Last January I gave myself an ultimatum of sorts, telling myself that by the end of the month I should’ve been able to find a hospital wherein I can get my training so I can get my Intravenous Therapy (IVT) license. And lo, due to some kind of freak coincidence I’ve somehow gotten a slot for the February schedule in my very own alma mater, UST Hospital. It was way cool, since I’ve had my ward duty there for three years so I know how everything worked.
The week before my training I was in a rut, as you might know from my recent blog posts. Although at the time I wasn’t really in the mood to do anything, I was actually excited to do the IVT training. It was one of those few things that I’ve orchestrated by myself, with my own connections and by my own will so yeah, scheduling it made me feel useful for once.
Since it was being conducted at UST Hospital, one would think that the training would be teeming with UST College of Nursing graduates, like me, yes? Wrong. Apparently everybody who’s anybody has either already caught the January slot or has trained somewhere else. So imagine my surprise when out of the seventy-two people who showed up for day one, there were only eight of us who were from the UST. One was Cha, a classmate during senior year high school and all throughout college, and the rest were people who I only knew by face.
They were acquaintances, at most, since I can’t remember uttering anything noteworthy to any of them during my four-year stint of college. I wasn’t the most sociable of people, what can I say? Day one had been a day of nods and awkward smiles; for my case, I think it had been kind of obvious that I was trying to remember if he or she indeed was a batch mate of mine. But apparently they knew who I was, since they sort of greeted me first when Day Two rolled around. The lot of us spent the entire two-hour period together, gabbing, gossiping and just laughing at the most inane of things.
I know that it’s supposed to feel fake somehow, but it totally didn’t. It had been a very comfortable balance of superficiality and profoundness, unbelievably enough. We ended up on the same page on most things and the laughter wasn’t a bit awkward at all. We shared some of our deepest fears about nursing and our feelings about the roadblocks we’re facing and just by that tiny bit of honesty they presented I felt energized and renewed.
In retrospect now I can say that the three-day IVT training had been exactly what I needed. I needed to be in a place where I am once again a part of a group of people who’re going through the same things I’m going through and feeling the same things I’m feeling. It lightened my heart to hear them say “You’re not going through this alone, you know” because I know that they meant it. They went through the same things I did during college, graduated the same course I did, passed the same licensure exam that I did and are facing the same dim future that I’m facing.
It was just one of those random reminders that I can find comfort from the weirdest of places, and for that, I am ultimately grateful. We might never become the closest of friends but the three days I’ve spent with these seven other people shall forever be with me, as they, once-upon-a-time, had been the light to my dark tunnel.
