Tuesday, May 10, 2011

New Town, New House, New Job

This last month, things happened so fast. I'm already up in Cleveland-Carl is not.

After we found out where Carl would be doing his residency at, Carl emailed his residency coordinator (who is kind of like his mom in the program) and asked if she had any contacts for me. She came back with the email of a nursing recruiter.

On Tuesday night, I emailed the nursing recruiter my resume. By Wednesday afternoon, I had an interview set up for the next Monday (the 28th of March). By the next Thursday, I had been offered the job, which started on May 2nd.

I am extremely grateful to have gotten a job so quickly. Nursing in one of the jobs that you can count on there always being jobs available, but politics in the last little while have made jobs hard to find.

The only problem is that I was starting on May 2nd. Carl doesn't graduate medical school until May 22nd. If I waited, the next orientation for new nurses isn't until July. I took the job, knowing I would be up here by myself for a few weeks.

April was a blur. Carl and I went to Honduras (!) for two weeks on a medical mission with the med school (yes, I will do a post about that). We got home with two weeks to pack up and move up to Cleveland while I was still working and he was still in school.

Needless to say, it happened in quite a rush and we really didn't get to say goodbye to many people. Due to us being in Honduras and then being in Cleveland for the last few weeks, we basically showed up to church and said "sorry, we're moving in two weeks!". One of our good friends had a baby while we were in Honduras and I feel horrible that we never made it over to see how they were doing and to say good bye.

We did end up renting a house. It's a nice house, with 3 bedrooms and lots of space. I moved in on the 30th and started work on May 2nd. Carl is coming up on the weekends, but most of the time I'm here by myself trying to unpack, work, and find my way around everywhere!

I am loving where I work at. It is the same hospital as Carl, although not the same department. We will most likely never work together unless I switch floors. The hospital is a Magnet hospital, which is a big deal for nurses. It's one of Cleveland's big hospitals and is the only Trauma 1 center in Cleveland (which is why Carl is going there). It's not associated with the Cleveland Clinic. It's the public hospital in the area, so most of the patients without insurance end up there. This makes it difficult, because of budgeting, the nursing is more primary nursing-nurses doing all the bathing, putting in IV's, blood draws, etc. This is actually great for me to get my skills really down well.

For right now, I'm excited to be living in Cleveland. Of course, it's summer and not winter. :) Sometimes I get really lonely and I have watched way to much netflix the last week, but it hasn't been too bad. I hope some people get adventurous and come visit us!