Friday, November 7, 2008

PNP (Pediatric Nurse Practitioner)

This is one of those things that should be shouted from the moutaintops. Heralds should go through the city singing songs, painters should be painting pictures, and poets should be writing sonnets, and yet this little dabbler in prose finds himself unable to give this quite the punch it deserves.
It is official, Mary Jane has passed her boards!!! She is now a board certified Pediatric Nurse Practitioner!!!
Some of you looonnngg time readers will remember that Mary Jane graduated with her Masters in Nursing back in the beginning of August. Doing this is kind of like graduating from law school. You have the degree but you can’t do anything with it until you have passed the big test (in the case of law, the bar exam, in this case “boards”). When Mary Jane graduated she had an elaborate plan to take care of the boards. She, in her methodic way was going to set up a strict study plan and nock that test out the first day they would allow her to take it. And because Mary Jane is the sort of person who does this she would have studied every conceivable question and then found a handful of questions that were not conceivable and studied them as well. However, life took a turn (which is really the only reason you ended up reading this blog) and suddenly Mary Jane found herself putting the boards off to the latest possible date that she could. And her strict study regimen? Out the window. There was no time to study and if there were a few minutes to study…well it’s kind of hard to focus when your daughters are in the NICU (trust me). So studying really didn’t happen much. Mary Jane was very freaked out going into the test, but once again the world was shown the great deal of intellegince God blessed my wife with, because she passed!
What really made me happy was how excited the NICU nurses got about it. I think everything that needs to be said about how wonderful my wife is might be illustrated by how people respond to her. Everyone loves her. As soon as the test was over (it was a computer test and they told her immediately she passed) Mary Jane called the hospital room to tell me she passed (I was holding Emma Jane at the time). The moment the room phone rang all the nurses in our area of the unit came running into the room to find out whether she passed. When I nodded that she had (still talking to Mary Jane) they sprang to action. Denise started by putting up a sign and then writing with a dry erase Marker on the room doors while Jen started cutting up disposable isolation gowns to make streamers. Other nurses grabbed gloves and blew them up like balloons, while still others grabbed baby bottles, filled them with candy and hung them up around the room.The PNP was done in surgical tape

Eventually real streamers were found and things got even "streamier"
All in all it was a good day.

Congratulations Mary Jane! We are all proud of you.

7 comments:

kosh_003 said...

Congratulations to Mary Jane! That's awesome! And as you say, truly amazing that she could do that in the midst of all that's been going on in the past few months. Well done!

Cindi Burger Barrett said...

I could not be more proud! I knew you would do it. Congrats. You are going to be such a GREAT nurse practitioner.

Erica said...

Congratulations Mary Jane! We are very excited for you.

Todd and Mary Wolfram said...

You GO, girl!

The Byrges said...

hello,
i hope you recieved my text earlier this morning, but way to go. i wish i could handle stress as gracefully as you do. congrats.
~mel

Molly K Katy K said...

That's awesome, Mary Jane! I am so excited for you!

Paul Luikart said...

Hey, that's fantastic! Congrats, Mary Jane!

love, Paul and Emily