Starting school soon and I'm excited/nervous.

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Well, only a few more months and I'm off to Buffalo to start CRNA school. Classes start in August but I'm starting to get excited and nervous at the same time already. That's because I'm already well underway making plans with my family for the move. We're from Pennsylvania so this will be a significant relocation. We've just fininshed the final touches on our house to show it to the realtor tomorrow morning and put it on the market. Boy is that weird. We've been here 5 years and my kids have only known this place as home.

The respiratory therapists at my hospital are training to intubate because the hospital is eliminating the on-call CRNA on eve's and nights in a month or two. That means the RT will intubate and we RN's will sedate and paralyze. Weird combo. Anyway, I was talking to my friend who's an RT and he said he did his training already and it was fun. I felt jealous and I can't wait to get in there myself. I work with some really great CRNA's and they've been very supportive in my application process. They say they LOVE what they do.

I'm just worried about how difficult the program will end up being. I'm financially prepared to not work for the whole program. I figure that if I have some extra time I should spend it with my wife and kids. But I just wonder how I'll handle the pressure. I mean, it seems weird to think that I'll be performing general anesthesia on people in 3 years. Yikes! I've just been told by my ENT doctor that I need a septoplasty for my deviated septum and it requires genereal anesthesia. I'm freakin' scared to go as a patient (and CCRN). I hope that I'll be good at what I do and be able to put my patients at ease. I guess the beauty of being a CRNA is that at least your patients are knocked out when you're working with them.

Isn't that fascinating? I think anesthesia is the coolest thing. How can it be that you can alter someone's level of consciousness that way that you can then operate on them and not have them feel pain or remember the proceedure? Weird. I can't wait to learn all about it.

Well, for all you who read this who are heading off to school: good luck and I'll see you on the other side when we can proudly add the initials CRNA behind our names!

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Good luck to you! :)

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Good Luck!

Yeah, I put my house on the market and sold it in 8 hours. All my stuff got shipped this week. Now we have to live in an apartment for 3 months till the AF cuts me loose. There are a lot of things to get in order for this adventure...

I hope you house sells easily. That was a major worry of mine.

Dave

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Well, only a few more months and I'm off to Buffalo to start CRNA school. Classes start in August but I'm starting to get excited and nervous at the same time already. That's because I'm already well underway making plans with my family for the move. We're from Pennsylvania so this will be a significant relocation. We've just fininshed the final touches on our house to show it to the realtor tomorrow morning and put it on the market. Boy is that weird. We've been here 5 years and my kids have only known this place as home.

The respiratory therapists at my hospital are training to intubate because the hospital is eliminating the on-call CRNA on eve's and nights in a month or two. That means the RT will intubate and we RN's will sedate and paralyze. Weird combo. Anyway, I was talking to my friend who's an RT and he said he did his training already and it was fun. I felt jealous and I can't wait to get in there myself. I work with some really great CRNA's and they've been very supportive in my application process. They say they LOVE what they do.

I'm just worried about how difficult the program will end up being. I'm financially prepared to not work for the whole program. I figure that if I have some extra time I should spend it with my wife and kids. But I just wonder how I'll handle the pressure. I mean, it seems weird to think that I'll be performing general anesthesia on people in 3 years. Yikes! I've just been told by my ENT doctor that I need a septoplasty for my deviated septum and it requires genereal anesthesia. I'm freakin' scared to go as a patient (and CCRN). I hope that I'll be good at what I do and be able to put my patients at ease. I guess the beauty of being a CRNA is that at least your patients are knocked out when you're working with them.

Isn't that fascinating? I think anesthesia is the coolest thing. How can it be that you can alter someone's level of consciousness that way that you can then operate on them and not have them feel pain or remember the proceedure? Weird. I can't wait to learn all about it.

Well, for all you who read this who are heading off to school: good luck and I'll see you on the other side when we can proudly add the initials CRNA behind our names!

Hi,

Congratulations! Reading your post brought back memories of 10 years ago. It seems like yesterday! I used to dream about writing crna behind my name and now it seems strange to me that I ever doubted it would happen. The road is rocky but fun. Good luck. A tip for you...find a classmate ahead of you in your program and start reading the 1st semester material now. It was hard to absorb everything all at once. On the other hand, these are the last few months of relaxation and sanity...so enjoy them. Good luck.

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I'm terrified! And it's still up in the air which school I'll go to, so that's hard too. Also, I committed to a job as a camp nurse, which I always wanted to do. Thought this was kind of my last chance. But the camp is 5 hours from my home, close to one potential school but in the wrong direction from the other 3000 miles away! It's not going to make things easy but I want to have a fun summer and do something for ME before I jump into this adventure.

It does all feel so crazy, and bizarre, huh? You concentrate on that work of getting accepted and you're too busy to think about what it really be like. Then you're in and it's "oh sh*t!" And we STILL have no idea of what it will be like.

Good luck to all new SRNAs - we can do this!

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