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| Mary Lein, RN |
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Mary Lein, RN
Hi! My name of course is Mary Lein.
My journey to get to an Occupational
Health Career has been, to say the
least, interesting. I had been down
several career avenues. I was once a file clerk, trained lab tech, an oil
analyst for locomotives, a florist, and a sales clerk. After an unfortunate family incident, it was
apparent that I needed to have an actual career, not just a job, so I gathered
all my college credits and did a quick personal list of pros and cons, to see
what I would even want to do as a career. Since I like people and I like science,
nursing seemed to be the obvious choice. In
1996 I started attending Oglala Lakota College of Nursing (OLC), located on the Pine
Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.
I have met many persons wondering why I choose OLC Nursing. For the simple
reason, I like the caliber of nurse that the college was turning out. I have
always looked at things holistically, not pieces parts, which is a big part of
the OLC training for nurses. That is an attribute that I feel helps as an
Occupational Health Nurse.
When I got my license I of course
ran the mill of nursing disciplines; geriatric,
long-term, floor nurse, home health, and even jail nurse. I could not find that
really great "fit". In June of 2006, I was hired as a
staff nurse in the clinic in DOE. I was not sure what the future would
hold for me. I was really getting the "hang" of OHN when in October
of 2006; I had the unofficial title of "Clinical Coordinator" suddenly
dropped on me. This brought a whole new set of things to know, people to
see, well you-all know the story. December of 2006 was when that was made official.
So far, I must say, I really do like being
an Occupational Health Nurse. At first glance someone once told me that an
Occupational Health Nurse was a "glorified school nurse". It may seem
so at first glance, but there are so many more challenges in this field,
teaching, interpretation of what the doctor had just told your patient,
figuring out how to keep your patients health and safe.
And of course, my personal favorite,
PAPERWORK!
Ms. Claudia, our
Webmaster, wanted me to include an interesting side story; I chose the one that
I actually told her. It was how Richard (my significant other) and I met.
One day in January, 1999,
my oldest son, Wade, was be-bopping through the living room. I was sitting in
there just kinda letting the TV watch me; he looked up at me and stopped. Wade
went over to the computer room door and said “Come over here Mom!” I followed
him into the computer room. Wade said
to me that he thought I looked a bit down. As he was talking to me he was
typing on the computer. I had no idea what he was up to, until he moved from
the computer desk, and motioned for me to take the chair. He had “set up” an
ICQ account for me. ICQ is an instant messaging system where you can meet and
“talk” to other people, some from around the world! I was looking at the
computer screen, dumb-founded; he asked if I knew how to “talk” to people on
this service. I told him, “never seen such a thing.” He then showed me how to
“check out” some of the bio’s of the persons that are free to talk to you.
After I’d gone through
about 10 of the bios, Wade, who was looking over my shoulder, said, “Hey this
guy looks like someone you could talk to!” “It says that he’s a scuba diver,
weren’t you one too?”
I corrected him with “I
still am.”
“Okay”, and with that Wade
reached for the key board and typed “Hi”. Will wonders
never cease! The guy wrote back, “Hi, how are you?” To which I sat staring
unbelievingly at the at the computer screen.
I asked Wade, “Now what do
I do?”
He says, “Well, Mom, it
may be nice if you wrote back to him.”
After that fateful day,
Richard and I wrote to each other over 3 months before we even saw each other
for the first time. We had decided to move in together in Aug of 1999, but the
problem was that he lived in St. Lenard, Maryland and I lived in Gordon,
Nebraska, so we chose Colorado to start out on our life adventure.
We now live in North Beach,
Maryland, and his favorite joke to
everyone is: “She got me move over 3000 miles to move just 20 miles up the road”
As an addendum to my
“never-ending story,” I have now started on my goals that I set down for myself
a few years ago. I have always wanted to go on and get my BSN then on to my
Master’s degree. The ultimate goal is to obtain my N.P. license. I have found
an online school or rather a great school that offers online RN to BSN classes.
So as of April 28, 2008. I have officially started on my ‘long term” goals! It
feels so good to start to see this new adventure unfold before me!
Contact Mary
Lein
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