Clicking No
Choosing my real life over a shinier one
It was January, and in my mind’s eye, I saw myself in the Pacific blue OR scrubs — the ones you swipe your badge for, and the vending machine pops open a drawer like a reward. I’d have a fun scrub cap with space dinosaurs or capybaras on it. Push-dose pressors in my pocket, 2 milligrams of Versed ready to roll.
The procedure would go smoothly. I’d intubate, turn dials to start the gas, monitor vitals from my seat next to the head of the bed while surgeons argued on the other side of a blue drape about something that did not concern me. After a smooth wake-up and a congenial handoff to the PACU nurse, I’d meander out of the hospital, my work done, my feet not aching. I’d unplug my all-electric, 3-row Volvo EX90 from the hospital’s charging port and drive home. Nick is already there, dinner is already made, my debt is already paid, and the house is always clean. Life would be good.
Other scenes also played behind my eyes as I fell asleep during the months leading up to my CRNA school application being due.
Piles of printed PowerPoints stacked haphazardly on a desk I didn’t even own. Drug names, receptor pathways, molecular structures I couldn’t recognize. The sound of another episode of Paw Patrol starting while my son stared, slack-jawed and zombie-faced at the TV. My daughter’s shoulders hunched in disappointment as I told her, “I’ll try to make it to your next game, kiddo.”
In this version of events, Nick looks frazzled and exhausted, dragging Miles out the door with one hand, attempting to console a crying Maxine with the other. No one is happy.
Friends and coworkers attempted to allay my anxiety about applying for an incredibly intense, all-consuming three-year program where I would effectively turn my husband into a single parent of a 3- and 7-year-old.
“It’ll be hard, but it’ll be SO worth it!”
“Short-term pain for long-term gain!”
“Tell your kids you’ll take them to Disney when you’re done!”
“Three years isn’t really THAT long.”
Their well-meaning words didn’t fix the knot in my stomach. And yet, the knot in my stomach didn’t keep me from continuing to dream.
After all, I’ve been at the bedside in the cardiothoracic ICU for eight years. I have seen some shit (as they say), and I’m pretty good at what I do. I have had a front row seat to innumerable coworkers leveling up to become CRNAs, NPs, assistant nurse managers, and charge nurses. Why not me?
In early February, I randomly opened the application at work and started filling it out. It was a compulsion; once I started clicking the checkboxes, I couldn’t stop.
I rewrote my resume. Signed up to take the last of the prerequisites, Biochemistry and Physics, online.
Asked coworkers and colleagues — ones I both feared and admired — to write letters of recommendation.
I studied for the Cardiac Surgery Certification to stack even more letters behind my name, because who wasn’t going to take Katie T., BSN, RN, CCRN-CSC seriously in an interview?
I had always felt like my 3.8 GPA in nursing school was a fluke — a combination of luck and being good at taking tests. I’d long ago convinced myself I wasn’t really all that “smart.”
Glancing over my resume with a newly critical eye, I added accolades that felt like a stretch. I had been nominated for not one but two Daisy Awards (I didn’t win either, but hey, I got a little flower pin for my badge — surely that counted for something, right?).
Committees and leadership?
Well… it could be said that I am an informal leader around the unit.
Newer nurses sometimes ask me questions, assuming I’ll have an answer.
I’ve been called the “nursier nurse” before — the one who generally knows what to do with the unstable post-op on rocket fuel.
(Politely call CT surgery and ask to cannulate the patient for ECMO, of course.)
If they asked about leadership in the interview, I’d say, “Why yes, I’m so glad you asked. My coworkers have, on more than one occasion, referred to me as ‘the adult in the room,’ so I’d say my leadership capabilities speak for themselves.”
By May, my application was submitted.
I finished both prerequisites and got As in both — pure luck again — because I absolutely do not understand a single word of biochemistry.
And then I waited.
Checked my email.
Waited some more.
In June, an email arrived inviting me to interview.
Cue the existential dread.
I met with a coworker’s wife who had finished the same program I was applying for to get some advice on acing the interview. We sat at the kitchen table while I sipped tea — which I never drink — as I attempted to absorb her wisdom, poise, and neurotransmitter knowledge, just by being in close proximity to her.
I chatted on the phone with an old travel-nurse friend who was currently halfway through school.
“Dude, you know what a shit head I am. So if I can do it, you definitely can!” he urged.
I had to admit, he had a point about that.
I shadowed a random guy I met on the r/CRNA subreddit.
I figured, as weird as it was, at least if he tried to murder me, I’d be near an OR.
Lucky for me, he turned out to be the coolest guy ever — and I got to see the hospital’s “snack room” where drinks, granola bars, coffee, bagels, and pre-made sandwiches just sat there, free for the taking.
That shit was free.
In July, I bought a suit.
The morning of the interview, I popped a double dose of propranolol and listened to Taylor Swift’s “…Ready For It?” on the drive there.
It was to be an MMI, or multiple mini interview format, and I was not about to let my sympathetic nervous system betray me during even one of the stations.
And it didn’t.
My hands didn’t sweat. My voice didn’t shake.
I smiled, shook hands, made at least half the faculty laugh, and by the end, I couldn’t help thinking:
Maybe I have a shot after all.
And so the waiting began again.
By August, I received the boilerplate email:
The decision was difficult. The competition was fierce. “We were very impressed by your application, however…”
Naturally, I was crushed.
But I accepted my spot on the waitlist.
When I didn’t get a call in September, or October, or the February next, I stopped imagining myself in the blue OR scrubs and the fun cap. I let it go.
“Will you try again?” my family, friends, and coworkers asked.
“Meh, probably not,” I would shrug.
“Once is enough. It was never really my dream. I’m totally fine either way.”
Cool as a cucumber.
Unencumbered.
Unbothered.
Unruffled.
Then, on a Friday morning in mid-April, after eight months on the waiting list, my phone buzzed in my pocket.
As soon as I saw the caller ID, I knew who it was, and I knew exactly what they were going to say.
I answered, trying to sound excited. Grateful. Humbled by the opportunity.
The opportunity to set my life on fire.
The opportunity to pull the rug out from under my kids’ feet.
The opportunity to stay behind on two family vacations planned months ago.
The opportunity to line up childcare and school pickups for two kids at two different schools, five days a week, come September.
Orientation would start in five weeks.
The woman on the line thought it would be “great” if I could let her know by the end of the day.
I smiled into the phone and lied:
“No problem!”
Later that night, talking to Nick, lamenting the timing and the impossible choice, Maxine saw me crying.
“Mama, are you sad?”
“I want to go to school,” I said, “but I’m worried it will be too hard and I’m worried I’ll miss you too much.”
“It’s OK, Mama. You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” she said, snuggling up next to me and petting my head. “It’s your body.”
I grinned at this empowered, body-positive advice from my sage 7-year-old.
“But,” I countered, “if I go to school, when I’m done, we can go on lots of vacations, and we’ll have lots of money for new toys, and — “
“I already have lots of toys, Mama,” she interrupted. “I don’t need more. I just need Dada, and Miles, and you.”
She put a tiny bag of Easter M&Ms on my bedside table and told me it was OK if I ate them all by myself.
She wouldn’t even be mad.
Then she asked me to tuck her into bed.
After she was asleep and Miles had gotten his “one last more” story and drink of water, I collapsed onto the couch and opened my laptop.
I followed the email’s hyperlink to a red checkbox —
and clicked No.
