Note to self and other future healthcare workers

When I am a patient, and I am lying on my back with nothing on but a gown, two people staring at my vag, and one of them is a young man-doctor with a scalpel in his hand, the last thing I want to hear is, "Whoah, that's weird!" I finally had a much procrastinated boil lancing done in my pubic area this afternoon. It turned out that I couldn't bring myself to say anything to my regular physician (a 70 year old man) about it, so I opted to go to my local med stop, because, well, it felt more anonymous? I don't know. I've had the issue for two years and it's recently gotten worse; plus it looked kind of yuck and with me contemplating taking a new lover (not something I usually post about here!) I decided I need to get it taken care of. The "oh weird" they were exclaiming about was that I had a lipoma (fatty tumor) inside said boil, and that might have been what caused the initial irritation. At various other points during the procedure there were comments like "Oh, my fiance gets boils all the time, especially when she travels." And, "That's too scattered, that's more something for a general surgeon." Oh, and my favorite, "I can't wait to see the new men in black movie!" Again, not something I want to hear right at that moment.

The financial reality of returning to school

A couple of updates: I have my phlebotomy license now (but I'm not using it at the moment). My nursing school orientation is coming up in a couple of weeks. I finally, finally, finally have health insurance again...okay, so the card hasn't arrived in the mail yet, but I'm covered as of a week ago.

Nursing school is getting closer and I am getting more nervous about money. I have been working hard on shrinking my debt. I had about 6,000 in debt at its highest point in the last year. All on 0% apr credit cards, thank goodness, but it was still weighing on my mind. It's hard to get back on track when you only make $11 an hour, and medical bills come up, and taxes have to be paid, and the car needs new tires. I'm down to about 2,000 and if I keep being very careful that will all be paid off by August. But there really isn't any extra to set aside *for* school.

I think part of my worry is all of the unknowns. Will my low income fee waiver come through again (I need to do the FAFSA to find out)? Will I be able to keep working at least 4 days a week to keep my health insurance at least partly covered by work? My dad agreed to loan me some money (LOAN, with interest), but how exactly is that going to work, and will it be awkward and difficult? What will I do if/when unplanned for expenses come up during school? How much can I realistically work while I'm in the program without running myself into the ground? There needs to be time for laundry and paying bills and doing dishes and cooking, not to mention a small amount of just "down" time to keep my sanity.

Even though I've had these concerns weighing on my mind I haven't done a lot to remedy them since I got the hospital scholarship. I need to be applying for more scholarships, and go ahead and fill out that fafsa, even if I'm worried the answer might be no. I also need to stop freaking out about it, because that doesn't help anything. I will know more after my orientation meeting in a couple of weeks and then I can just continue to approach things rationally and one at a time. Deep breaths!