Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Scholarship Essay

Well, I'm going to totally cop out on this one and copy and paste an essay I just completed for a scholarship I am applying for.  Just a little more insight into my crazy nutshell.  Oh, and an entertaining picture of the pure drive and comittment I speak of in the essay.

Scholarship Essay

My journey into the field of nursing began many years ago, probably when I was beginning my first few years of college.  I always had nursing in the back of my mind, but back then I wasn’t shall we say, as academically motivated as I am today.  Average grades suited me just fine.  I knew deep down that I had the potential to apply myself and excel in academics, but it definitely was not my priority. 
I graduated in 2000 with a Bachelors degree in Criminal Justice.  I began my career as a Tulsa Police officer in 2001.  I worked patrol for four years and spent six years in TPD’s Special Investigation Division (SID).  While in SID I investigated everything from prostitution, street level narcotics all the way up to trafficking narcotics.  
In October of 2009, my second son was born.  He was diagnosed with Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus.  His first surgery was about four hours after he was born.  In the first six months of his life, he had five surgeries.  It was during our first few weeks in the NICU that my long ago buried dreams of becoming a nurse started to resurface.  For years my husband and I had joked about me going back to school.  He would laugh and say, “Sure, just as soon as you have 10 years on the department and you can make straight A’s.”  Well, here we are, at a place where those jokes have become a reality (which we still laugh about). 
We started seriously talking about it again while we passed the hours sitting in the NICU with our baby.  I told my husband that I wanted to be a nurse.  I told him that I could feel it in my bones.  I told him that I felt like this was my “now or never” opportunity.  He was very supportive and even pushed me when that thought became reality and I enrolled in my first college course since graduating nearly 10 years ago and when our new baby was just two months old.  It was intimidating and I was terrified.  Here I had a toddler at home and a brand new baby who may need special daily medical care and I was contemplating going back to school while working full time.  Was this crazy?  According to most of my friends and co-workers, yes!  However, my husband convinced me to walk out the door that first day of my Biology class and I have never looked back. 
I have discovered amazing things about myself in the past 18 months.  I discovered that I actually am smart!  I learned that I actually can make straight A’s with a lot of hard work and commitment.  Since taking that first class in the spring of 2010, it has been full steam ahead toward nursing school.  I have completed 34 credit hours in the past 18 months with a 4.0 grade point average.  I am extremely proud of this accomplishment and I cannot express the shock and excitement I felt when I received my acceptance letter from the OU nursing department.  My family will be experiencing many changes in the next several months.  We will be going from a two income to one income family, which is terrifying!  I will be retiring as a police officer in August to start the BSN program at OU/Tulsa.  I am still a little scared, but very eager to start this new chapter in my life!
I am very happy to report that our now 20 month old son is doing fantastic.  He requires a little extra daily medical care, but he is just as rotten as his big brother and is a very happy boy!  When we have cuddle time before I put him to bed, I tell him that this is all his fault.  He just smiles and stares at me with his big blue eyes and I think to myself…I wouldn’t have it any other way. 
The hard work and comittment I speak of...


The baby whose fault this is...

Photograph courtesy of:

Thursday, June 9, 2011

One Defining Picture

As most parents do, we took hundreds of pictures while we were in the hospital having our second baby.  Our pictures this time weren’t all happy and beaming faces as they were when our first baby was born.  Oh, we have plenty of those, but many of our pictures this time included wires, tubes, monitors, bandages and scars. 

This one picture is worth a thousand emotions for me.  It’s not the clearest picture.  It’s a little grainy and a little hazy, but I think it’s beautiful and perfect.  It was a split second that was captured by my husband during our two week stay in the EOPC (NICU).  It was a split second that completely defines the following 18 months for me.  When I look at this picture, I once again feel the roller coaster of emotions that encompassed those two weeks and the following months.
When I look at this picture, every fiber of my being wants to reach into that picture and hug her.  I want to tell her that her baby, whose side she rarely left during that time, will be fine.  I want to tell her that he will thrive, that he will laugh and be rotten, that he will crawl, that he will stand and that yes, he will eventually walk.  But I’m glad I can’t reach through that picture and tell her those things.  I’m glad because she has no idea how much she will change in the next 18 months because of him.  She has no idea how much she will grow and how she will attempt and accomplish goals and dreams she thought were long gone.  She has no clue of the people she will meet along the way, people who have experienced similar journeys but some whose stories ended differently.  Stories that ended with unimaginable grief and loss.  She has no idea how much she will learn from these wonderful people, although she’s only known them a short time. 
So this is my picture I want to share.  A picture that means the world to me. 
Details may or may not come later of this continuing journey.  If I feel froggy, you may get more details than you can handle.  If my schedule continues the way it has for the past year, this may be the only thing you ever see from me.  But whichever way it plays out, this is me, in my crazy nutshell.