Change of Plans

Sooooo.... After a great deal of soul-searching, I've decided it's time to go home and be with my family. It actually wasn't a hard decision to make. Do I a) put off nursing school for one more year and be with the people I love or b) try to focus while 3,000 miles away doctors are doing God-knows-what to keep fighting this beast in my dad's body? It's so obvious.

Yes, there is much unpredictability about what will happen. But I have options. Duke knows my situation and has said I can choose to defer and know I have a spot to come back to with next year's class. So I can go home and if things go swimmingly, I know I have something to come back to. I can also apply to programs out in California (UCSF is one of the top nursing programs in the country) so that I start next summer instead of this August. So in a way I'm one year behind, but most of the programs out there are Master's Entry programs, meaning you start a graduate nursing program with a Bachelor's degree in something besides nursing. It's three years instead of 16 months, but I'd have a Master's on the other end and be preparing to be licensed as a nurse practitioner to boot. I'd probably get there faster through this route than through 4 semesters at Duke, a couple of years of working to pay off loans, then another 2-3 years in a graduate program.

Actually the most daunting part of this are the hellish logistics to take care of in the next 6 weeks. Will Mr. D be coming with me or stay behind for about a year and then join me next summer, hopefully in San Francisco? Do we try to sell the house or put it up for rent? Do we REALLY have to pack and move AGAIN? How will we be able to afford living in CA when we're barely surviving here? Do we pack and ship, or use a Pod and pay to have it stored in a Pod warehouse until we know what the heck we're doing? Do we try to trade in Lola for a better car (if we can afford it) and then do the cross-country road trip (which I've always wanted to do)? Do I quit work a week earlier than planned and we drive out to meet my family for the August trip to Catalina? Or do we fly out for the trip, fly back to finish packing and then make the big drive? If we're not working in August where will the money come from to pay the bills? Our savings is nonexistent right now.

But all that pales in comparison to this.... there will be no regrets that I wasn't there or didn't do enough or didn't spend enough time. The logistics will be taken care of one detail at a time. So where to begin...