66 - Tera Tveit Pt 2: I Just Wanted to Be Numb

Continue with nurse educator and Spokane, Washington native Honored Guest Tera Tveit as she vulnerably opens a window into a very dark time in her career and how she (mis)handled it, how the COVID pandemic compounded that, her incredible story of recovery, and her resulting advice to fellow nurses and nursing students! 

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Transcript

0:01

Welcome back to the Tera two-fer We're here for part two of the Terra Tveit two-fer Did I do that right? Was that all right? Was I close enough on the last name? All right, thanks. Okay. We're just, we're not messing around. We're gonna jump right in because Tera's got some things she wants to talk about. So let's ask the loaded question, shall we? Do you, Tera care to share about any challenges you might have had in This is really personal for me and so, I'm sharing this because of, because I want others to learn. So not because I need to share my dirty laundry, okay? Hold on, let's back up and let's bring the humor back in because you know this is it right here. Feeding Our Young we're getting down and dirty with Tera And so, no. This was something that she, in our questions that we ask and that sort of thing, she literally says in the email she sent to me, she goes, in this part about what she's going to talk about, she says keep me on track because I could talk about it for hours. So we're not going to talk about it for hours. but she is gonna give us a nice abridge and why this was a challenge and obviously maybe how you worked through that challenge. I've been using the word overcome and I need to change that habit because it's not necessarily an overcoming, it's an embracing moving through, working with, working with, yeah. Okay, so the floor is yours, my mouth. I'm trying to figure out where to start. So I'm going to start a little bit back to what we were just talking about in considering nursing a hobby. So there are things in nursing that I always thought as a hobby. There are also really horrible things in nursing. I don't know if you've experienced this. Actually, I'm 100 % sure you have because you used to be a pediatric oncologist oncology nurse. So I'm going to go start with that. There are things that that we see in nursing that no one else in the world sees. No one else in the world does. No one else in the world has to be exposed to it. And I experienced those things. Early 2000s, middle 2000, like 2011 -ish, 2007 -ish, right in there, things just got a little bit harder for me. When I had dealing with death of babies, dealing with... intrauterine death, dealing with bereavement, dealing with all of the bad parts of OB. 99 % of OB is great. There's a 1 % that is bad, but that 1 % is so bad that most people don't even know about it or see it. So there are some instances that happened to me then, and that's kind of where I began to... get affected in terms of not being able to sleep, not being able to function, not being able to cope. And I didn't at the time get help from our employee assistance program. I wish I had, know, hindsight's 20 -20. I didn't get the help I needed. And so when you don't get the help you need and when you don't process things, Like we teach our people, our friends, and everybody's guilty of this, of not being able, of just saying, you need to just go home, have a glass of wine, you're gonna be fine. Self care, self care, you'll be fine. You'll be fine. And we've normalized drinking as a way of coping. I had a group in of, kindergarten moms that we would get together and, and laugh and have a great time and drink. had group coworkers, you know, it's been a really bad night. Let's stop off at the bar and we'll have mimosas. know, we normalized and we have normalized alcohol and. other drugs and as ways of coping and self care. So I started doing that and I got through. I'm going to say fine until COVID hit. COVID is a touchy subject for a lot of nurses that worked during COVID. The first year of COVID, was a hospital supervisor. My job was to make sure we were admitting the right patients, making sure they were going to the right floor. I dealt with all of the emergencies, so all the codes, all the traumas, all the deaths. I was present for. The body moving the. More the all of anything it entailed. And then we were as nurses. We were also. things changed minute to minute. I, you know, thinking back to that nursing home, you know, where I came out of nursing school, very idealistic, you do exactly what they said in nursing school. You're five rights, you're everything you did. You were taught, you did. And now COVID came and the powers that be that we've trusted for years said, no, no, do it differently. We want you to wash your gloves. We want you to gel your gloves when you get out of a room. We want you to use your PPE on all the rooms, not individually. That tosses nurses and toss nurses into this moral decision -making of this isn't right, but I'm, this is what I have, you know, wearing your masks again. We never did that. That's not right. And I have a very strong button, you know, the second. second year of COVID, I worked, like I said, at Kootenay. And my job was to train labor, a labor pool, people that worked at Montana or on Montana, McDonald's, Starbucks, they could walk in and I needed to teach them what to do so that they could help. I needed to take that very angry OR nurse and teach her how to be a MedSurg nurse with eight patients. So for a year, that's, that's what we did is we rearranged everything. and it was the bickering and the fighting and then all the vaccine arguments, all of it just weighed on me. And by the time I got to the second year of COVID, I was very much an alcoholic and struggling with my day -to -day life. so my moment, the moment that came to me was when I... I basically, my therapist, I'd started seeing a therapist the year before when COVID started. therapist finally said to me, he's like, you're gonna die. So you either go to an inpatient rehab, and my husband's sitting right next to me because he made me bring him to my session. He didn't know everything. You either go to an inpatient rehab or I will no longer see you anymore. And I was like, crap. He goes, you're going to die. And I, and I actually had had an episode where I, I wanted to die. I wanted to wave the alcohol in front of a cop and say, please arrest me, help me stop me and help me to get through this and what's going on. And it all started cause I couldn't sleep and wine makes me sleepy. So my, so when I look at students and and with my students, one of my most important things is self care and how to be able to take what you're doing and take where you are and separate it from who you are. It's yes, I'm a nurse, but what I do, I am somebody else. I am a wife. I'm a mom. I'm a gardener. I'm a reader. I'm. I'm anything, I'm everything else. Nursing, well, I love it and it was a hobby for me. It still is that, but it's not my only identity. Yeah. And so I had to work through that. And I think, and I'm glad for COVID for that, for being able to bonk me on the head and say, it's time that you're going to die if you don't get help. And so I teach my students self -care. I ask them, not every week in class, but I'll be like, what did you do for self -care? And some of them are like, I went to Taco Bell and I liked Taco Bell or I went and got an ice cream cone. or I watched a movie and I'm like, okay, that's a start, but you guys, know, because I see that myself in them as this is what I'm going to be. And this is the cure all end all like, yes, but remember you had to take care of yourself and deal with this. And I started peer support groups at Deaconess and we started, I've been done critical incident stress management training and I've done. all of these things, we created the Zen Dens at the college just to, I'm doing it to prevent it from happening to somebody else. I never drank in high school. I never drank until I was 21. The first time I was drunk was in, was after a test in nursing school. I would never have been the person you'd guess would have a problem with that. But that's, I just wanted to be numb. And when you, are a nurse and you're in these situations that you don't expect to be in or don't know how to help yourself out of, you start to try to numb and you numb and you numb and you numb and you numb. So I'm trying to teach my students how to not do that. Does that make any sense? more sense than has ever been spoken on this show before. I'm just my heart like, thank you. Thank you for being vulnerable with that. And for the benefit of the listeners, the listening audience, again, like this is a nursing instructor, this is a professor, this is somebody who is teaching actively, teaching nursing students who are very well. going to possibly, hopefully, hear these episodes, including Tera's And so for you to have a level of transparency, to know that this is potentially what would happen or be a sequela of doing just this moment of being open and vulnerable and I just... I can't. Thank you. Thank you for because there are things that we don't like to talk about in nursing in life. you know, I mean, you can go we've talked about it before on the show, just death. You know what I mean? Like we avoid society. We like first world United States, other countries, perchance avoid the subject of death, whereas you go back 100 years ago, it was commonly talked about. and yeah. then when we have a, we have a death or we have a, we're part of it, we don't know how to talk about it. And nobody knows what to say to anybody. And they say stupid things. And then, so, you know, then you're like, really? So yeah. Yeah, yeah. And you go back far enough to the point where like this is opening the door, not in any way, shape or form like you did there. Like there's nothing vulnerable about this for me. I've, one of the things I love doing, especially with my kids when they were younger, I loved taking them to graveyards. I love taking my family to a graveyard and walking around and seeing the tombstones and thinking of these people and maybe the lives they might've lived. It sounds morose in today's day and age. It sounds gross. But there is something there spiritual and you go back far enough and guess what? Crazily enough, learned this, I don't remember exactly when I learned it. People would go families after church, because that was a common thing. You'd go to a cemetery to have picnics and gather and talk and to remember the dead. And I'm like, the thought of that now? Just that subject of these things that we don't talk about. And those are those, you know, those elephants in the closet, we try and keep the door closed, all the things. And so I appreciate your vulnerability there and also just what has come from that, your motivation, you know I mean? The things that you're doing for students today. I'm a completely different person, a completely different nurse. And, you know, this song you asked me about this, this is me. That's, that's what came out of it is, is for me to, like I said, when I, when I came home from being away, I, I'm like, I'm done. I don't want to do this anymore. I can't do it anymore and still be sane and sober. And so I love that I have found another niche, which I wanted to do years ago. had, it was already part of my plan to become a teacher and instructor, nursing instructor, but it just came a little sooner than I thought it was going to. And it's been the perfect, everything has fell really in line. this fall, I'm really hoping to get together, some debriefing sessions for students. So like every, every Tuesday at five o 'clock you meet in this room. If you know, one comes within 15 minutes, I'm out. If you show up, we'll debrief because that's things that the students are seeing nowadays are even worse than what, what I saw or what you saw when you were a student. almost every one of them that I talked to have to have done CPR in their, in their J two semester. And that is like, my, Are you okay? You know, and those are not pretty. No. And they will have lasting effects. And I want to teach the other instructors, this is what you need to look for. These are what you, you know, let's talk about what it looks like to someone, what someone looks like that's had a really hard situation. I did it once, I don't remember what class it was, but it was a really bad situation and the student talked about it. And then I got to. be able to look at the other students that say, okay, this is what you're gonna watch now with her. You're gonna check in on her. Are you sleeping? Are you eating okay? Are you avoiding or using alcohol inappropriately? Are you using sleep aids? What are you, you know? And if she says, yeah, great, okay, check back the next day. But it's our responsibility as fellow nurses, and that's why I love your Feeds Your Young so much. our responsibility to take care of ourselves because we won't, no one's going to do it for us. We as coworkers and as teachers and as students and nurses, we need to start looking at what's going to, what can help us as nurses and as a nursing profession continue for the next hundreds of years. Because right now, look where we're at. or nurses are leaving in droves. Why? And what have we done wrong that we can't? help them stay. And you have this seismic event, like a global pandemic, that you never expect to live through, you know, and it costs so many people so many things. And for a lot of people, automatically it's, know, well, they lost a loved one. Someone died that they loved, that they cared about, that they didn't expect dying, and they died. And now we got to deal with this. But you're opening the door to everything else. that that global pandemic then causes, including those coping mechanisms that may or may not be as healthy, those things that, and then also it causes everybody to question everything, period. It's like taking the standard like basket filled with eggs, just everything's nice and neat in a row, and you just shake the living heck out of that thing, and these eggs are flying everywhere, they're bumping into each other, and now all of a sudden you're like, I need to reevaluate my life. I need to reevaluate my life choices. And maybe that's why some are leaving. But for other reasons, then other people are like, well, life is short. And there's a lesson to be learned there. But I think one of the issues we're having is that society as a large are taking the route of, since life is so short, I'm going to tell you how I feel, regardless of how that makes you feel. And there are Yeah, and it's and so then we do that to each other and then now we're abrasive and all the things. So it's all this negative stuff that came from what a bat in China. don't like come on. I can't my mind can't wrap around it. And so but here we are in twenty twenty four still dealing with the fallout from this and working together. You know, we can't fix the world. I've said that before. But here we are as nurses trying to at least help. our fellow nurses and future nurses to be. I love that, how you said that. When I get to teach community, the community health practicum clinical. So my students go to, they go to like low income elderly housing. go to people that have been housing for people that have been homeless. They go to, they see a lot of things that they wouldn't necessarily see in their lives. And they get really angry. And I want them to get angry. I want them to be like, this system is terrible. And the psych patients and this system is awful. And this patient can't even get this and this is because I'm like, yes. Now what are you going to do about it? And they're like, well, it's so big. said, yeah, it is big. But guess what? You sat and you talked to that elderly gentleman and you made a difference in his life in that moment. And that is why you're a nurse. It's not about. connecting with all your six, seven, eight patients. It's about what can you do to the person that's in front of you? Maybe you're the only person that helped him, you know, made a phone call for him or took talk to him that day. You made a difference in his life at that moment in this time. And that is what nursing is about. Because you will drive yourself insane if you try to solve all the world's problems or the system's problems. So what can you do for that person right then? And that helps them, think they have said that that helps them to kind of reorganize their priorities because it's never going to be perfect. But what can you do right then and there? Yeah. And in the meantime, as we all are, you know, guilty of doing, we become very myopic, right? It's my world, what happens to me. And again, I think the pandemic has accelerated that to a certain extent. it's you cut me off in my lane, in my car, and whatever. And that's always existed to a certain extent. But we're still, that myopicness, I think, also applies to each of us in this scenario that you're talking about, where Well, Tera, what can I do? I'm just a nursing student and you point that out. And then the next part of that is look alongside you. How many peers do you have? You affect one person. This is the greatest pyramid scheme of all. You affect one person and the person next to you affects one person. If there's a cohort of 70 students, that is 70 lives changed. Done. Even math. Easy math. And that's only if you affect one person, one time, one shift, not giving any care to any other day or any other person you've cared for. More goosebumps. More goosebumps. that's kind of, and that's how I tell them how to cope as well, because that goes right back to coping. And, and you know, I, I, I try to be really honest. I don't want to paint a picture of perfectness for nursing because I don't want them to be so shocked when they get there, that it's going to be like, I'm done, you know? But I also don't want to discourage them from being a nurse either. So I'm trying to, I'm very much like. Yeah, that happened. But what good did you do? What did you do to whom that did help? You can't maybe be part of a code, but you can go stand by a wife and hold her hand. You can't be a part of a hemorrhage. Like, you know, what are you going to do? Well, I can tell you what to do. You know, you stand here next to the dad or you hold the baby so the dad can be with the mom. That's huge. And so with students, but you have to teach them that you have to tell them that or else they just stand there like I'm so helpless and I'm just in the way. No, you know, I had one practicum student that they were coding a baby and she says, I didn't know what to do. So I just went in and sat and held on to the dad. I'm like, my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. No one else is going to be able to do that because they're all busy with the code. But you had the wherewithal and the thought somebody needs to be with him. And you did it. That's what I try to kind of teach them, I guess. And then I think it's important too to balance this out with, so for nursing students that are listening, to balance this out with the idea, there's a couple of ideas I want to share to piggyback on this. And that is, first of all, don't put the burden on yourself that you are going to be the problem solver in that day, in that moment, in whatever, fill in the blank. You don't have to go into every day like, my gosh, I got to find that one person. And maybe it motivates you and you're like, I'm going to find that one person. But if you go into that with that, just know that it may not always occur. That day may not provide that opportunity for you. And don't walk away from it as a personal failure because you did not do that, whatever that is. But the other thought that you've already said, and that is that oftentimes our students, ourselves, we go into situations, you know, and people like, want to be that hero. I want to help whatever. I want to save that life. I want to do whatever the case may be. and they think of the grandiose things. Like you said, the students, it's like, what do I even do in this situation? I can't, you know what mean? They're not gonna jump in there and do a fundal massage and try and save a woman's life who's trying to hemorrhage out. And that's one of the quote unquote big things, right? Like we're giving medication and we're providing ideas to providers and they're like, you're amazing. Thank you, I never thought of that. And you know, it's these big things that the grandiose things that go through the mind. But it's those little things that... You just never, please don't ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, I don't know if I can say it enough, ever lose sight of. And that is the holding of a hand, the holding of a baby, the coming alongside somebody that you can do, just speaking the words, you can do this. And you're talking to someone who's got substance abuse issues. And there are people like, wow, I'm not even gonna, the cynical old, us old biddies, like, well. the edge. Yeah. But yeah. been burnt out and I get it and they're like well Why even try and but if you and because here's why you may be the person who goes in that room and says You know what John Doe? You've got a problem. You're therapists either you get help or I'm done seeing you For some people that's not a wake -up call and and that's okay maybe to the detriment of your life, but Everybody has free will. That's the beautiful thing about it. But you can be the person that goes in the room and says, John Doe, you've got an issue. I want to see you again next year. I want to see you come back through here with a stubbed toe. I don't want to see you in my morgue. And that may get through. It may not. But I talk about that principle of planting seed. You're not the first person to tell them that. And those that are burnt out aren't going to tell them that because they're like, I'm not the first person to tell them that. But you might be the person, that last one, the last link in the chain that provides health for that person. So, agh! Agh! Also, to again, go back to feeding our young, that person that you connect to, that person that you help, that person that you do a little extra for might be your coworker. Maybe it's your coworker that's headed the death. And you say, you know what, can I answer those call lights for you? What rooms need them? mean, we don't, we're, nursing is in kind of a crisis where you know that. Part of it is that lack of taking care of each other. I have five minutes, why can't I go and get your patient up to the bathroom? I would love to do that for you. And that is how we're gonna get together. That's how we're gonna get through it. And that's how you're gonna have a year or career is if you can find those little things in not just your patients, but each other. Yeah. Ugh. don't, there's nothing left to say, Tera. This is like, my gosh. Like, I'm done. This is unedited. I'm posting this today. Like, it's just that important. It's that important. And it doesn't matter how big or small the task that you're doing to help your peer, you know, postpartum, there's, know, there's, everybody has perceptions about whatever area you're in, right? Mine was, you know, I came home after my first shift or two or something. My wife was like, And just lovingly, she's like, what is it like holding all the babies? And I think what she's thinking of is when our kids were, you know, growing up and we had a nursery and babies would go to the nursery so moms could sleep. Well, that's not a thing anymore in a lot of places because the standard of care is, they find that bonding is better if you, anyway, blah, blah, blah. Let's not bore with the details. But the point is, she's like, what is it like holding all the babies? And my answer to her without much thought at all was, I have no idea. Ask the moms and dads, because I've been too busy. I'll shift taking care of these families. And so even like in postpartum, there are other nurses that see us as what do we do? We feed babies. We teach people how to breastfeed. And we give ibuprofen and Tylenol. We are the weakest of the bunch. I'm not going to step on any soap boxes today because that's not what I'm here for, especially after the powerful things that you're bringing. But I'm circling it back around to the idea that, you know, okay, yes, you're right. We do give a lot of ibuprofen and a lot of Tylenol and by golly, there are some times that you'll ask somebody, they're like, can you get to lunch? No, I can't. I've gotta go give this ibuprofen. And my response candidly and rather sarcastically is, my gosh, I don't remember how to do that. Maybe, I'm gonna find somebody. No, I know. to go give a pill for somebody because what does that turn into any nurses out there will answer this question. Tera you already know if you say as the nurse it's your assignment and you go in to give somebody a singular pill what are all the things that can happen? Yeah and or you know the answer and then they're like well shoot and I need well and little Jimmy's not latching can you get the and that one pill turns into 10, 15 minutes you didn't have. So that's why doing just the simple things, man, it just helps. Help your peers. my god. And you know, it's interesting that you say, you know, perceptions and, I worked at Deaconess labor and delivery for most of it. did when I was manager, I was manager, L and D, NICU and postpartum. So I got to see a lot of different things that I didn't get to experience just being on L and D. And yeah, there's a huge perception there and it's a divided unit because it's L and D is on like Sacred Heart L and D is a unit. Postpartum is a unit. NICU is a unit. And then I went to Holy Family for clinical and they're all one unit. It's an LDRP. I am still overwhelmed by the teamwork that happens on that unit. I have never ever had seen nurses volunteer to take over patients because a labor came in. Here, let me take that one and you know, I'll take that one too. That's fine. And you know, because they know that that labor patient has to have a one -to -one. Yeah. We need you. We need you all to create a nice. What's the word I'm looking for some sort of course. You need to go talk to other establishments not just here but nationwide. No. Well all right. So Tera we're going to I am I'm going to end there just because I. Is there anything else. OK. So there's of course the pointed questions we have to end. you already know what's coming. So not getting into that territory. As a clinical instructor, anything else you want to share on your heart for students, for fellow instructors, not the one thing. We'll come to that in our typical format here on this show. But are there anything else? This is the catch -all question. Is there anything that I have not asked you about that you would like to share and share your heart with before we close? I don't know if there's anything specific. I would love to shout out that I can only speak for Gonzaga because I only work there, we instructors as instructors all I don't know one even that doesn't truly care about. The student as a whole. And I want sometimes I think our students think that. We're there to. challenge them to be mean or to weed them out, I guess. And that has not been my experience. I wouldn't work there if it was because I don't believe that's right. So I don't know, for our Gonzaga students, just know that we care about you and all of you and all parts of you and want you to know that we are there for you. And I guarantee, other people in other universities, other colleges, et cetera, et cetera, just like in nursing, there are gonna be those that are burnout, there are gonna be those that are cynical, there are gonna be those that whatever, fill in the blank. And those people, whether you're a nurse or a nurse instructor and you're like, that's me, I'm a bit cynical, I'm salty, I'm all the things, you're not an enemy of this podcast. That is not the idea. You're not an enemy of what we're doing. It's not us versus them, which is what society has turned into. The idea is hopefully, hopefully I can reach in somehow, our students, our instructors, somebody can reach in and impact you in a way that goes, man, that is me. I need to go to Macy's for a while. I need to go to, know, we're filling the blank, whatever you gotta do. And it's not a failure. It's not a, we gotta check our egos at the door, all the things. But circling back around to the idea that there will always be someone there who can tell you you can't. And whether, hopefully that wasn't somebody that told you that growing up, and I'm talking to everybody now, this isn't just nursing students, maybe somebody told you you can't, and you used that as fuel, and you said, I'll show you I can. One of my favorite characters, going back to your love of TV shows, the show Lost, which I loved its first go around. And I think as of this recording is going to start making a revival because I heard it's coming out on Netflix next month. So there's going to be a whole new wave of fans, I think. But regardless, Locke, John Locke is one. I can't even talk about it without, but he's one of my favorite characters. and you'll see why in the show. can't like turn away if you plan on watching the show or weather case movie. The opening pilot like this guy, know, it's about a plane that crashes on an island, blah, blah, blah. And this guy is like, he's looking, he's waking up. This is John Locke. He's waking up, he sees his toes, he wiggles his toes. He's like doing a self check. He gets up and he's just got the biggest grin. He's just been through a horrific plane accident. And. He embodies without getting into the specifics of the show and I feel like I'm going to be doing a disservice by omitting this but it's that powerful of a moment. He embodies and he says on more than one occasion, you can't tell me, don't you tell me what I can't do. Because he faces in his life these limitations and you're going to have someone that tells you that. So use it for motivation, maybe it's hindered you whatever the case may be. But like you just said, Tera, finally, three hours later, bringing it back around full circle to what you started with and got me on this rabbit trail is that there are majority, I would imagine a majority of instructors, professors, et cetera, in every university, every community college, every nursing school that are there because they want to see you succeed. Because I can tell you right now, a lot of places... You're not getting paid well, at least not as much as bedside. That's a whole other reason why nurses are staying at the bedside, not coming to teach. And that's not a, this is not a whatever. I am happy with my job. Tera's happy with her job. But people aren't coming to it for the money. Most of the people are coming to it because they want to see you succeed. So if you have those thoughts, and we've heard it on this show, we've heard from nursing students that have said, I felt like a number. I felt like we were trying to be weeded out. mean, those are two of the most common things that I think all of us hear. And it's not a thing. I know that there have been instructors that have done that. I lived through one years ago who was like, no, what are you, I'm going to fail every blah, blah, blah. Because they had the power. It makes no sense. regardless, we are not, most of us are not in it for that reason. Yeah, I agree. I yeah, I just couldn't work for places that did. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And if that's the culture, dear God. I hope that's not true of anywhere. We're gonna get someone that's gonna email the show and be like, I wanna be on the show, because I am in that place. I'll be like, okay, this'll be awesome. So anyway, we're gonna put a pin in this conversation. Tera, let's wrap it up the way we talked about. You had chosen three words to describe nursing school. What were they? Remind everybody, and why did you pick them? They were challenging was the first word. Nursing school is hard, period. It's supposed to be hard. We want you and we teach and we need it to be hard because it's a big deal. So I found nursing school to be very challenging. The next word was fulfilling because when you're successful in nursing school, even on a test or a class, It is like, that feels good. This is where I'm meant to be. Here I am. Right. It's that it's so uplifting and fulfilling and it's led led me to a fulfilling career as well. And then the last one is life altering because if you, for me personally, I started nursing school, like I said, on my 21st birthday, I had never seen. This is going to make everybody laugh, but I'd only ever seen my husband's penis. Happy anniversary Tera you. So I'm 21 and I'm having to go put catheters in and I'm having to do, I grew up. I grew up and I grew up in nursing and I matured and it changed who I was. Nursing school changed who I was for the better. And I can't even articulate it really well. I think the maturity of it is probably the most life altering. I'm young, our students are very young. It's life altering. much so. Very well said. So closing this episode, two last questions. If you had one piece of advice that you want nursing students to walk away with after listening to your episodes, what would that be? That is so hard because there's so much. But when it relates, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But if it relates to what we've been talking about today is learn appropriate and self-care. Take care of yourself first, always is probably the one. You gotta take care of yourself before you can take care of others. And that is so true. Very much so. And your one piece of advice for fellow professors, nursing instructor, instructors, et cetera, clinical or didactic, it doesn't matter. What's your one piece of advice for them? Something you want them to walk away with. Listen to your student. Do not assume you know what they're saying or feeling. Listen to them and use your emotional intelligence to hear them. I know a lot of students don't ever feel heard and I've seen it in front of my eyes and it's like, no, that's not what they said. Listen, just listen to them. That's all. That's it. Great advice. What a, I just, man. Give me all fired up. We're getting each other all fired up. It's an honor to call myself a bulldog. so grateful that you came on this podcast and shared your story, shared your wisdom, shared your insight. I learn something every day just by doing this. Like I said, this is just a personal pet project. That's it. just, I'm gonna call it for what it is. I'm being selfish and if somebody else wants to learn from it, great. But seriously, I thank you and I hope you have a delightful rest of your anniversary. It was an honor to be here and I appreciate what you're doing and I love that I get to work with you and I just appreciate you in a lot of ways. So thank you for having me. Thank you. Students, we're coming for ya. Not to weed you out, but to lift you up.