Helen Alford:  

Hey. Glad you stopped to check my story. After HS I worked a year, started NW Indiana University, got married in '72, got an Assoc. Degree in Nursing in '74 and worked for 17 years at Dyer hospital in the Psychiatric unit. I had one child in '91, my son, Troy, who graduated from Portage in '99. I got my BSN in '90. I worked for the Visiting Nurse Association for about 2 years. I ended up working at Porter- Starke through Porter Memorial for 5 years. We had an exchange student from France in my son's Senior year. If you haven't done this I highly endorse giving it a try. I was divorced in 2000 and started doing travel nursing where I took contracts at different hospitals across the country. It was my way of being able to travel and still work. I loved it. I went to VA, HI, FL, ME, MA, and 3 different assignments in CA. The last was for 6 months at Stanford Hospital starting 6-04. I really liked it here. The teaching hospital environment is very exciting. California has limits on how many patients a nurse can have for a shift. The hospital sees error as system errors and looks at systems rather than pl...Expand for more