On my way to being Chemo certified!

Well today was the last day of a 2 day course on chemotherapy. The course was rough: we trucked through a 1 inch thick (at least) book in less than 12 hours. And then, to make matters more stressful, in order to become certified, you must take a test at the end of the second day.

Fortunately it was open book, but if you don't know the book very well, it would be difficult to find the answers in 90 minutes. 50 questions total, and you can only miss 10!

I was nervous in anticipation, but I had faith that I would pass it.

Oddly enough I was reminded of college. And how much stress it was to prepare for tests. How I often felt nervous before the test, only to have relief directly after the test. Most of the time I did well. Better than I felt I would do before the test.

And today was no different. Last night I went over all my notes in my book, and reorganized. They gave post-its that were the small ones, but bigger than a simple skinny tab. And it was a mess. I couldnt read anything because they overlapped. So I used my skinny tabs, made sure they didn't overlap, and went crazy. Mostly I did it so I would know the book, and would know where to find things.

It paid off. I missed 2 questions. One of which was obvious afterwards, it was one of the first questions and had I gone over it before turning it in, I would have caught it. But since i looked up pretty much every answer, I didn't want to go over the questions again.

What a sigh of relief!

Now, all I have left is a "skills day" on december 5th where we will go over the how-to's and have a more hands on day for chemo administration.

That means I have a good two weeks before I actually start giving chemotherapy on the floor. Which gives me time to absorb and review the information and get used to the idea of administering toxins to people...