CRT Stress

Well, I finally did it. I finally registered for my CRT exam. We were allowed to start a week or so ago, but I honestly didn’t feel ready. Ever since I graduated, my brain has mostly refused to let me do anything that relates even a little bit to school. I know I said I missed it, but it’s kind of a mixed bag right now. I’m trying to be good about staying studied up on everything and forcing myself to look things over in small pieces several times a day. Anything over a half hour right now and I lose interest. I hate that it’s gotten like that and I know it’s a mental block I have going on. Maybe in the end, I keep wanting to put off the exam because I’m afraid of failing it. I’ve never had such a high-stakes exam before and if I can’t pass this, I can’t work. I know I shouldn’t worry about it, but that’s what I’m good at.

I’ve been dealing with a lot of the stress by working out as hard as I possibly can. I really love my gym time, and I can spend so much more time there than I could before. I’m more motivated than ever to do everything I can to get into shape. I can thank my new doctor for that. He’s the only one who has ever actually helped me try to tackle the problem. Going to the gym every day has also been a nice way to get out of the house (which is probably causing me the most stress right now). What I should do is make little “cheat sheets” of respiratory information and formulas and study them while I’m running. I can prop them up on the machine and it’ll give me something to do when I’m working out alone. Other people bring magazines and books and the gym staff doesn’t seem to mind, so I might as well bring stuff to study.

Speaking of study, I finally got around to ordering a kanji dictionary to aid in my Japanese studies. Japanese writing can be a little tricky when it comes to kanji. You have to learn two syllabaries (think alphabet) with 46 basic characters representing sounds in the language. Some of the 46 can be combined with each other, and some have sound changes when you add certain markings to them, so the real number is much higher for each one. Katakana is the one used for loan words from another country or for foreigner's names (and there are a surprisingly large number), while hiragana is what you can use to write everyday Japanese in if you don't know kanji. Kanji are the more advanced characters you can use to write an entire word instead of using just the hiragana (the sounds). I believe there are around 2000 kanji that are used commonly in everyday life, so it takes some time to learn them. You have to learn the proper way to write the kanji, the different pronunciations, and what the kanji itself means. It sounds like a huge undertaking, but once you get going, it's not so bad and it speeds up your writing. Right now I only know about 100 of them, but it has been a couple of years since I've had classes. The kanji dictionary will help me to learn more of them. I can use it to look up unfamiliar kanji while I'm reading and it will tell me how to pronounce them and the meaning. I think it will be a wonderful tool and I should have ordered one a long time ago.

I’ll be updating again next week after I’ve taken my CRT exam. By then I should finally be able to call myself a respiratory therapist!

Changes: Full Speed Ahead

Graduation was about a week and a half ago. Everything went well, but I honestly don’t have an opinion on it one way or the other. To me, it just didn’t feel like the place where things closed up for me school-wise. I felt like our class pinning ceremony was more of an ending than the graduation ceremony. It seemed more fitting. I got to see everyone I’ve grown to care about in the last two years in one room. The speeches were from people we actually knew (except the one) and were a lot more relevant than the ones at graduation (which I will discuss later). We got to socialize with everyone afterward without a huge crowd. In general, I feel like that’s the day I graduated.

The actual graduation ceremony was just too large. Even though they split the school up into 2 ceremonies (a morning and an afternoon ceremony), there were just too many people. My class did all end up sitting together, though. It was a lot better than sitting next to the strangers that made up the rest of the graduating class. The ceremony seemed to drag on forever. We listened to a bunch of speeches from complete strangers that were all about the same. You know, the usual jargon about going out into the world and trying to change everything, facing life’s challenges head on, etc, etc. One of the speeches was a biography of the guy who was speaking next! And then that guy talked a lot about himself and his law career. I mean, come on. I’m tired of listening to graduation speeches where the speaker focuses more on him/herself than the graduates. After a while, I just zoned out. I did my best, but they went on forever. I think the best part of the graduation ceremony was when our program director and professor got up from his seat to meet our class in line and individually congratulate us and wish us luck. That’s the part I’m going to remember forever, not a speech by some anonymous person.

The one thing I find strange about graduating is when everyone keeps asking me how it feels to be a college graduate. This is my second college degree (I have an associate’s degree as well), so it doesn’t feel any different to me at all; I just have a higher degree now. Until I start working out in the field and am 100% independent, it’s not going to feel different at all. And hopefully a job is just around the corner. I am now allowed to take my board exams since my graduation has been verified. I think I’ll probably wait a couple weeks so I can brush up on everything. I don’t have the money to retake an exam, so I need to get it right the first time. I wish I could have afforded the official review course offered last week, but that wasn’t going to happen, not with the way my work hours have been cut over the last couple of months. What worries me the most about getting a job is my skills, not my knowledge. I haven’t had a real ICU experience in months and I’m going to be out of practice when I start working. Where ever I end up, I hope I have a nice long orientation so I can get used to things again. And then there’s still the worry of whether I picked the right career. I won’t know about that until I actually get to work alone for a while. I’m hoping I made a good choice, even though it’s not my dream job (which was somewhat unrealistic in today’s world).

As much as I miss school sometimes (yes, I am strange, but I love learning), I am enjoying not having to do any mandatory studying. I have already started reviewing my Japanese from a couple of years ago, and it’s coming back to me quite nicely. I can’t wait to start adding new material soon. I’ve also filled my time with reading, and am almost done with my second book already. I want to start learning how to play the piano. The best thing all this time has given me is the opportunity to start spending hours working out each day. My lungs have finally recovered from the pneumonia and it’s a lot easier to finish a workout now. I can run about 2 miles without stopping, whereas two weeks ago I was still struggling with walking around the block. I’m looking forward to being able to devote time to getting in shape.

Well, I suppose this is enough rambling for now. I’ll let everyone know how my exam(s) go, as well as the job hunt. Take care!

Graduation Looming on the Horizon

Today I had the last final exam of my undergraduate college career. My backpack is all cleaned out, my binders of notes are on a shelf, and everything school related is put away (except for my cap and gown). I can’t even begin to describe what a relief it is not to have the pressure of grades in my life any more. It’s like a huge weight has been lifted and it’s one less stress in my life.

Graduating, though, brings along a whole new stress to replace the one of passing exams. After Sunday, everything changes. I feel like I will finally be one step closer to feeling like a real adult. I’m excited, scared, and just confused in general when it comes to my future. I don’t have a job lined up yet even though it seems like almost everyone from my class does and I worry that by the time I get my CRT credentials so that I can start working, there won’t be any positions left in the area. I also worry that I won’t even pass the credentialing exams. I am confident that I can pass the CRT exam without any problems, but I’m worried about the RRT. The written part will probably be fine, but it’s the clinical simulation (ClinSim) portion that worries me. I just barely passed the practice one we took as a class a couple of weeks ago, and I’m told that most people actually fail the official one the first time they take it. I guess the best I can do is to have faith that things will work out. I know I’ve had the privilege of studying under the best minds in the field and in being a graduate of one of the best programs in the country (I’m told that when I tell them where I graduated from, they’ll expect a lot more out of me than someone who didn’t attend this program). I must trust in the knowledge I’ve been given and the experiences I’ve had.

I was listening to the radio tonight and heard this song from Five For Fighting called “Story of Your Life” and thought the lyrics were pretty fitting for my current situation, so I thought I’d share them:

“In the story your life
you're moving down the page
As the words begin to change
The story of your life
You live it everyday
You can run, you run
But you won't get away

I don't know what's coming up
Where will you go now
it's the story of your life”

And on more of a personal note now: Despite how nice it is to be free from classes, I have been kind of bored. I spent the last 4 years of my life going to class, studying, and going to work for the most part. I had little scraps of time over long weekends or school breaks to enjoy my hobbies and activities, but after being home most of the last 3 days with nothing productive to do, I’m ready to be busy again. I’m ready to dive back into the things that make me…me. Even this blog is helping with that (I’ve always loved to write). I made a list of what I want to spend my time doing and things I want to accomplish. My number one thing is to get back to studying Japanese. For being a class I took on a whim in high school (a friend asked me to sign up with her), I sure have developed a passion for it over the years. I taught it to myself once, and I can do it again now that I have the time to commit to it. I guess it doesn’t surprise me that now that I am finally free from having to study, I choose to do so anyway. Learning has always been something I valued. When I was little, it was for the grades and the praise that went along with them, but as I’ve grown older I realized that learning new things makes me feel like a better person somehow. I feel this is a trait that can only help me throughout my career.

Lending an Ear

I’m going to kick this blog off by talking about an experience I had today at the doctor’s office that will end up focusing a lot on a very important skill necessary for this field: listening. I’m going to start off with a short version of my story and then get into the discussion.

I saw the physician’s assistant (he replaced my regular doctor after he left his practice) because I was having problems with my asthma. It’s been out of control lately and I can’t even walk around the block without gasping for air right now, and that is definitely not normal for me. I’m someone who goes on three hour marathons of playing tennis, so walking is normally a breeze for me when I’m feeling good. Anyway, I told him I’m having symptoms usually 3 or 4 times a day and I keep waking up at night with them. Yes, I have an inhaler and the ability to do aerosol treatments at home and I have been using both, but the medicine doesn’t control the symptoms for more than an hour and a half to two hours. I told him that normally when I have asthma symptoms and albuterol doesn’t work to take care of them, I get put on steroids for 10-14 days. I also told him that since I always have problems with drastic weather changes (like this year has been), I go on a long term controller medication (Advair) until things stay in control for a while. Well, I tried my hardest to persuade him but it didn’t work and I wasted my time going there because he wasn’t willing to do anything to help treat it and told me I’d just have to wait a couple weeks and see how things go then. Needless to say, I came right home and started looking for a new doctor.

Now to the point of this post: Patients know their own bodies the best and if they have a chronic condition, they also know what treatments have worked best for them in the past. Health care professionals need to listen to what their patients tell them. Patients may not have the same amount of knowledge as the person treating them (and in fact, most don’t), but they still bring their own expertise with them, and that is the knowledge of how their body feels and what works and doesn’t work for them.

Healthcare these days is no longer one sided and there’s more and more of a movement for patients to be their own advocates. Gone are the days of patients just blindly following the suggestions of their doctors. If the patient isn’t getting what they need out of their health care, they have every right to find a new professional who will take them seriously and listen to them.

Listening to my patients was one of the first skills I learned when I started my clinical rotations, and it remains the most important and the most difficult skill to practice. It’s easy to get caught up in your workload and forget to take the time to actively listen to your patients; I understand that. However, if you don’t spend time listening, you can miss important clues about what questions to ask next. That in turn can lead to a misguided view of what the patient’s problem is and cause you to treat a condition they don’t have. Meanwhile, the delay in the treatment the patient actually needs could have serious consequences.

For anyone working in the medical field, please remember to listen to your patients and take your time with them. They are people after all, and not just some product on an assembly line for you to inspect and pass along on its way.

Introduction and Welcome

Welcome to my blog. I will be graduating from one of the top respiratory therapy programs in the country in just 6 days. I know the title of my blog is a little premature and that I'm not a respiratory therapist (RT) yet, but I have confidence (mostly) that I will be credentialed in just a few weeks' time. I thought it would be interesting if I kept a journal of sorts as I start this new chapter of my life. I want to chronicle my experiences as I enter the field as a working professional for the first time and share some stories along the way. I had wanted to keep a blog about my time as a student as well, but I couldn't find the time. That should give you some idea of what life has been like the last 4 years. For now, I will wrap this up with more to follow in the next day or two. I hope everyone will enjoy reading this blog and you can feel free to leave suggestions on what you would like me to discuss or ways I can improve things as I go along here.