I Know Where I'm Going

$300 shirt looks pretty good, eh?

When you decide you're going to Baylor and submit your enrollment deposit, they mail you this shirt and probably some paper and stuff.  It's an exciting day.  Then you can go around wearing the world's most expensive tshirt and feel all cool.  You can be even cooler by wearing it on campus.  It'll look great with your high school letter jacket.

It's always exciting, though, to have a plan and know that something is coming up.  I like planning ahead for vacations and trips and events, because the anticipation is almost as much fun as the event/trip/fun thing itself, or at least gives you a goal to look forward to and get through each day until then.  I am goal-oriented, and I just can't help myself.  So when you get that tshirt and it becomes real that you're going to college and everything, there is so much to look forward to. So much to plan, so much to imagine, and a dorm room to decorate in your head as you go to sleep (is that normal? I hope so.). It's just a good feeling and a good time.

Well, recently I've had a hard time being in Nashville - it's far from home, I hate my apartment, and I am pretty ready to be done with balancing school and clinic.  I just want to start working. Don't get me wrong, I still love it and everything. I am just ready to have the next step of my life to look forward to.

And now, I do!  I am happy (and nervous, and excited, and anxious, and thrilled, and pleased, and overwhelmed) to say that I have a great thing to look forward to, because I will be doing my externship at MD Anderson Cancer Center!  I will be working in the Head and Neck department.  I am thrilled and incredibly blessed, because this was my first choice and is the #1 cancer center IN THE WORLD.

yay

In case you are unsure of what an externship is exactly, it's a 12-week (in my case, 10 weeks for the majority of students in my program) intensive period of working and getting umpteen hours of clinical experience.  Instead of having to do class and clinic, we just get to do clinic. Yay! There will apparently be many assignments to complete and quite the workload outside of clinic, but it will all be related and, hopefully, interesting. I'll get MBS (modified barium swallow study) trained, and get to see things like surgery, chemo and radiation treatment, and a wide variety of cases.  It's also likely that these cases will be very extreme or severe - if you're really sick, you go to MD Anderson. 

I'll be spending the first six weeks in the acute hospital, seeing patients right after surgery and helping them communicate via electrolarynges or Passy-Muir valves or communication boards.  I'll also be doing A LOT of swallowing therapy in the hospital.  The next six weeks, I'll be working with the outpatient population, which I am really looking forward to.  This will include A LOT of swallowing therapy, speech therapy for glossectomies and such, and assessment and treatment of laryngectomees.  I'm very much looking forward to seeing these kinds of patients, problem-solving to find the best solutions for them and helping them communicate most effective and feel more normal again.

This will be incredibly challenging, but I think I will come out of this experience as an excellent clinician.  It's also encouraging that pretty much every SLP I've told about this has said something along those lines, that I'll get terrific experience and learn so much and that it is a great step for my career.  All good things :)

So there's all of that to look forward to, and it's certainly a lot.  But there is so much else to look forward to, too!  I get to move to a new place (an apartment with working...well, everything!) and meet new people and colleagues, and best of all, be close enough to home and Waco to get to go to ATOC (if the schedule works out) and some good basketball games! I'll get to live in a big city, work in a huge medical center, and be all young and single and fun and accomplish my goals and dreams at the same time.  It is an incredible opportunity and I feel incredibly blessed.  I hope it turns out to be all that I am wishing it will be.

So now I can start planning this event, decorating my new place in my head as I go to sleep, looking forward to the future, and I can finally say, yes, I know where I'm going!