140 days, 19 hrs, 51 mins, 00 secs

My kids are so adorable! I love this photo.

I have a countdown to graduation on my facebook page (under boxes). 140 days still seems like a lot, but 4 months and 3 weeks doesn't. It's flying by as I expected. We're already heading into week four of this quarter and it seems like New Year's Day was yesterday! The rapidly passing time has a side effect, though. It's really hard to get all of my homework done. With only one day of class per week, you'd think I'd have no problems. But throw in two days of clinical, two nights of work, 12-24 hours of homework, my family and all of their schedules, along with everything else I've got my fingers into, and you've got a real problem. My facebook addiction has got to go or I'll never make it!

One of the hilarious things about nursing school is how you start to overreact to everything your body tells you. This happens to medical students, too. A headache becomes a brain tumor, chest pain is always a heart attack, and every time my kids get a stomach ache I worry it's appendicitis. Half the students in my class are undergoing diagnostic testing for one condition or another, and while some of them will turn out to be quite real, the majority turn out to be simple anxiety caused by too much information.

This week we studied Alzheimer Disease, dementia & delirium. Fun stuff. If I start asking you to spell words backwards, I'm really checking to see if your brain still works. This coming week is stress & anxiety. Since I start clinical this week in the mental health unit, AND I have two papers due on Thursday, AND I go back to work Thursday night after 3 weeks off, I'm sure I'll be asking for a prescription for Paxil by the time I get off Saturday morning!