C'mon kids...school is back in session!

  Two weeks of my final semester down! We started back up on the 18th. The first week was pretty glorious due to the crazy Oklahoma weather. We only had one day of class and two days of clinic. I'm still really fighting to get back into school-mode because I got a little lazy over the break. I have a long list of presentations and papers to get working on but I just can't seem to get my little fingers to type anything school related. The most daunting task in my near future is my capstone..dun dun dunnnnnn! It's like a mini-thesis in the form of a lit review. It will take hours of research and writing. So, if you have any extra willpower lying around, please kick it my way! I haven't even picked a solid topic thus far.
 
  Last weekend I worked on booking hotel rooms in Norman so all of my family can drive up and celebrate graduation with me. It's so exciting to think that it's so close! I can't wait to finish school and get a job so that I can contribute a paycheck to the household again. Jeremy has been working so hard and picking up my slack for two years now. He needs a break! A paycheck with my name on it will be a sight for sore eyes. While some cash is motivation in itself, I am more excited to just start doing this sonography thing. I'm in clinic at St Francis Imaging Center right now. I've spent five days in clinic and I already feel so different. I have started performing studies that I really hadn't tried before this rotation. The people that work there are so encouraging and helpful! Yesterday I started a thyroid study and by about ten minutes in I was so friggin frustrated that I nearly threw the transducer through the monitor. (This brings me back to the paycheck situation....transducers and ultrasound machines cost tens of thousands of dollars so I CANNOT afford to office space any equipment.) So.....deep breaths...1...2...3...4...5...hot flash. Seriously. I started sweating like man. I got up, walked out of the exam room red faced and, frankly, a little bit pissed off. You see, when you get to this point in the program it's a little bit embarassing to walk back into the office and admit defeat. I am fully capable of completely a thyroid study - it's one of the easiest exams to do. However, this thyroid was like a little devil spawn sent from the pits of hell to terrorize me. Ok, a little huge exaggeration. But anything multiplied by a full blown hot flash seems a little bit more dramatic. **Shout out to my menopausal friends - I feel you ladies!!** I digress....I walked into the office and grabbed the lead sonographer. He came into the exam room and finished the exam, talking me through the dirty details. After the patient left, the sonographer explained that this thyroid was really difficult and I shouldn't feel bad about struggling with the exam. He put my mind at ease. So I waited by the printer for my next patient to print out and give me a shot at redemption for that damn thyroid. It did - and I did. I finished the study with ease and felt like a brand new woman! The sonographers at SFIC are just so encouraging and I can feel myself improving daily. I'm going to enjoy the next six weeks of clinic. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my next rotation is at the pediatric cardiology center of St Francis. I think that even if it isn't my rotation I might just show up and start scanning some littles and hope I don't leave with a police escort.

So my little typing fingers are warmed up....let me see if I can get them to talk about professionalism or ethics or one of the other topics I need to work on for my presentations!!!!

Love you friends and family.