The Almost-Nurse Practitioner

Today we registered Anthony for graduation!!! He is in his final semester and his graduation ceremony is scheduled for December 11th at 6PM here in Tampa. I can't believe that he started this program two years ago. In some ways I can't believe he is finally going to be done with school, but in other ways it feels like it has taken forever to get here!

So far he is loving this last semester. He has three different clinical sites:

• A clinic located an hour away from our house that mostly does Department of Transportation physicals for truckers. Yeah.....fun. Anthony says that the actual work isn't very interesting, but the nurse practitioner who is training him is really nice and is giving him tips on where to work. He also got to put in his first set of stitches at this clinic last week!
• A family practice clinic that does a lot of things for themselves. They have their own lab, x-ray machines, and they even do their own casts so Anthony is excited to be able to learn a lot of new things. They also follow patients for long periods of time, so he will be able to practice doing follow ups and things other than drop ins and urgent care.
• A cardiology clinic for some specialty experience. Anthony has always been interested in specializing in cardiology. He says that he just "gets" the heart and that unlike a lot of other body systems he finds all of the complicated things about it easy to learn and remember. He hasn't been assigned to his clinic yet, but it will be good for him to try it out and see if he likes the atmosphere. We've heard that cardiologists can be a bit...difficult to work with, as in big egos, which is totally not Anthony.

Since he only has class once a month, all Anthony has been doing is going to clinicals and studying for his boards. I can definitely tell a difference in his stress level when he doesn't have to obsess about exams every few weeks :) His birthday is coming up in a few weeks, the big 3-2, and even though I've been telling everyone he wants baby stuff ;) I'm sure he would like everyone to remember that he will be taking everything fishing or aquarium related.