Information Overload

Being a new nurse is hard. 
In school, you learned a little bit of everything--every disease, every drug, every surgery, every patient situation--very quickly.
You're on constant information overload. With a test a week, you cram a bagillion facts into your head one week only to take a test and move onto the next week's load. 
It's hard. 
And starting out on the floor, you can feel a little like a fish out of water. A patient says something like, "My belly aches and I have a headache", and you could swear you learned something about bellies and headaches and electrolytes and bleeding and drug side effects and how they might just somehow relate. 
It's frustrating not to be able to recall information.
It's like when you learned Spanish in high school and because you didn't use it all summer, you come back the first day of school and can't remember anything, but you don't find this out until you try to say a sentence you've said a million times and worked for hours and hours to learn and totally fail trying. And then, you sit stewing over and over again about how to say that freaking word in Spanish. 
It's confidence shattering. It's exhausting. It's stressful. And I feel stupid a lot. 
Experience is everything in this business and I've only just started to get my green toes wet in it. 
But, all-in-all, its incredible. I care for people who are ill and suffering. I work to alleviate their pain and worry and I send them home with knowledge of how to care for themselves. 
I'm paid to provide charity--something that changes me every shift. 
It's worth it. 
I came across these two images and they made me smile :)

Have a great weekend, everyone!
I have a hot date tonight with Adam de-cluttering our apartment before we move. It's so liberating just to throw stuff away!