Let It Be NCLEX Exam, Just Let It Be

For the last few weeks I've been studying for the NCLEX back here in Chicago. About 8 hours a day, 6 days a week since Jan. 3rd.

The exam is tomorrow morning at 8 am.

If I'm being honest with myself, the studying is not going well. I can say without irony that I feel like I'm getting dumber the more I study. In the last few days before graduation, I took two NCLEX prep/readiness predictor tests to evaluate how prepared I was to take the exam. On both, I score in the 87-89%. You'd think that if you took that percentage and added to it an additional three weeks of study and prep, my chance of passing the exam should be in the nineties.

In the last few days, my scores on the practice exams have been steadily dropping, like to ridiculously low levels. So low, that I'm starting to panic. It feels like I'm in some kind of nightmare. I wake in the mornings thinking about the exam and my heart races; I have panic attacks.

I took the day off today to give my head a well-needed break from practice questions. Went to a movie this afternoon to enjoy some mindless diversion. I'm not sure it worked.

But one glimmer of hope: If God exists, he talks to me through my radio. And driving home this evening XRT played two songs back-to-back. The first was The Beatles "Let It Be" which is one of my 10 Desert Island Songs and one of two songs I want played at my funeral. The other, which followed immediately afterwards, was Coldplay's "Life in Technicolor" which is not only one of my favorite Coldplay songs, but it also has particular significance to by nursing career thus far.

I'm taking these as good signs for tomorrow.

OK, enough bullshit. I need to go to sleep so I can get up early tomorrow and kick some NCLEX ass..

Getting a Lemon Lobbed at Your Junk Is Not a Good Way to Start the New Year

This morning, I was laying in the hotel room bed while Anthony was attempting to juggle with three lemons. (He wasn't doing it well.) At one point he threw one to me while I wasn't paying attention and it smacked me right in my balls. Goddamn, I have not been hit in the balls in probably 20 years and had forgotten how much it hurts.

Like, indescribable, mind and soul-numbing pain.

As I lay writhing in agony I remember thinking that my balls would never be the same again. As soon as I felt like I could stand I hurried to the bathroom to throw up.

I have high hopes for 2011. But this is so not the way I wanted it to start.

Happy 2011 everyone!