About Me

undergrad RN
I'm a twenty-something Canadian student. After stumbling through a few years of college, I finally managed to get into the nursing school of my dreams, where I hope to graduate in 2012 with a nursing baccalaureate degree. I want to offer an honest look into how a modern nurse is educated, both good and bad. Eventually I hope to compare my education to my day-to-day career and see how it holds up. Whatever happens, it should be somewhat entertaining. Find me on allnurses.com!
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Thursday, November 25, 2010

Oncology - maybe this is it?

First off - thanks for all of your positive comments on my QQ post. I really just needed to vent about it. I'm still annoyed about it but I'm still alive, so that's a plus. I am suffering a severe case of end-of-semester-itis. This was a long haul - third year is kind of a 'blah' year, IMO. I'm not really close to graduating, and I'm not doing anything for the first time. Still, semester is over in less than 2 weeks and then I am GTFO to Mexico.

Secondly, big shout out to Rob Fraser (RN! congrats!) who probably gave me the best quote ever about STTI:
My philosophy about any professional association, is that it is like a gym membership. You get out what you put in. So take advantage of their resources and the different opportunities for getting involved!

Touche, sir! I just got my STTI pin in the mail today. I can't believe it cost $40. It does, however, give me a certain amount of pride to pin it to my nametag. I haven't heard back yet from my CNSA application. Assuming I am not accepted to that, I will be attending my STTI induction at the end of January.

ANYWAY, to the point of my post. I have spent hours - HOURS - trying to decide what kinda nurse I wanna be when I grow up. I have been strongly leaning towards ICU (even joined CACCN to suss it out)........

....until the last couple of days, in which we have focused on Oncology.

And let me tell you, it's the strangest tug at my heart strings.

I do find it somewhat tragic, of course, but so incredibly filled with hope, and such an amazing release from all the (IMO) pithy doings of functional day-to-day society.

Even when my dad was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, I didn't get really emotionally overwhelmed about it beyond the day I found out. I thought the oncology atmosphere was quite powerful and charged with positive energy. I didn't break down and cry all the time. I was pretty up-front about my feelings and reflected on them a lot with my Dad.

I wonder if that would make me a good Oncology Nurse.

More musings are required. In the meantime, I am going to watch these.

Any oncology nurses out there, or people touched by cancer, who care to share their experiences with patients or nurses?

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

First of all, thanks for the shout out!

Second, I was actually looking for your post (since you aren't on twitter) about the couch to 5k series, just going to encourage you in your progress. I'm very unwillingly, forcing myself to do week 8 day 1. I know I'll be happy I did afterwards.

Third, this post happened to be about oncology, so I thought I would take a minute to mention http://desouzanurse.ca (I worked as an RA for them) and they are a new(ish) resource for educating nurse in oncology, most of their stuff is free. They are amazing, you should check check out @Ashleigh_RN (on twitter) she is an educator with de Souza and has a blog at http://apps.desouzanurse.ca/wordpress/ - she is super friendly and I'm sure she would answer (and love) any comments you post on her blog.

Keep up the writing, love getting the updates when I stop by
Rob

Ps. I cried when I was at horse camp– cause my sister wanted to go, therefore I had to– when they tried to make me feed it a carrot. I was little and thought it would eat my hand.

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