00;00;00;00 - 00;00;21;23
Unknown
Hi, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Tina's Arena. Today I have fun, so Lani and she's going to tell us a story about herself as well. Hi everyone. My name is Alani. I'm a nurse. I'm Filipino, so I guess I play into that. All Filipinos are nurses stereotype. But I tried really hard not to be a nurse.

00;00;21;23 - 00;00;40;12
Unknown
You know, after high school, you're like, I'm going to do whatever I want. So I did do whatever I wanted. And I went into social work still working with people. I don't know why I thought I could work with people, but I did, and I took social work for a year and a half, and I hated every second of it.

00;00;40;14 - 00;01;01;09
Unknown
All the classes were terrible. I couldn't relate to any of it. And then at 18, I got a job as a debut. So I worked as a peer taking care of people, using your social work. I didn't have to use anything at the time. You you didn't really need a diploma or anything to work in these group homes.

00;01;01;09 - 00;01;20;07
Unknown
So I worked in a group home, so they just took me off the street. Joe Schmo taught me everything I know about moving people and changing them and things like that. And yeah, I hated school so much I stayed. I mean, not long after I got that job, they decided they're going to need, like your disability, your certificate or whatever.

00;01;20;11 - 00;01;45;09
Unknown
But I got grandfathered in. I took a year off of school after my year and a half of social work, and sure enough, I went to nursing because at, like, what, 2020? You're like, oh, I wasted so much time, I need to make money. I went into RPN school because it was only two years and I wanted to make money, get get going, but I did it, I took nursing, I was a nurse as an as an RPN for six years.

00;01;45;14 - 00;02;05;09
Unknown
And then I realized, dude, you need to do more with that. You can't see a lot of the departments you want to see as an RPN. So I went back to school that was a journey because going back to school at 29 years old, everyone's at least ten years younger than you. And it was a lot. It was a journey.

00;02;05;12 - 00;02;29;28
Unknown
I graduated in 2020, so at the ten year mark of me being a nurse, I graduated again. And here we are five years into that 15 years as a nurse and yeah, I mean, I wouldn't say nursing is who I am, but it's definitely what I do. It's what I'm good at. And again, contrary to popular belief and all of my complaining, I actually really do enjoy it.

00;02;29;28 - 00;02;49;10
Unknown
There's a sense of like, it sounds corny, but like helping people or even like explaining to them what's going on with them sometimes are like, you see these people at like some of their worst days or at their most vulnerable because they're sick. And yeah, I feel like I'm told I'm good at it. I just it doesn't feel like it when you're in it.

00;02;49;13 - 00;03;08;02
Unknown
But yeah, later on people are like, oh, I remember her. She's got the weird name. Like it's hard for people to remember my name, but they remember, like that cliche saying they remember how they how you make them feel. It's a true thing. And like, I didn't think, I thought I was just working until patients would come back and say, who's that girl?

00;03;08;02 - 00;03;26;25
Unknown
The one, because my hair's usually in a bun and it's flopping around. The one with the funny name when her hair's like this. Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's rewarding. It is rewarding at the end of the day. And it's surprising how much you see and how much you learn from other people. And honestly, I surprise myself every day with what I know.

00;03;26;28 - 00;03;44;25
Unknown
Sometimes I say stuff and like, you know, you're explaining something to somebody and they're like, oh yeah. And then back of my head I was like, damn, where'd you get that from? Yeah, that's pretty smart. I know my shit. I know my stuff. I know some things. But yeah, even in nursing, like, I've hopped around to all kinds of different departments and specialties.

00;03;44;27 - 00;04;04;13
Unknown
I'm currently in the E.R., which is a wild, wild ride. I worked in the ICU. What I know what I know best is dialysis, because that's what I've done as an RNN for the longest. But yeah, we're out here trying all new things and learning all kinds of stuff and meeting new people before we have to buckle down.

00;04;04;16 - 00;04;25;10
Unknown
Okay? Okay. So many, so many questions. Well, first of all, an observation. Isn't it crazy how you can be working in this same field for 15 years and still feel like you don't know anything? Absolutely. I literally know nothing. Every single day I walk into that hospital and I'm like, you know what? Yeah, some days it's monotonous and you just doing the same thing over and over again.

00;04;25;10 - 00;04;46;27
Unknown
But not one day is the same as the last. You could be doing the same thing in theory, but the circumstances around that same thing are so different. But I honestly, it's heart like while you're in it, you say, you know, it's the same thing over and over again. We literally learn something new every day, if not about your field or what you're doing about yourself.

00;04;47;02 - 00;05;07;15
Unknown
Because I've been like, do you have no patience? What are you doing in this field? And then you at the end of your shift, you're like, I got through it and I didn't lose my shit. So what about it? Nursing when you were younger made you not want to be a nurse. Or was it just the stereotype? Not the stereotype per se.

00;05;07;15 - 00;05;22;23
Unknown
I just didn't like people telling me what to do. So like I was that I was. I wouldn't say I was defiant by any means, but I wanted to see what else was out there in terms of what to do with the rest of my life. And I was like, no, I don't want to do that. That's only one thing.

00;05;22;23 - 00;05;40;06
Unknown
There's got to be something else. And even on my in the years leading up to me going back to school, I thought, what else can I go back to school for? That's not nursing because I was I mean, I didn't want to leave nursing, but I was like, If I'm going to change it up now, I might as well do it and start fresh.

00;05;40;08 - 00;05;59;14
Unknown
But one I had ten years in at the time already, and I was like, you know what? This is what you know, just put your head down, get it done, and now here we are peers. And you know, I don't I don't see more opportunity for sure. Like I have the options to go to the States if I wanted to work over there, heaven forbid I lost my job here.

00;05;59;16 - 00;06;19;13
Unknown
But yeah, the doors are open much wider and I you definitely get to see more things. Is there more schooling in your future? Do you foresee? Oh, I see it all the time, do I? Friends, I say, if I ever tell you that I'm going back to school, punch me in the face because I'm literally losing my mind and I've literally gone crazy.

00;06;19;13 - 00;06;41;10
Unknown
But the option is always there, which is nice. But school as an adult isn't. Well, it's not for the week. No, not at the peak at all. Yeah, I thought about going back to school a lot, but I just know how I am at school and it's not good. I what the thing is with nursing because I, I was in it already, like I was already a nurse.

00;06;41;12 - 00;07;00;13
Unknown
I knew when I went back to get my degree what I needed to know and what was just kind of fluff, which worked for me. Like, not I'm not my grades weren't stellar by any means because you still have to study. There's a lot of stuff that you seen, but the depth of what you have to know in nursing school is wild.

00;07;00;15 - 00;07;18;29
Unknown
But but it was nice because a lot of it was a review and a lot of it was like, oh yeah, that's why we do this, that and whatever. But it's not easy financially. They're holy smokes. So you're passed to nursing with kind of like you got some working experience for it. I got a lot of working experience first.

00;07;18;29 - 00;07;39;25
Unknown
Yeah. But the way the regular school system is, you just go straight into your school. I insisted you. What do you think? That the way you did it is better? Even though you went back to school much later, I wouldn't change it because experience, that's how you learn anything in nursing, really. All those books and you could get amazing grades in nursing.

00;07;39;25 - 00;08;10;10
Unknown
School will be a total flop in a hospital or in a community in any setting, because you don't know how to talk to people. You don't know how to carry yourself. Like, I don't regret the way I did it, although I wish I had done it sooner. Having done both the RPN and the program and knowing there's a whole there's a divide in nursing, there's RPMs and RNNs and having done the program, they look down on RPMs and I'm like, dude, why?

00;08;10;14 - 00;08;33;18
Unknown
You can't tell the difference between RNNs and RPMs on paper. Yeah, there's a difference in, you know, they should get the the less acute patients they should get, the more stable ones. But it doesn't always happen that way. And some of these are RPMs. Let me tell you one run circles around me because they know their stuff and because they know what they're doing or just because they've had experience.

00;08;33;25 - 00;08;54;11
Unknown
It's a shame because we have to pay for our license to the College of Nurses, and it's the same price to the penny. Rents pay the same amount as the RNNs do to the college, and they get paid less. I mean, yeah, we had to do two more years of school and yeah, we have a degree, but that doesn't mean much of anything.

00;08;54;11 - 00;09;12;23
Unknown
I know some RNNs. How do you get there? Because they don't do you can't teach common sense. And a lot of nursing is common sense. And like there's common nursing sense, there's street wise sense. And like you can't teach that in school. And I feel like that gap year that people talk about that they just don't do anything.

00;09;12;23 - 00;09;32;25
Unknown
They go the, the, the year people travel or find themselves. That's an important year. My gap year just happened to be a year of social work and learning how much I didn't like it. And now, like I work closely with some social workers and men. Their job is not easy. I you couldn't pay me to do that job.

00;09;32;29 - 00;09;54;01
Unknown
I would rather have my hands deep into someone's body than deal with the stuff that they have to deal with, outside of what I do. Yeah, I mean, it's all hard work when you have to deal with people and when they're in such vulnerable states, it's it's a lot to, to handle sometimes. Like these are some of the worst, worst days.

00;09;54;01 - 00;10;18;02
Unknown
Like, you know, you have someone who just had a heart attack and like, they don't know what to do. They don't have anything set for them. Like it's scary for people, which has taught me to get my stuff in order. Like I tell my my people like my sister and my husband, like, this is what I want. If anything ever happens to me x, Y, and z so that no one's guessing and you can't.

00;10;18;04 - 00;10;35;15
Unknown
Like, I've had a lot of instances where the person is so sick that they're not breathing on their own. We're keeping them alive, but they don't know what their wishes were. And so, you know, that has taught me to, you know, get your stuff in order. And it sounds morbid and like people don't want to do it. But when the time comes, it's good to have.

00;10;35;15 - 00;11;01;20
Unknown
So no one's guessing about what you want for yourself if anything ever happened to you. I mean, it's just kind of the nurse in me to get because I've seen families just combust because they're matriarch or patriarch, because they're gone, not gone. But like, they're panicking and they're they're doing all kinds of Hail Mary things for this person when they wouldn't have actually wanted that, but they didn't know.

00;11;01;27 - 00;11;26;09
Unknown
So if that's a lesson to anyone, get your stuff in order. I think that's very important because we never know when stuff is going to happen. You think you have so much time? Yeah, in theory you do. But express your needs and wants for yourself if ever you become incapacitated to someone, anyone really that knows you, who's close to you, write it down.

00;11;26;12 - 00;11;47;17
Unknown
I don't know how solid a written thing is, but it's better than nothing. And like, hope that your family like follows those choices for you because I've had family members who they know it's written, there's an actual will signed by a lawyer, blah blah blah, but the family tries to go against that. Yeah, because they're so emotional. It's vulnerable.

00;11;47;17 - 00;12;06;08
Unknown
They don't want to lose their loved one and stuff like that. But nursing, we see all kinds of weird stuff. But that's a big one. There's like get your stuff in order, express your wishes to your loved ones because you really never know. Yeah, you never know. You said you are a nurse, but it's not who you are.

00;12;06;11 - 00;12;27;28
Unknown
So who is the lady? So, honey, you still trying to figure it out? I I've learned that I care a lot. I play it off like I don't, but I'm someone who I'm solid to my to my people here. I will tell you when you're being stupid and I'll be mean about it. Like, why are you dumb? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

00;12;28;03 - 00;12;50;28
Unknown
But that's because I also want that in return. I like to try new things. Thanks to you too. Tina here has gotten me out of my comfort zone many a time now, being one of them. But yeah, I've learned that I'm like, ballsy like that. Like, I, I like to try new things. I used to be so calculated and like, if this like, I would think everything through before doing.

00;12;50;28 - 00;13;19;24
Unknown
Now I'm just like, okay, go do I think because, you know, the older you get, the more you realize I can handle really whatever comes at me, I feel like I'm feisty. I've had some fight in me. Like, if things aren't going my way, we'll make it happen. Understatement. Yeah, I think I'm resilient. I just, I just if the circumstances are shit, we're we deal with them and we go and even to people who are around like are going through some shit I'm like, okay, that's fine.

00;13;19;25 - 00;13;39;19
Unknown
Feel your shit. You can have some self-pity, but you have to get up and do your thing. Do what you need to do, get out, see people. When you're not doing so hot, reach out to people. The real ones will show who they are. I'm one of those people that will, like, talk so much shit and be like, this sucks, this sucks, this sucks.

00;13;39;19 - 00;13;54;16
Unknown
But really, the background, I'm still trucking along. Like, we got to get this done. I like, I grind, you know, and I hope the people around me see that too. And like, if you're in a shitty spot, you can count on me to let you be in that shitty spot. But we're going to get you out of there.

00;13;54;16 - 00;14;19;07
Unknown
We can't just stay there forever. And I think that is more me than being a nurse. Is the resilience like it can't be shit for forever. And I think I want that to be known as more of me than she. She's a nurse, like I'm scrappy. All right. I agree with that. That's probably one of the aspects about you that makes you a great nurse, because they're resilient and you care and you have that fight in you I think so, I hope so.

00;14;19;10 - 00;14;42;13
Unknown
I have had patients say that, like my situation was really dire and our little pep talk helped those like, really. And it's really nice. So like I have to embody that. That part of things is and that the scrappiness the resilience. And I think as negative as I am sometimes I'm pretty positive. I make the negative seem funny.

00;14;42;21 - 00;15;07;12
Unknown
So that it's positive, if that makes any sense. Like we could be in the trenches and everyone's losing it and I'm out here like, well, who's going to live first? Everyone's going to live, but someone has to suffer a little bit. We're going to get out of this. And I think that I think that's who I am, is resilient and scrappy, and I will make something happen, something good happen from a shitty situation.

00;15;07;15 - 00;15;30;24
Unknown
I think I love that answer. I think that's a great way to describe yourself and a great outlook on life as well, is just to know that you can make it through it. If you just keep, like you said, trucking along one step at a time and eventually we'll get out of it. It's yeah, if it's not, everything will be fine in the end.

00;15;30;25 - 00;15;50;05
Unknown
If it's not fine, then it's not the end. I think that's what I want all the people around me to realize is like as long as I'm around, I'm going to do what I can to make things okay, but I'm not going to shut. I'm not going to ignore the fact that things are crap. I'm like, I will tell you, yeah, this is not great circumstances, but you weather the storm.

00;15;50;10 - 00;16;14;10
Unknown
Do you think that your faith affects that outlook? Absolutely. I grew up in church and it's like, it's weird because I was just talking about this with my husband. I have this. There's a higher being that tells me everything's going to be okay. I know that the Lord will take care of me regardless of what's going on, regardless of the stupid mistakes that I make.

00;16;14;17 - 00;16;32;20
Unknown
It's going to be fine because of my faith. You know, I'm not, you know, super Bible thumping and like all that stuff. But I do believe that I'm taking care. The Lord watches me because let me tell you, like in nursing alone, there's some times where I'm like that. Probably you shouldn't have done that, but everything worked out okay.

00;16;32;23 - 00;16;54;22
Unknown
And like, I feel like the Lord puts people in my life in order to help me stay on that track. There's roadblocks, for sure, but a lot of it is the fact that I have faith that everything's going to be fine. I do it a lot, but the back of my mind always is like, it's fine. This is the way the Lord wants it go.

00;16;54;22 - 00;17;12;21
Unknown
That's the way it's going to go. And that a lot of people are like, you're crazy for doing X, Y and Z. Like you're like, I like jumping off a cliffs into water. I would skydive if you let me like all of those crazy things. And I tell people, if that's the way the Lord wants me to go, that's the way we're going to go.

00;17;12;23 - 00;17;32;09
Unknown
I like I don't shy away from stuff like that anymore and like, and not even that big. Even like anything really. If if you're afraid of something, why? What's the worst that could happen is rising. And then that's another like what is the worst that can happen? If the worst does happen, you just work through it. It's fine.

00;17;32;09 - 00;17;54;13
Unknown
And a lot of that is because I have a lot of faith. It's hard to explain. Okay, what is something you would tell yourself or someone in your position like 20 years ago, 20 years ago, say like 18 year old? Yeah. Or like fresh at a high school. What do I do next? Dude, it's hard to say. You're an idiot.

00;17;54;13 - 00;18;17;26
Unknown
At 18, you literally. No, nothing. You know nothing. You're out of school where you have to ask to go to the bathroom. Still, like it's hard as an you. You can't tell 18 year olds anything. I want to tell an 18 year old to, like, be careful, but also don't like. I mean, obviously be careful doing things, but like, do whatever makes you feel good about yourself.

00;18;17;27 - 00;18;36;14
Unknown
Don't worry about don't worry too much about what other people think of you. But stand on your choices. Like if you're going to do one thing, do it. And if the consequences are crap, suck it up. That's what you decided to do. I was too afraid at 18 to do anything. I was really like, straight shot. I was the good girl.

00;18;36;20 - 00;18;57;06
Unknown
Hello oldest child. Like, I wish I was a little bit more rambunctious, but it brought me to where I am now. And now I know myself better, and I. And, And I think that's what allows me to make all of these decisions, like, because I know how to carry myself in the consequences of things that I do.

00;18;57;08 - 00;19;15;13
Unknown
Right. Like if I break my leg doing something. Well, you decided to do that. So it's just can you deal with the consequences of the things that you're going to do? And if that if I could tell my 18 year old self that I would, but would I still do it? No, I can't, it's just the way I was brought up.

00;19;15;17 - 00;19;38;07
Unknown
You know, you have to be a smart 18 year old to even think of the consequences, because I was not exactly at 18. What are consequences? You're invincible at 18. I was too careful at 18, but I. I feel like it turned out okay. Yeah. Yeah. Same. I was very square within the lines, obedient. And I do wish that I push the envelope more.

00;19;38;07 - 00;19;56;20
Unknown
I really a lot. I feel like it would have changed a lot had I push the envelope a little bit more. But now I push the envelope now and, and it's I feel like it's better for me to do it now because I'm more responsible and I know what consequences are because had I done it at 18, who knows?

00;19;56;27 - 00;20;18;13
Unknown
Is there anything else on your heart that you want to share? Tomorrow is my birthday. I think lately it's been hitting me like, dude, at 38 years old, I don't want to feel like this every birthday. So I'm going to put it out there and be like, embrace it. We're turning 38 tomorrow. Amazing. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today.

00;20;18;15 - 00;20;39;25
Unknown
Thanks for having me. Hi everyone. Thank you so much for making it to the end of the episode. If you live in Windsor-Essex County area in Ontario, Canada, then you should know that I host an open mic live storytelling event the last Saturday of every month at Alo Lounge on Erie Street in Little Italy from 5 to 7 p.m..

00;20;39;27 - 00;21;05;24
Unknown
If you don't know what open mic storytelling is, well, I encourage anyone to come up and share their story. We have different themes every month. The event celebrates each connection, our humanness, our emotions of rawness. It gives us space to really express ourselves and to have people listen. Because I feel like you don't really get too much of this anymore.

00;21;05;26 - 00;21;26;06
Unknown
It is essentially a gathering of the souls and sharing a little part of ourselves with each other. Whether it be a funny story, a sad story, a happy story, a romantic story, any story that is yours you can share. And I'm loving the community that is coming from this event. So come to the event. I hope to see you there.

00;21;26;12 - 00;21;33;12
Unknown
You can purchase tickets at tales of the town. Com.