I can’t imagine you as a…

Me: Hey mum, I’m going back to uni next year!

Mum: Oh! What are you studying?

Me: (knowing pause) Finish this sentence: “Kim, I can’t imagine you as a….”

Mum: Not nursing!

I knew that my mum would get it in 0.000004 seconds. She might be in her 70s but she is onto it. Of course, the fact that she’s in her 70s means she has a radically out-dated idea of what a nurse is and actually does (which is kinda weird, since she used to be a scientist herself). She doesn’t see me as anyones’s “lapdog” or “servant”, which on one hand is great that she thinks that, but on the other hand that’s not what nursing is about. And let’s face it, I am already the servant to two feisty daughters.

I tossed up between nursing and paramedicine for weeks. And everyone I spoke to who is or had been a paramedic themselves said the same thing:

Do nursing first. Then do a year of paramedics on top of that if you want. Instant employability. Nurse. Paramedic. You get both. Nursing is a registered profession whereas paramedics is not (yet). They’re working to change that, but for the time being, I’m a fan of the double dip.

And really, the two professions are very similar. Paramedics is grittier and dirtier, but you get to see a lot of the same stuff as a nurse. Ultimately, it’s about being useful to others and studying medical science. Anatomy. Pathophysiology. Biology. Learning how to inject shit into people’s bodies. Hopefully good shit. And then there’s the actual shit, the actual vomit, the actual blood and bodily secretions that patients will serve to you on a human platter through no fault of their own.

I got accepted into nursing two days after sitting the entrance exam. I am excited. Stoked, actually. Part-time, so I can still swan around and be a volunteer medic while I study and perhaps actually continue my writing/editing and make a showing of being a parent as well.

I know, I can hear you all rolling around the floor in paroxysms of “you wish, you deluded creature”. I never said 2015 wouldn’t be busy. I just hope I manage to stay sane.

Optimism, now.

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