I gave my first shot today in pharmacology lab. I hadn't worked up my usual pre-first nerves since I didn't know I'd be doing it. The lab began innocuously, as I injected blue saline into a hotdog to practice intradermal injections. But then we had to give the subcutaneous shots to each other, a shot of saline in the back of the arm. I practiced on a creepy dummy arm three times first. (Note: there are tons of dummy body parts in the simulation lab. On opening a cabinet to look for the bottom of the sharps container, there was a random and unassuming foot hanging out. Two weeks ago, we administered medicine through a PEG tube that went into a 6-in by 6-in abdomen fragment that had been taken out of a dummy and placed into the sink. There's even a dummy that gives birth that we'll use when we do maternity lab.)
Anyways, then came the moment, and my partner offered to let me go first. I talked out loud for each step, dictating what I was about to do, hoping that if I were about to make a mistake, the instructor would stop me before my words turned into medical malpractice. I was pretty nervous, even though I knew those things don't usually hurt. Even though I'd watched another girl give an injection, seen it on the instructional videos, and practiced on the dummy arm, there's still this quantum leap between knowing and doing that presents itself as a sink-or-swim moment. If you wait until you feel prepared, you'll never take the leap, so I did it. And then it was over. No catastrophe, no blood, no tears. Success. I was so relieved that I was not the least bit nervous about receiving my partner's injection, her first as well.
That's the thing about firsts. I get entirely too nervous about them. There's all the worrying that comes before the preparation. Then there's the preparation. Then there's the practicing, the attempts to replicate the scenario as much as possible without actually doing it. And then some more agonizing over all the ways it could go wrong. And then at some point, I've got to stop planning, preparing, catastrophizing and just take the plunge. No matter how much I've prepared for it, the first always seems an impulsive moment. A "wait for it, wait for it, wait for it... go!"
And then it's over, its exit having none of the fanfare of its entrance. I'd built it up to be this grand ordeal, a parade of steps that each must go right, and really, it's a simple moment, slipping quietly by with no pomp and circumstance. For all the nail-biting anticipation, you could miss it if you blinked.
And so I'm glad that the moment kind of sneaked up on me today. I still prepared, read over the skills checklists and the techniques we were to use, but because I believed that the hotdog would be the closest I'd get to a live patient, I didn't set up the usual pressure that weighs on uncertain situations. And imagine that-- I lived to tell about it, and so did my lab partner.
