NCLEX over; mom in hospital (again)

[verushka70]

So I took the NCLEX-RN licensing exam yesterday. My girlfriend & I were both scheduled at the same time & same place, downtown. We took the L. We were scheduled for 3pm (thank god! none of that ultra-early morning bullshit like when I took the NCLEX-PN at frakkin' 9am). I think I started around 2:45 because they let us start as they got us checked in. By the time my cell phone said 16:00 (4pm), I was standing outside on LaSalle St. again, feeling like I bombed it. WTF, I got a LOT of questions on colostomies and patient self-care of same. Of course, what did we study this past week? Peds and maternal-child nursing! New born assessment! And in the past month I concentrated so much on cardiological procedures and cardiac meds because I knew I didn't know them as well as I should. I didn't go over colostomies! I read that stuff over at the end of April and haven't looked at it since. So of course that's the area the questions seemed to concentrate on! Frak.

People are telling me that if I finished that early, I must have gotten the minimum (75 questions). I didn't keep good track, and you never know when it will end -- you never know which question will be the last and the screen will go blue and you won't have looked at which question number you were on. Which is what happened to me. The last time I had looked, I was on question 61. So, I am told that getting the minimum is good -- that most likely that means the computer adaptive test realized quickly that I was working above the passing standard. But what's really worrying me is all the colostomy questions. I must have gotten about 8 of them. And some of them had the same multiple choice answers. I think it kept asking me questions on the same topic because I kept getting them wrong. The test bulletin says it doesn't do that, but I doubt that.

Then, when I was standing on the sidewalk in front of my house, talking to my girlfriend before she got in her car to go home, my cell rang and it was one of my older sisters. She said that when my mom went in for her scheduled chemo in the morning, she had a fever. Before she even finished, I said, "They admitted her." She paused and said, "How did you know?" I said, "Unlucky guess." So they didn't do the chemo -- again, for the second week in a row. My mom's fever was 101.4. Kinda high. I don't know if the shingles could do that or not; but the acyclovir was clearing that up (although not the pain, my mom said). So they did a chest X-ray last night, but the results aren't back yet (or haven't been read and confirmed by a radiologist yet, I guess).

So I put one thing behind me (I hope) and then another bad thing confronts me. My mom has lost 3 lbs. Not that bad, I guess, but she was also dehydrated. They put her on Levaquin (big gun antibiotic), although I'm not sure if they even know what is wrong yet. But she said she's feeling a lot better this morning. So I don't know if they will send her home today or not. I have to go visit her and bring her some underwear, anyway.

I get my NCLEX-RN exam results in 2 days. Well, unofficial results in 2 days. So I should know by Tuesday if I bombed it or passed. If I passed, then I'll be a "real" nurse. Sigh. I wonder if E---'s sister Y------ dropped off my application to Holy Cross ER yet. If she did, she said she was going to put in a good word for me.

So that's the latest. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I thought the stress-related eye tic I have developed over the last few weeks would go away after I finally took the exam. No such luck. It's still with me.

To take my mind off things, my bf took me to see a late show of Ocean's 13 last night. It was so nice to take my mind off things for a couple hours. But then I tossed and turned all night, didn't sleep 'til 5am. I got some ideas for the HCL/FTWHTWD xover story I'm working on, to get me out of the dark impasse I was at with it. Every time I make a major change, I change the name slightly so I can keep earlier versions. I add "vX" to the title, where X=number of versions. I'm up to v13. So 13 versions. Well, now that I have nothing to do but work & worry about my mom, I'll have more time to write. And now that my mom seems to have taken a turn for the worse, I'll have more reason for the escape of writing. I had it before, but I felt guilty writing when I should've been studying for the exam. Now (at least unless I find out I failed) I won't have to feel guilty about that anymore.

Comments

[grey853.livejournal.com]

Fingers crossed, your mom will rally and feel better. Hope you did well on your test.

[songfire3.livejournal.com]

I'll light a candle for your mom and keep my fingers crossed for your test!

[verushka70.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I really appreciate the kind words.

[verushka70.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the candle-lighting and finger-crossing -- feels like I need it! Very kind of you.