Clinical Bound

This morning I gathered up my bags and headed off to the airport again - for my fourth trip within a month.  This time I'm going without Scott.  We're going to be apart for TEN whole days.  When we were dating, and lived 12 hours apart, this would have been no biggie - being apart for a month at a time was the norm.  But, I do believe this is the longest we've been separated since we got married.  It makes me a little homesick looking at it from this end and thinking about it all, but I know the time will fly.

I'm headed back to Kentucky, to my school in the mountains, Frontier Nursing University.  I've completed most of the book work portion of my master's program and now we have orientation for clinicals!  The exciting, real life, action part!  When everything we've learned over the last 18 months finally gets tied together and put into practice.

While at Clinical Bound, we'll be learning and practicing all the hands-on skills we need to master during our clinicals: physical assessments of adults and infants, pelvic exams and paps, learning what various infections look like under the microscope, birth and birth complication drills (on simulators for now), and suturing, along with lots of paperwork and documentation training!  I'm also getting to see many of my classmates and friends again that I've been interacting with online and on the phone, since I was in Kentucky for my first school orientation.  It's going to be a packed session and I'm both excited and very, very nervous.

So, if you think of us, please say a little prayer that Scott can manage to keep track of his wallet and toothbrush, has enough clean clothes and that the house doesn't fall to shambles while I'm gone (only slightly joking :).  Also, that my brain doesn't explode from the overwhelming amount of information that's going to be pumped into it.