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| Whose Idea Was This?? |
With such an auspicious Hospital background, it's a wonder I didn't finish Medical School. Or even start. Didn't finish Nursing School either, although I did the first two years at University before going crazy and switching majors my Junior and Senior years. How does that go? The best laid plans....
I don't know, maybe there had been signs. Like when I flew home from Utah for Christmas vacation my Freshman year. The hospital actually hired me as a Nurse's Aide for those two weeks. I was so excited! Until I passed out at the bedside of my first patient and hit my head on the bed rails before starting a close relationship with the floor.
This was following my first ever plane trip the day before, which was in a vintage WWII aircraft that the Pilot and his wife, the Stewardess, had bought to start their own private company. What a ride! Maybe I had a "planeover" the next day? We did actually make it, against all odds, obviously. Unfortunately, the enterprising couple perished in it a couple years later. Anyway, I digress.
So my friends there, the Staff, picked me up off the floor and put me in a private room and monitored me that day. How embarrassing! When they would leave my room, I would jump out of bed and put my uniform back on and start taking care of my assigned patients again. Till the Nurses would see me, and whisk me off my feet and right back to bed. Then they would leave, and I would get dressed again and carry on. Rinse and repeat. Good intentions, but.... The next day was better.
It wasn't the end of the world, of course, but the next summer I decided to apply as a nursing intern at the Insane Asylum, Elgin State Hospital, instead of returning to St. Jo's. What could Possibly go wrong?
