put us on the elevator and sent us up. The patient did not want us to leave her there but me and the other medic filed our transfer paperwork and beat it outta there. We couldn't come up with a logical explanation for that all the way back to base. It was definitely a strange occurrence. I have more stories. Will post more later.

I used The Compleet Idiot's Guide to Nursing Entrance Exams and Nursing School Entrance Exams by Learning Express.