lunch today

The UNC School of Nursing Accelerated BSN Program is 14 months of classes, labs where we poke and stick mannequins, clinicals where we poke and stick patients, hours of cramming for exams, and even more hours crying to our classmates during our 10 and 30 minute breaks between classes and for lunch about how our lives were ending.

With only 28 people in my class, some really fun friendships formed amidst the hospital and labs and tears. And, with UNC Hospital's amazing loan program, 22 of the 28 new nurses are working at the hospital, so most everyone is still in the area.

Today I met up with one of those people for lunch, someone I had bonded with during our time on the Rehab unit at UNC in our first clinical. We helped each other with patient transfers, medication administration, and bedpans. She actually made all of those things fun, well, close to fun.

Now she actually works there, and we try to get together every so often to catch up. Without fail, nursing is the center of our conversation. That's what we know, and so that's what we discuss. There's always stories about crazy patients or scary situations that only another nurse can understand and relate to. She tells me her stories, and I share my own. Despite working on very different units with a very different patient population, our stories, without fail, make us laugh.

In this line of work, you have to laugh in order to make it, else you burn out. Taking things too seriously in nursing is a death sentence. Sharing your experiences, both successes and failures, as well as the ridiculous, with other nurses is therapy. People outside of healthcare will listen, but they don't really understand, or they get a little nauseated. I'm pretty sure the guy at the table next to us was gagging a little during lunch today.

But we have to get it out, and thankfully, the Lord as blessed me with several friends in the field to unload on and to laugh with. What a change from nursing school, where we were all on the verge of a nervous breakdown most of the time. Now we have lives and can be creative and have fun and chuckle at ourselves and our jobs.

I'm so glad that my friend met me for lunch today for said chuckling. I know she'd be there to listen if I needed to cry a little too, but today neither of us did. In fact, it was quite the opposite.