school woes

I've lost count of how many times I've come like this -- stuttering and red-faced and sweaty -- before you, dear reader, but please, let me get this done as fast as I can.






... (pin-drop silence)

On second thought, since I'm really bad at apologies, let's try something new.

You and I are theoretical physicists. We've discovered that the past several months of humdrum activity in this unkempt mishmash of HTML code that's my blog has been a time-dilation illusion caused by a freak localized wormhole in a small Texas town along the Rio Grande.

So the truth is, a few minutes have just passed since my last update, and now you're terribly excited to hear what I have to say next. (wink-wink)

Unlike most of my friends on the other side of the globe, I will start with my second semester this school year tomorrow. And this time, unlike the past semesters, I'll be donning sky-blue scrubs complete with a hospital badge when I go to my classes.

I've already been accepted into the nursing program. I received a two-page acceptance letter a few days before Christmas. The fact that I was the highest-ranked among the three hundred plus students who applied last semester, I should be beaming and thrilled and leaping above and beyond cloud nine. But I'm not. Really, I'm not.

The prospect of spending entire days roaming hospital floors while tending several patients at a time makes my nose wrinkle. This usually happens when I'm forced to do something I don't want to. Like washing off smelly brown stuff from my cousin's rump.

I try not to think about it more because it'll just make me even more anxious. Two years to go. Four semesters' worth of injecting catheters, cleaning pus-spouting wounds and wiping spit off the mouths of mental patients. Breathe in, breathe out. You can do this, Jef, I tell myself in the same way a husband comforts his laboring wife in vain.

My father, who got into the program a semester earlier, says that the clinicals class will be a bit challenging. He only got a B. Every meeting, he says, the nursing instructor will assign each of us a patient, whom we will be taking care of the whole day.

It is harder than it sounds -- not only will we nursing students be responsible for providing him medical aid, but for maintaining his entire well-being. So we have to ensure the patient feels comfortable, dignified, yadayada.

I'm not a people-person, so it makes me really uneasy when I imagine myself in that situation. Will I get the conversation right? What happens if I suddenly run out of words? Here's what I could think of right now. I'd blurt, "How are you, Mr. Smith? Ahh, OK, Buhbye!" and I'd scurry out of the room as fast as my stubby legs could carry me.

Far more important than the emotional rapport that we have to build with the patients are the medical procedures themselves that we have to perform. Intra-muscular injections, spinal taps, wound care, rectal suppository placement, IV therapy.

But neeedles and my clumsy hands don't go together very well. If I myself ever so often cut my own fingers while chopping carrots, how much more misfortunes would I cause my patients while I try to insert a thick needle into their wrists?

AhhHH-- Wait, wait, I caution myself. The other me suddenly surges out of its shell and grabs the microphone from the anxious me. (This schizophrenic mono-dialogue goes on in my head much more often than people think) Before I sink down in despair as I worry about what the next few months hold in store for me, I am suddenly reminded of this proverb which my wise grandmother had me memorized when I was seven:

Cross the bridge when you reach it.

And then I slowly realize how foolish I am to wring my sweaty hands over the unknown paths that lie ahead, over which I have absolutely no control. I cannot predict the future, much less mold it into what I want it to be.

But God is there. The God who deemed it wise to sell Joseph into slavery to rescue his family from the famine, to send His only Son to suffer a horrible death in the hands of bloodthirsty sinners, to make me fail the interviews for Intarmed so I could live in a run-down dormitory across the UP Coop and thereby gain a saving knowledge of Him through some priceless friends, also deemed it wise for me to go to nursing school.

He is sovereign, and He is good. He has a plan -- one that stretches far back into the darkest reaches of time into the end, the consummation of His second coming. A plan that weaves the magnificent panorama of human history into the manifold perfections of His glory. This, He assures me, you, us, that His timeless promise -- that He will, in time, lavish on those who trust Him the greatest gift of all, Himself -- still stands.

God causes all things to work for the good of those who love Him. Rom 8:28