Fun Weekend

What a fun weekend! Friday I hiked to Lake Blanche and tryed, but failed, to find a way to hit Sundial peak. I burned 2700 calories! (according to my heart monitor). What a fun little toy.
Saturday I spent with friends in Idaho at the City of Rocks. What an awesome place to climb. We left around 6:30am, arrived around 9:30am, climbed and climbed, left the City around 9:00pm, found an open pizza parlor/convenience store, and arrived home around 1:30am. What a long, fun weekend:)

Mt. Timp

Another summit completed. Mt. Timpanogus was accomplished. We left the trailhead at 9pm and arrived to a camping site in a cirque around 1am. There was a lot of snow on the trail at elevation which required a lot of concentration to not go sliding down. We made it to the saddle around 530am to wait for sunrise. We summitted after sunrise and headed back down that afternoon.

Officially an RN

A lot has happened since my last post. First off, back in June I passed NCLEX! It was quite a scary experience. My body wouldn't stop shaking during the drive to the testing site...true it could've been from the caffeine I consumed that morning. I arrived at the site and was happy to see friendly faces taking the test with me. Three girls whom I've worked with in the hospital, and another gal who graduated from the U's program with me. We were all checked in and walked to our computer station after getting photographed and fingerprinted. I sat down at my monitor, put in my earplugs, and started to hear my heart beating really fast. I took a few deep breaths trying to slow it down which didn't help much. I began clicking through the screens with some difficulty because my fingers had somehow swollen up to the size of sausages, similar to when they swell after a long hike. I was so relieved to be in front of a window where the sky was blue and there was a big beautiful tree in front of me. When I didn't know an answer to a question I looked outside, took some deep breaths, and went through the choices with process of elimination. One of the medications I was tested on I never learned in class or during clinicals. The only reason I knew what it was was because my Grandma used to take it. When I got to question 73 I felt I was going to fail at 75. 45 minutes after starting I hit question 75 (realize the testing center provides 5hrs to take the test with a potential of taking over 200 questions). I read it very slowly and answered. As I was clicking next I was praying for question 76 to appear...it never did. The screen went gray and I was asked to take a survey of the testing process. I called my mom to go to lunch and was convinced I had failed. I tryed going rock climbing later to take my mind off the test which didn't help, I kept falling and failed to keep focused on my climbing. A few days later I was awakened very early by a friend of mine who said "Congratulations Nurse!" He had seen my license posted online very early that day, definitely before 5:00am so I was very much asleep when I heard the news and thought I was dreaming. It wasn't until I saw the results for myself that I believed I had passed. Hooray! I am now a registered nurse working at LDSH's emergency room. Life is Good.