You know it's funny. Sometimes, you get to the end of a program, and your insecurities kick in and you think "how the hell am I going to be a nurse?"
I'm not sure how. I often think I'm the most incompetent human to walk the face of the Earth. But I need a job that pays ok, and I care about people, and especially about health, and people tell me I'll be an excellent midwife, and maybe an ok nurse, as long as I'm careful about the jobs I pick. But in this economy, who can be careful about the jobs they pick? Do I have the choice to "pick" a job?
I wish I knew how to get paid for doula work. It seems like only broke people have babies, and I can't ask a broke momma to pay me. I'd love to be teaching childbirth education and getting paid doula clients, but I'll likely be working long-term care for a few years, which is ok too, as long as I find a better way to deal with stress. It's hard to watch people with dementia struggle to understand where they are, and why we have to do the things we have to do to them (even bathing a person with dementia can be a struggle,) and I frequently feel like a cruel person for doing things against a person's will, even when they are so demented they don't know what they want. I guess I'll get over that.
In Kaplan Review class today, we where talking about restraints, both physical and pharmalogical, and I was having a hard time even thinking about putting someone in restraints, even though I know at times it is necessary. Maybe I need to have some kids so I'm more callused about doing things to people who don't know what is best for them? I don't know. I feel like working in long term care for a few years could be very good for me, since I really need to learn my meds, inside and out, yet I feel terrible being the "med nurse." We know that polypharma is very dangerous and detrimental, yet, look what we do to our elderly. But maybe I can make peace with my distrust of most meds, and get over my feelings of wrongness about giving many patients somewhere between 10 and 20 different meds.
On top of endless ethical dilemmas, trying to study for my boards and apply for my New York State Nursing License (which easily transfers to Indiana, once I move there,) I'm trying to prepare to move to Ander's farm, possibly named "Work in Progress Farm."
And I feel very unsettled about all of that as well. I love Anders, and I love some aspects of farm life; but I never pictured myself as a farm wife, or at least not in recent years. I've seen my parents struggle with farming my whole life, and I know that, for most farmers, good years are pretty good, but bad years are really bad, poverty is a very real issue for farmers, and a lot of kids who grow up on farms got this advice from their parents "get out while you still can!"
On the other hand, rural life and farm life is what I know, what I'm comfortable with. I think it is a privilege that I grew up that way, considering that less then 2% of the kids in this country grow up that way anymore, when once-upon-a-time, this was a farming nation. I want my children to have fresh air, fresh water, and fresh, organic food. I want to live in a way that is less destructive then many other lifestyles I can picture. I want to teach my children about edible wild foods, and to not fear the woods, to love nature, to respect the planet they inhabit. But I'm a lazy creature, and farming is a hard thing to do if you are, by nature, a couch potato.
But I realize that I'm happiest when I'm forcing myself not to be lazy, when I'm busy from dawn to dusk, when I'm working hard, in the sun, using all my muscles, sweating all day long, using critical thinking skills to irrigate crops, or build a chicken coop from scrape materials, or what have you. Maybe all people kind of want to be lazy, but it is more satisfying, often, to live a life that is busy and full of accomplishments.
Well, nursing doesn't have to be an ethical dilemma either, I suppose. There should be a job, among the plethora of nursing jobs available, which would fit with my ethics, for the most part, and not cause me too much anxiety. I've been thinking a lot about finding work at a low-income health clinic, or maybe a hospice house? I've got to get in somewhere; bills that have been piling up for years now are starting to get out of control; life isn't free, especially when you've got student loans up to your eyeballs....
I'm going to visit Healing Spirits Herb Farm this evening to clear my head and gain some perspective.
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