11 Hours

Until I meet my very first patient. Well, my very first patient as a nursing student. My very first patient EVER was as an EMT, four an a half years ago. They say you never forget your first patient, and I'm sure I never will. After all, he died. My very first EMT call was a nasty car crash, which resulted in the rapid demise of my patient, about 30 seconds after we finally got him extricated.
In some ways, this makes me less nervous about tomorrow- after all, the odds are that THIS patient won't die on me. On the other hand, the odds of my getting a fatal car crash on my first day were pretty low too.
The professors told us that they expect us not to sleep tonight, to be worried about killing someone, and to obsessively study our texts. I'm not sure that's a healthy attitude, and I'm going to do my best now to get to bed.