done!

Tonight has been a relief of a night. It was my last night of anesthesia and I couldn't be happier. Tonight was also our clinical final and we had a written final last night. I did well on the written final, would've liked to have done better. I can't even express how glad I am that the clinical final is done and over with (I probably shouldn't get too excited since I have to do it again in December for the actual boards! AH!) But anyway, its been a stressful day. I always get nervous for things, but I was so nervous that I woke up last night and had a hard time falling back asleep, which NEVER happens. I think the reason being is that during our practice last night the director of our program watched me and to this day I still feel like I have something to prove to her. My hand was shaking so bad and I couldn't get it to stop so that made everything more difficult and then she had some comments about what I needed to remember. All in all it was a good experience and she thought my angles were perfect. She even got distracted while staring in awe at them! I was excited.

Anyway, tonight I got so lucky because there were 2 pairs of instructors grading and it just so happened that mine was the dentist (who I love and feel so calm around) and the director, Mrs. Blitz, who watched me last night. This seemed to calm my nerves since I kept telling myself that I already displayed to Mrs. Blitz that I can succesfully administer the 2 injections and she thought they were good. How the grading works is that for every try you take more than once to successfully give the injection results in an overall deduction of your grade and there's certain things you can do that result in automatic failure of the attempt, such as needle contamination. Then there can also be mistakes that are smaller and if you get a lot of those can result in failure. I was lucky enough to experience most of the problems that people were having tonight on previous occasions and was taught how to correct them.

I was nervous, and my biggest worry was that my hands would shake so much that I wouldn't be able to demonstrate what I know. I understand how the injection is supposed to be given, it was just a matter of converting it. Well, I was shocked and so grateful that I passed both injections on my first try. I can't even describe the feeling of excitement and relief. It was a proud moment for me.

I have an exciting few days coming up. Tomorrow is our lunch with the first years and we get to meet our partners. Also, Chelsea and Petra come into town, so hopefully I can see her! We'll see how it all goes.