Continuing Your Education With Pain

Today I am signing up for a new distance-learning program that will allow me to get my BSN.  This is the serious road to finally let me get to where I want and need to be.  But how can I study; take my classes online; and soon, go to clinicals a few hours a day, with pain??  This on top of a full-time nursing job?  This schedule is hard for those who do not get setbacks due to pain!  Add on the mental and physical stress of experiencing pain while trying your best to be attentive in a tough program.  This will certainly be a challenge.  

This was a situation that I knew I needed to research deeply before deciding. What was I deciding? Was the question IF I wanted to go through this program?  No!  I wanted this as soon as I saw it was available to CA nurses.  The biggest question was: Can I do this?  I have a medical issue that affects every area of my life.  Can I do it?  Of course I can do it!  I have done much harder things in my life and made it through just fine.  Above all else, this is what I need to do for me.  For my career.  For my future.

What about my pain?  As my son said, "Mom you may as well do something that you really want to do even if your hurting; these days will pass anyway."  The days do pass.  So quickly now.  And when we look back on our life, have we made the very most of our days?  Were there things that we could have been doing to help our future?  This also can be much easier said than done.  

California Nurses lost our distance learning and education online abilities about 4 years ago.  The program was discontinued here, although it is still running fine in other states.  I did some of that program years ago.  As I just posted on the Nurses site I belong to: "Isn't it odd how different our state's laws are, and how they affect each U.S. nurse in what they can learn online, what is available to them; Why we are not looked at in a National sense instead of a state by state basis."

So, a new, and in my opinion, much better nursing program comes along in the place of the old program.  It is harder, it is longer, and in the end, I will have two big accomplishments in my life through this program.  I am excited and almost do not think of my pain in the mix.  I am on the computer in my off time anyway.  (I love to learn and was a 4.0 student in my in-person nursing classes I was taking when my father was diagnosed with colon cancer and very shortly was admitted to hospice.  That changed the trajectory of that course of action to obtain a higher degree.  I was blessed to be my dad's caretaker in his last days but had to withdraw from a full load midterm.  I asked my professors if there was any way to come back and finish the second half; I knew the answer before they gave it to me--No.)  Then there will be clinical days, in class after class.  That scares me, not the classes themselves, I love clinicals.  It is the fear that my pain will get in the way.  Things can sound good then real life happens and....my pain makes decisions for me.  Yet I am determined and excited.

And if, after a day at work, I sit down to study, take a test, or read a lesson from one of my Professors; and I have pain, what do I do?  For one, I can assure you I will be in pain after work.  That puts me in the recliner with the heating pad.  I can mix furthering myself and pain.  This program was exactly what I needed.  It will also help take my focus off my pain which has been shown to be a fantastic way to lower pain levels tremendously! We, as pain sufferers, that want to do more with our careers but know we cannot go back to school, there are ways. I can tell you some places to check out in an upcoming post.

I wish you a low or no pain day.....