the deed is done

This morning I woke up around 0900 after a pretty good night's rest, thanks to Ambien. I had to take it or I would never have slept a wink. I laid there until about 2245 and finally decided playing Bejeweled Blitz wasn't going to make me sleepy as it normally does. I placed the iPhone on the nightstand, rolled over and was a goner within minutes. Thank you, Ambien!

It was nice to wake up in such a good mood. Big B and AW had returned during the night from their man-bonding trip, so I quickly made my way downstairs to check on Big B. He'd graciously slept downstairs, so as not to disturb my slumber. Aww! He is so sweet! He'd already awakened for the morning and was just tinkering around. AW was still catching ZZZs and LB had crashed at a friend's house.

I actually don't remember much other than all of that. What I do remember is my good buddy, Ethel* picking me up and us making our way up to the town where we would meet our doom - I mean take our NCLEX exams. We stopped for lunch at Cracker Barrel. You know, comfort food..food to feed the brains. It wasn't long before we had to make an, ummm...urgent stop for ummm...my..umm...intestines-that-are-not-liking-the-current-hypernervousness level. And we didn't stop just once.

Then we arrived at the testing center with a few minutes to spare. There was one other nervous test-taker in front of us signing in. Then it was Ethel's turn. After she was done and escorted into the gloom room, I was then checked in. We may as well have been entering the classified materials archive in the Pentagon.

Finger prints AND palm prints? Really? Us fledgling nurse-types are certainly a bunch of dishonest sorts. I mean, what, with our eager need to please and be perfect. Geez, give us time to get develop burn-out and then be suspicious!

Then it was time. I sat there staring at that monitor briefly, hoping it would start blinking with notification that I was the lucky, 1billionth test-taker and had been chosen to receive an honorary license. No need to sit through the grueling exam!

As if!

Nope, through the tutorial I went and then onto the real thing.

You know, I must've completed around 3000 questions in preparation. As time went on, my averages went up.

Today?



















Ha! It might as well have been στα ελληνικά. I hit
next" on the 75th queston and it kept going. Ugh! I thought to myself "Ok, KLS...you're going to be in it for the long haul". Then wouldn't you know it, around question 82-83 the screen went blue! Still, there wasn't any notification of an honorary license, but NCLEX was over. I lived through it.

This is what 22+ months of nursing school(not counting the past 11 or so years since I decided to go to nursing school) has come down to...80 some odd, mind-blowing, make-me-doubt-all-I-know questions. A friend of mine, who took it Monday, told me of the 78 she lived through, 4 was the total of what she felt comfortable with. Me? zero. Ethel had about the same number of questions as I did.

Now we wait.

We left the test center feeling as if we'd been rode hard and put away wet. We called our other buddy, RG,RN, and complained about the ridiculousness of what we'd just been through. Yes, RG (78 questions, from above) made it.

We're not one of the 48 hours results states. Yeha, that was the other attachment that came with our ATT email. If you live in this state you may receive your results in 48 hours by paying... Those, from our class, who took it this past week, found out the next day. Since today is Friday Ethel asked, after finishing her exam, and was told "next busniess day". One of the other girls we graduated with called the BoN and found out we should be able to call tomorrow afternoon and find out.

Guess it'll be another Ambien night!

*Name changed for privacy...I'm Lucy, and she is Ethel, as we were known in nursing school.

All this and I might have a job! I got a call from a local hospital's nurse recruiter yesterday!