So I just realized a little post here is overdue. February is going by so quickly. I can't even believe it. I'm half way through the rotation part of my residency and have only 3 more units to go, and when I went to pick up my first paycheck today (BIG event in my life...biggest paycheck I've ever gotten), they were already interviewing for the Summer residency cohort! Crazy.

So far, I've been to the renal dialysis and transplant floor, ACE (acute care of the elderly...basically a general medicine floor that gets most patients over 65), and myelosuppression. I still have a cardiac stepdown unit and 2 different general medicine units to go. Unfortunately, I will be spending time on those units on the night shift. The upside is that I will get paid a little more, but I'm anticipating it feeling like I'm living in a constant state of jet lag. I'm kind of excited, though, to see how night shift is versus day shift...will be a new experience. I put up the new curtain I bought myself that is supposed to block out 99% of light, so hopefully that will help me sleep better. I LOVE that my apartment gets so much natural light during the day, but for this situation, not so great.

Let's see...now that I have a full time job, I feel like my life has gotten a lot more boring. But maybe it's always been that way and I'm just noticing now, but anyway...I'm having a blast so far. I have weekends off (for now), so Matt and I have been hanging out a lot (and other friends, too!). I should probably make more of an effort to hang out with other nurse residents outside of work/class, because they are awesome people but it's hard when I don't see Matt very often anyway. Also, I have no idea who I'll even see once we get matched to our units. Anyway, since the 31st...hmm...hard to write down everything exciting I've done. I'm trying to remember, because I want to go back and look at this and remember all the experiences I've had. Kind of like my study abroad journal...only I'm not living in as cool of place as Vienna. I applied to the Nurse Education Loan Repayment Program recently, and I REALLY hope the lovely government will help me out with my loans in exchange for taking care of my lovely patients. A lot of Matt's friends from Divinity School, Kendra, Jaye, and I watched the Superbowl together. We also walked around Centennial Park a little that day (it was gorgeous...like today).

The next week, I attempted (yes, only attempted) to go to a Zumba class. However, Nashville got 3 inches of snow and flipped out. I got one block in 20 minutes and decided the traffic was not worth my time. The next morning, although there was no snow overnight, the roads were still not cleaned off and were pretty much the scariest roads I've ever driven on. I had to stop at one of the 1000 stop lights on Hillsboro Pike (of which none are synced up just right), aaaand I couldn't get my car to start moving again. FREAKED me out, and after a hysterical call to my mom, I lived and was only 5 minutes late to work. Oh, the joys of being a nurse and having to come into work even when other working adults get "snow days." I look forward to the day I get to sleep on an air mattress in the hospital for the next day's shift...some of my friends in the program did that!

Let's see...Matt and I had a very chill Valentine's Day. He bought me a box of chocolates (because he knows I always like having chocolate around), and we just watched TV and ordered a couple pizzas. We have GOT to stop this eating an entire pizza for ourselves thing. V Day was kind of lame, since it was on a Monday, so we went to an Indian buffet the Saturday before. It was actually pretty good, and we went to the employee celebration at the Vanderbilt women's basketball game the next day. It was nice. They gave us a free t-shirt (made me laugh hysterically when it was a t-shirt from the event they had in 2009(!)). We got a free bottle of milk (?) and a popcorn and soda. The game was going pretty well, but apparently it went downhill when we left, because they had a 10 point lead when we left and they lost. Oh, I also went to my friend from DePauw's (Allyson) choir concert before the game. It was cute...songs from musicals. I wanted to check them out and see if I would be interested in maybe auditioning and singing a little bit again. Speaking of music, I bought tickets for me and a few friends to see Spring Awakening next weekend!! I am beyond excited, and I cannot believe I am FINALLY seeing it. I hope it doesn't disappoint!

If you're wondering how I am liking the floors, it's difficult to say. We only get 2 days on each unit (granted, no other program does this and I am grateful for this aspect of the program), but it's difficult to gauge if I will fit in and like it there. My preceptors have for the most part been AMAZING. I am so impressed with Vanderbilt, and I think I will love working there. The patient to nurse ratios are a lot better than some places I've seen, and the units seem to have excellent team work. I don't want to go into too much detail here about the different units, because who knows what will happen on match day. All I know is that I will have some difficult decisions to make when ranking them...

2 "firsts" for me today: my first parking ticket (by the way, Beth, a friend from nursing school got some coffee with me today on her way to Auburn to visit her son...she's so great. I missed her), and my first paycheck! Woohoo!!