It is still a little unbelievable to me that I am sitting down to write this blog entry – because for a moment there, I was beginning to loose faith in ever being able to claim this next story as my own. And now that my dream has become a reality, I guess I’m a little unsure where to even start.
It’s been such a long time coming that I’ve become complacent to a degree, and so perhaps it might be best to pick up from where we last left off…
I’ve been using the analogy of knocking at a stubborn and generally unanswered door for a while now when I’ve referred to my many attempts to become a Nurse Practitioner. This has been a career goal of mine for the better part of the last 8 years and I have worked tirelessly towards its attainment, having very little to show for it. And yet I still set out in hope that one day someone would answer my incessant knocking and let me dive head-first into the world of practitioners.
And with a heart bursting in gratitude, I get to finally say that today is that day.
A ‘pinch-me’ moment, if you will, as I pull out a crisp set of burgundy scrubs and take stock of the words ‘Nurse Practitioner’ embroidered in white thread across the top. Of course, that is perhaps only a half-truth for the interim as I also pin on a temporary badge underneath the embroidery engraved with the word ‘candidate’ – because it’s training wheels for me at least for the next year as I finish my Masters degree.
If I thought a two-day orientation at the commencement of my graduate year back in 2014 was the pinnacle of responsibility bestowed – then I can guarantee that the baby-grad version of my nursing self had no concept of what true responsibility would look like ten years later with a whole year of training ahead of me. Because ladies and gentlemen, I’ve stepped into the biggest arena of my life so far and the rodeo has just begun.
A lot of people have asked whether I’m excited to start this new chapter, and the answer is: of course I am. But I would be lying if I said I didn’t also carry with me a little sadness for having to leave behind some of my roots in my surgical ward, a little nervousness for what will be expected from me from this new clinical world, and a whole lot of apprehensiveness for how big next year is going to be.
These emotions started embedding themselves the moment I received a phone call asking whether I would be available for an interview, and even more so when I was told on the down-low that I was the only applicant to be receiving an interview at all.
They doubled-down the moment I finished what was the most challenging interview of my life, and found sanctuary in almost every part of me when a TEAMs meeting with my surgical director revealed a successful offer.
I’m not sure I can even recall much else of what I did that week, and I’m entirely sure it was the least productive week of my life – but there I was, finally being welcomed in past the threshold of a door I’ve only ever looked at from the outside.
And as I’ve reflected upon this new life development over the past couple of weeks, I’ve come to realise a couple of things.
The first is that it’s entirely possible to feel extreme joy and sadness simultaneously, in a way that leaves you standing in the living room unable to decipher whether your next move is to pop a champagne bottle or cry yourself into next week. This makes for somewhat of a confusing stance that seems to abate when the strength of both emotions somehow cancel each other out. But I figure that’s normal. I’m about to leave everything I know, and while there is so much excitement in what this means for my future, there is a grieving process that’s taking place. And that is okay.
The second is that I can’t help but now see just how little pieces of this next adventure have been falling into place well before it was even an opportunity for me. Things like meeting my [now] director when she was working in safety and quality and I enlisted her assistance in helping me create a patient admission channel for the health service back in 2020. Or when I joined the HCS charity back in 2018, and worked alongside the very person who would now become my mentor as I navigate my Masters. Or how my education resources in urology would become some of the biggest evidence of advanced practice in a chosen field that I never even regarded as special.
How it came to be that each member of my interview panel not only knew me at a clinical level, but has bear witness to my work over the years, is something I can’t quite explain – but somehow sense it’s irony to be life’s way of smirking and saying, “see what I did there?”
They say that “If it’s right, it will happen; and that nothing good gets away” – or at least John Steinbeck said that. And I’m inclined to feel like finally, my “something good” is no longer getting away.
So don’t mind me as I gather as I gather my courage, and my hem (metophorically I’m wearing a big gown suitable to the occasion), and step across the threshold to a new chapter… on the other side of the door.
Here goes everything!
d x
Life, She Wrote. 