Nursing School is Hard

Clinicals. They are not what you expect them to be, not that I really had any expectations.
Today was a hard day. Mondays are generally pretty slow going on our floor. we have a lot of surgery patients, and most of them don't come to our floor until Monday afternoon, after we have left.
This morning, while waiting for our nurses to round, another student nurse and I agreed to give a bed bath. we followed the night nurse to the patients room. He was on contact isolation which meant we have to put on gowns, and gloves and face masks to go into his room. He was a stroke victim as well and was almost completely paralyzed and suffering from a respiratory infection. We did our best to clean him, just two student nurses in our seventh week of nursing school, but eventually an RN had to come in to help us. It is emotionally draining to see postings like, "please take care of our dad." in this patients room. It is physically exhausting to have the visceral reaction of dry-heaving in reaction to the patient coughing up phlegm.

but it is monday. and i have a pharmacology test tomorrow. so i come home. i set the alarm for five minutes and I give myself just that amount of time to relive my stress through tears. when the buzzer rings the tears must stop. because tomorrow is tuesday and i have to get up to do it all over again.
there is reward in the work. there is.