Week in Review 9-25-16

The first part of this week was quite stressful.  The school where I work is working to gain accreditation through CCNE (The Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education) for our bachelor's of nursing program.  The requirements and process for accreditation are quite cumbersome and many people have worked many hours trying to pull it together.  This week was our site visit from the CCNE representatives.  They spend three days touring our campus, visiting our clinical sites, interviewing various personnel such as financial aid and administration, and reviewing all of the paperwork we submitted.  They had a long meeting with all of the faculty to asking how our coursework and student mentoring lead our students to an outcome of being a working RN who has passed the state board tests.  It was grueling.  To be honest the part I played in getting ready was very small in comparison to the program administrator and some of the more experienced faculty, but nonetheless I felt the heavy weight throughout the days we were there.

After our faculty meeting me decided that we needed a real treat, so Carrie and I headed to Iceberg to get burgers and shakes for everyone.  WOW!  We ordered mini-shakes and they were HUGE!

They were yummy!  Just the thing to refuel us after the taxing meeting.  I sure love working with those fun faculty people!

Wednesday the site review visitors gave us their official report. Apparently there are four standards that can be classified as "met", "met with conditions", or "not met".  We "met" all four standards!  Whew, what a relief!.  However, we still have to wait while the official board reviews the findings of the site visitors and makes their final decision.  We won't get the final word until May, but we are very happy with the results of the site visit.

Later that night my new visiting teacher and good friend, Carol took me to Fizz for a drink and a great visit.  We had such a good time that we stayed over 2 hours!  It was so good to catch up with her.  She is a physical therapist and gave me some great advice to pass on to Tasha since she is studying that field.

This week I made a very, VERY difficult decision.  I decided to quit my job at the hospital.  I have loved working there.  I love the patients, I adore the babies, and I love the nurses and CNA's that I work with.  However, I feel that I can't be an asset in the unit since I am only working there only occasionally.  My STABLE and NRP certifications are going to expire and I can't get to the re-certification classes because of my school work schedule.  My confidence is lacking at being able to handle an emergency at the hospital.  I think that I if I had been working at a facility with a lot of staff so that I always had back-up I may have felt like I could continue working, but my hospital is small and there is not always someone to back me up.  I just don't want to make a mistake because I don't work often enough to always remember how to do things.  Besides, it is hard to work and take even more time away from my family.  It is the right decision, but it wasn't an easy decision to make.

Thursday afternoon I was sitting in my office at work when all of the sudden I could hear the wind blowing very hard, then I heard it start to rain.  Next thing I knew the power went out.  There are no windows in my office, so it was DARK!  Luckily I had my phone flashlight to get me down the stairs to the office.  We all waited for a long time for the power to come back on, but it never did, so I decided to head for home in case the storm got any worse.  I'm so glad I did!  I found out later that we had had a major storm.  The temperature dropped 20 degrees in 15 minutes which caused winds as high as 80-100 mph.  In fact, there was even a tornado that touched down about 15 miles north of my school taking out some electrical transformers and ruining a house!  The drive home was not fun, flooding on the freeway caused me to slow suddenly when I hit puddles.  The rain was coming down so hard that I could barely see even with the windshield wipers going full blast, and the WIND!  It was difficult to stay on the road.  I pulled these pictures off the news channel showing some of the damage from the storm.

Luckily there were no injuries!  The power was still out to most of Weber and Davis county the next day, so I stayed home in my nice warm house to work.

Saturday we attended Kevin's funeral.  Unfortunately Shandra had to work so she couldn't go and we were watching the kids.  We knew it was going to be a long day so we asked Kim's niece, Heidi, if she would be willing to watch them.  She is such a lifesaver!  She cheerfully offered to keep them as long as we needed.  We took dad with us and met up with the rest of the Duerdens at the church.  Julie and the kids looked wonderful, as usual, but you could tell that they were under stress.  Julie injured her back during the weeks of taking care of Kevin and spent the day in excruciating pain.  My heart just hurts for her, dealing with the loss of her husband along with severe back pain and upcoming surgery.

The service was a wonderful tribute to a wonderful man.  Kevin's brother and sister spoke as well as his best friend.  Mark Fox, Head of the Neurology Department at the University of Utah Hospital also spoke.  Apparently he had spent several years working with Kevin and his memory loss and became a good friend to Kevin and Julie.  He talked a little about how Kevin's memory loss affected his work and his daily life.  It was a great service.

We gave Julie a copy of the book "Tear Soup", a book that really helped us when we lost BJ.  We have given it to many families dealing with the loss of a loved one.

We were invited to attend the family dinner after the service.  Of course they served "funeral potatoes" a favorite of everyone at the table!

The 5 sisters

 Sunday was the last Family History lesson for this group.  It is funny, the class started out with 9 and ended with only 3 members.  But those 3 members all expressed a desire to learn more.  Perhaps we will hold a refresher course sometime, who knows.  Right now I am trying to decide which week to start the next class.  General Conference is next week so we will probably start the week after.  I played the piano in Relief Society this week.  For some reason both of the songs were really hard this week and I practiced a ton.  I got through it but still made numerous mistakes.  Urrg!  I hate making mistakes!  Hopefully one day I will get good enough to make it through a song perfectly, probably not, but we can hope.

After choir practice I noticed how nice the weather was, perfect temperature for a walk.  I wanted to spend some time outdoors enjoying the fall (something I don't do often) but knew realistically I would go home to an empty house because Kim was working and miss out on the evening.  Luckily when I got home I noticed my friend Curt was on Facebook.  I messaged him and we agreed to go on a walk together.  It felt so good!  I'm glad that I had the opportunity to enjoy the evening.

 THIS WEEK I AM GRATEFUL FOR;

Good friends and family who make life worth living - even in the sad times.