It's the end of June?? When did that even happen? I feel so confused by what my life has been for the last two months. Let's recap.
May 1-10: finals. My mother comes and stays with me to help out, by which I mean she does a ridiculously incredible job of helping me with every single thing around the house while I study frantically for two weeks. The last day of finals, thanks to the poor planning of some moron buried deep within my school's bureaucratic bowels, I juggle cramming for my test and slogging my way through a 10 hour BLS/ACLS (BLS = CPR, ACLS = reviving a dead person in the hospital) online course because it has to be done by the next day and they didn't tell us until the beginning of finals. As a result I probably don't know pharmacology or CPR, thus making me as prepared as possible for rotations.
May 11: day off. By which I mean after going to bed at 1:30, I wake up at 6 to take my mum to the airport, cry a bunch about being alone, then go for my mandatory BLS/ACLS certification test that they have kindly scheduled on our one day of freedom. Then I go to therapy and talk about my feelings.
May 12 - 20: 8 hours a day of pathology lecture. My professor, who is a brilliant educator and a total big shot, gives us a board review course that the school makes vaguely mandatory. It is really helpful, and also excruciating. I spend a lot of time thinking in capslock, like this: I AM SO SICK OF CLASSES.
May 21 - June 8: 12-14 hours a day of focused but sane boards studying. By this I mean I eat regularly, exercise most days, and get a minimum of 6 hours of sleep each night. I bought this online review course which consisted of even! more! lectures! and so I spend my time sitting at my desk facing the pool in my apartment complex, trying to learn but mostly just loathing the young untroubled idiots sunning themselves into oblivion 20 feet away. I have a couple of moderate-strength crises ("But what if I don't do well on this test and then I am a TERRIBLE DOCTOR FOREVER?!?" -sob-). June 8, I finish my last awful, hideously informative online lecture and feel a bit lost. My loved ones are very gentle with me.
June 9 - 12: 16-18 hours a day of totally insane review. I have an impossible list of things I must reread before my test, and I am meant to reread the entire 500-page review book as well. There is no time to eat, or work out, or sleep, or study, or think. I finally, after one last spasm of anxiety, find peace in the fact that the Lord is in control. And praise Him for that! I give up on the stupid review book and the bloody list and decide to focus only on my worst areas. Late evening on the 12th I drive to my hotel in Fort Smith and medicate myself to sleep. No, seriously. My doctor gave me hydroxyzine (think prescription Benadryl; I've been having some allergy things) and all but told me to use it to get myself to sleep properly.
June 13: I take the COMLEX Level I. It is a 9-hour test. I leave feeling worn out but free and thankful. God is so good for bringing me through that in one piece!
June 14-17: All of the furniture and random things I ordered on study breaks arrives at the same time, and I realise the apartment is a total disaster. Boxes on top of clothes on top of dishes type of disaster. And suddenly third year is positively looming with a whole list of demands - nitpicky things that nevertheless absolutely must be done. Whatever. All I can think about is...
June 18-24: vacation with Matt. It is wonderful. All of it. We do too much. We don't do enough. We sleep too much. We don't sleep enough. I look at his face a thousand times and then do it again.
And now I am back in my pigsty of an apartment. My third year starts in less than a week and I need so many things - background check, HIPAA certification, TB test, and so on. Matt is halfway to Afghanistan and I don't know the next time we'll talk. My kitchen is covered in dirty dishes and I have half constructed furniture sitting everywhere. I've been trying to find my big girl panties but they're probably at the bottom of my enormous dirty laundry pile, or maybe on the floor under a stack of mail that needs sorting.
My life feels a little bit wrecked right now, to be honest. Praying for something to give me a bit of momentum and perspective.
