Nursing School Gave Me Cancer

Right after the bottom fell out in the booming housing business in 2008 I found myself single, middle-aged, and looking for another job, after working in a building materials center for 15 years. They began laying off left and right as the sales plunged to rock-bottom. Our local tiny hospital was hiring, and I lucked out by getting a full-time registrar position. My HR guy saw in my resume that I had gone to nursing school after high school but never finished and convinced me to go back to school, as there is always a shortage of nurses, including at this hospital, and no matter how old I was I could always land a job somewhere. I had not been in school for 25 years, and I was terrified. I knew I would have to take all the classes I was scared to take in high school like chemistry and advanced algebra. But I decided to take one semester at a time, and if I did ok I would take another semester. I worked during the day and went to school at night or online, while raising my last child who was in high school. We were taking many of the same math and biology classes and it was fun to be learning alongside my youngest son.

The journey back to school was amazing! Not only was I able to complete the courses, I learned what I was good at. I excelled at algebra, got an "A" in chemistry, my papers in English won me a trip to Weber State University to read my research paper on Internet addiction in front of other students all over the country, including Harvard students. I did not even know I could write until I was in an environment that required me to do so. The journey was phenomenal. I found many other middle-aged people were also going back to school, and I was not always the oldest person in class. Occasionally, I was even at the top of my class. Then came nursing school.

After 3 years of working full-time and getting my prerequisites done with all A's and B's, I entered the RN program. I began going to school full-time and working only part-time on the weekends. Still 7 days a week of work and school but I knew it would only be for 4 more short semesters. Was I wrong. RN school was grueling. Our class started with 51 students, 26 graduated. Each semester more and more of us were failing out, and I just hoped I was not the next one to go. I began my student-loan journey at this time due to my hours being scaled back at work, and the debt was piling up fast. RN school at my college is roughly $5,000 per semester. I struggled with test anxiety the most. The clock ticking down on these grueling tests had never affected me before like they did in RN school. I kept passing them, however, and by the time I reached 4^th semester I thought I was home free. Was I ever wrong.

In 3^rd semester most of my class was on Xanax. I was going drug-free. By 4^th semester a nurse in one of my clinicals gave me the test bank from my college and told me the only way to pass the grueling tests in 4^th semester was to cheat. Her class had all used it and it was the only way to pass since the tests were so difficult. I found out that many of my fellow classmates also had the test bank. Five years of grueling schoolwork, working and going to school 7 days a week, came down to me cheating to pass the tests. I refused, and I failed out, 10 weeks before graduation. In our school you must submit several clinical skills videos and pass a test to get back in, and then you only have one more shot. I got back in, and while getting ready for the fall semester had my annual mammogram, which ended up showing I had stage III breast cancer.

I do blame the stress of nursing school for the cancer to be at a stage III as I was laser-focused only on school for so long. The instructors warn you there is no life outside of school, and they are right. I was in shock with the stress. I began chemo and had to delay my reentry to the following spring. I entered school wearing wigs and my classmates would just stare at me at all I was going through to try to become a nurse. Many of them knew me from several semesters prior when my video for female catheterization became a training video for several semesters behind me, yet here I was.

After I failed even more miserably the 2^nd time around I found out with my situation I could have had special accommodations like being in a room by myself, instead of a huge computer room with the distractions of my classmates getting up from their seats after finishing their test to leave the computer room. I could have been allowed to have more time on the clock since I not only had chemo-brain but severe test anxiety as well. The instructors cannot tell you this. But a doctor's note can make all the difference in the world, and I did not find out until it was too late. I was ready to throw in the towel and stay a registrar for the rest of my life, or at least until we were replaced with electronic robots, which were coming. Robots can certainly be used for check-in purposes, though I doubt a robot can ever replace a good nurse, at least not in the near future. Then a nurse friend changed my mind.

Jo was a traveling RN working in our ER. She had a southern accent and an exuberant personality. She had also moved right next door to me and we quickly became friends. She convinced me that I had had too much schooling to just give up and I should get back into school to get my LPN. She was right. The next day the LPN program accepted my application and put me in their accelerated program, and 6 short months later I got my license. I now am a licensed nurse, work at a fabulous facility, love what I do which is patient care, make double what I was making, and can pay off all my student loans and other debts I acquired during schooling. Oh and the cancer? Though I am now flat-chested, the cancer was beat up and spit out, and is becoming a fading memory.

The point is to never give up. We will all get older. At age 70 what will be your biggest regrets? That you tried and failed, or that you never tried at all? Get back on that horse, live your dreams, at least try. There will be doors that slam in your face. Take a crowbar and break the damn door down. Be who you were meant to be, not what people or situations think you should be. Obstacles happen, that is life. But live fully, and honestly, there is never a reason to cheat, or take short-cuts, especially when you are dealing with a patient's life. Face life head-on, stare-down cancer. Someday we may be on that nursing home bed hitting our buzzer for a pain med or waiting for someone to take us to the bathroom. But in our thoughts, we can look back on a great life, and that we lived it to our fullest potential.