Sink or Swim

So it's kinda crazy to believe that I've been here 1 year already and I'm now the second most senior officer on the unit. A lot of people have come and gone during that time and there have been a lot of changes over the past year too (not only at work but in my life as well). Since my deployment got canceled, I've been in a little depressed mood. I was looking forward to getting away from postpartum, getting out there in the world and really DOING something, and I was also looking forward to getting out of a lot of things including:

1) Uniform Inspections
2) Physical Fitness Test
3) Training to Charge Nurse

Well, $300 later (from buying stuff for deployment i.e. more uniforms and all the items that go along with it, toiletries, etc etc.) not only am I NOT going anywhere anytime soon, I'm stuck with all this crap and a big credit card bill. Not to mention the gov't shutdown that almost took place and would have cut my pay almost in half. (But this story is for another post) Oh well, I told them to pick me up for the next deployment so hopefully that will be sometime soon.

But alas, I diverge. I was thrown for another loop today. No one was scheduled to be charge nurse. None of the nurses who were scheduled had been trained and neither had I. Well, since I was the most senior out of everyone, I took the reins and took on charge nurse... yup without having ever been trained for it! Didn't really know what I was doing but all of a sudden I found myself not only responsible for the entire unit but also responsible for assigning patient load, collateral duties, calculating numbers, and making sure everything was running smoothly. Sink or Swim! What a tiring and stressful day! Thank GOD it was a good day, not insanely busy (patient load wise), and nothing crazy went wrong. I'm beat... time for bed!